Five Basic Truths

This sermon was given by Rev. Jared Buss on July 19, 2026 

Text:

There’s a lot that’s written in the Word. A lot to know, a lot to do. And yet, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8). Even though there’s so much to know, there is a sense in which this journey of religion is not about mastering a complex thing, but about getting a simple thing right.

Today we’re going to look at a summary of the faith of the New Church, a summary that’s given to us at the beginning of the book True Christian Religion. This summary includes a list of five basic things that we need to know and do. Five is not a big number. Obviously the Lord has given us books and books to learn from, and understanding more is always a good thing. But it’s also good to be clear on what the basics are, and to understand why they’re the basics. When you simplify a whole theology down to a list of five points, there’s a lot that you can’t say; so everything that is said carries a lot of weight. So today we’re going to look at this summary with the goal of understanding why the five points on its shortlist are the ones that make it to the shortlist.

I’ll begin by reading the introduction to the summary, which is the very first thing that’s said in the book True Christian Religion [read §1].

So this statement of faith is like a doorway into the church. That’s a useful way of visualizing the things we’re talking about today. The book then proceeds to lay out the statement of faith. I’m not going to read the whole thing—even though it’s a summary, it’s still several pages long. But at the end of that summary we’re given a list of what the book calls, “the particulars of faith on a person’s part”—in other words, a list of the specific things that we are responsible for knowing and doing. That’s what we’re going to focus on. This passage is printed on the back of the worship handout, and you’re encouraged to follow along as I read aloud (read §3.2).

So there’s the shortlist. And now we’re going to go through these points one by one, and talk about what they mean, and why they make it to the shortlist.

The first point is about the identity of God. “God is one, in whom is the Divine Trinity, and He is the Lord God the Savior Jesus Christ.” It’s a simple statement, and maybe it all seems obvious; but there have been schisms in the Christian church over just about every detail in this sentence. Every nuance matters here. Really it shouldn’t be surprising to say that it’s important to get our idea of God right. Religion begins with God. He is the Alpha and the Omega (Rev. 1:8 & 11, 21:6; 22:13). Later on in True Christian Religion we read that, “the whole body of theology hangs on a right idea of God, like a chain on its first link” (§163).

Our statement about the identity of God begins with the assertion that He is one. This is something that the Scriptures teach from beginning to end. In the Gospel Jesus says that the first of all the commandments is to love the Lord—but listen to how He actually phrases that commandment:

The first of all the commandments is: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:29, 30)

The oneness of God really matters. God is the supreme being, and there can only be one of those. But within the one God there is a Trinity, a Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19)—these three are distinct, but they make one, just as soul, body and action make one person (TCR §166). Jesus said, “I and My Father are one” (John 10:30).

And it’s important to know that this one God has a name. He isn’t a concept, He isn’t an abstraction, He isn’t whatever we want Him to be. He is the Lord God the Savior Jesus Christ. We can’t actually have religion unless we’re willing to serve something greater than ourselves, and we can’t really serve something greater than ourselves unless that something has a name. That’s why our list of five basic truths begins with a statement about who God is.

The next point on the list says that “saving faith is to believe in Him.” Faith and belief are things that we sometimes sell short in this church organization. We know that we’re not saved by faith alone—we’re not saved just by saying and thinking the right things. This is what the Lord Himself teaches: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven” (Matt. 7:21). Thinking the right thoughts is not all that matters—but faith in God does matter. “Saving faith is to believe in Him:” the faith that saves us is faith in the Lord. But it’s important to understand what “faith” actually means. Listen to this teaching from the gospel of John: [read 3:16-21].

That puts it pretty starkly: if we believe in Him, we’ll be saved. If we don’t believe in Him, we’ll be condemned. But think about the things that the Lord went on to say, in that reading, about what it actually means to believe or not believe. He says that those who don’t believe are condemned, “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (v. 19). In other words, the people who don’t believe and are condemned are people who don’t go to the Lord because they are doing evil. And conversely, the Lord says that, “he who does the truth comes to the light” (v. 21). In other words, the ones who do what is right are the ones who go to God, who is the Light of the World (John 8:12, 9:5). These are the ones who believe, and are saved.

 Faith is not just a feeling and it’s not just a thought: to believe in God is to go to God, and to treat Him like He is in fact your God. It’s to go to Him like He is your light and the one who saves you. But if we go to Him, and then run away from Him so that we can do evil, that’s not really faith. To believe in Him is to accept that His Word is truth, and so to live as He says.

Now, these teachings about faith in Jesus Christ can leave us with the impression that people who don’t say, in so many words, that they worship Jesus Christ cannot be saved. But God is not so inflexible. As He says in John, “other sheep I have which are not of this fold” (10:16). Listen to what we’re told in the Heavenly Doctrine about “good gentiles”—that is about non-Christians who “live up to their religion, in love to … God and in love towards the neighbor” (SH §3263.2):

… although they do not know the Lord while they are in the world they nevertheless have within themselves a worship and virtual acknowledgement of Him when good exists within them, for the Lord is present within all good. For this reason also they acknowledge the Lord in the next life without difficulty…. (ibid.)

The message here isn’t that the identity of God is unimportant. The message is that the Lord looks deeper than we do. He isn’t looking at whether or not we call ourselves His servants, but at whether or not we’re willing to actually become His servants. People who do their best to seek the supreme being, who are willing to learn the truth and do it, are looking for the Lord, and they will serve Him when at last they meet Him. What we know about Him in this lifetime is comparatively trivial.

 This doesn’t mean that we get to decide who God is, or who we want Him to be. If we do that, we’re really just worshipping ourselves. We need to do our best to seek God—to learn the truth and do it. We’re not meant to use that truth as a weapon against other people, to say “I’m right and you’re damned.” But we’re meant to hold ourselves accountable to it. Religion begins with the acknowledgements that we aren’t God and that we need God. So we have this statement of faith, which says that saving faith is to believe in the Lord God the Savior Jesus Christ.

The next two points in the summary statement of faith are that “evils must not be done, because they are of the devil and from the devil,” and that “goods must be done, because they are of God and from God.” Now you can go home and tell your neighbors that in church today you heard that you should be good, and not be bad. Everyone knows that this is the stuff that religion is really all about. But it’s important to note that the statement of faith doesn’t just say “be good and don’t be bad.” It says that evils must not be done, because they are from the devil—or you might simply say, because they are from hell; and that goods must be done because they are from God. In other words, our reasons or motives for shunning evil and doing good are just as important as the things we actually do. We can abstain from evil for all kinds of selfish and worldly reasons: because we want to look good, because we don’t want to go to jail, etc. But when we abstain from evils only for external reasons, our hearts cling to those evils—and when our hearts cling to evils, we hide in the dark and don’t go to the Lord, who is our Savior. So we need to reject evil because it is wrong, because it is from hell; and we need to do good because it is right, because it is from God.

The statement of faith doesn’t go into detail on what counts as good and what counts as evil; but for the most part, figuring that stuff out is pretty straightforward. As the Lord said to the ruler who asked about eternal life, “You know the commandments” (Luke 18:20). And as He says in Micah, “what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, [and] to love mercy…?” (6:8).

The last of the five points in the list we’re looking at today is maybe the most puzzling. It says, “These things are to be done by a person as though by himself, but it should be believed that they are done by the Lord with him and through him.” In other words, we need to shun evil and do good as though we do it by ourselves; but we need to believe that it’s really the Lord who does these things through us. That idea isn’t so complicated by itself; what might be confusing is why it makes it onto the shortlist. The other four points are so simple and so obvious: Believe in God! Do what’s right! This one seems like a technicality—like a little detail.

We find a hint as to why this last point is important enough to make it onto the shortlist in the sentence that follows next—the last sentence in that passage on the back of your handout. “The first two points pertain to faith, the second two pertain to charity, and the fifth pertains to the conjunction of charity and faith, thus of the Lord with a person.” This fifth point is about our conjunction with the Lord. It tells us how to understand the relationship that we have with the Lord, day by day and moment by moment. He is the source of everything good. He is our Savior, and we depend on Him. He is life, He is love itself. So He says, “without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

And yet, He wants us to receive His life and His love as though they are our own. He wants us to be real, living beings with our own identities, distinct from Himself. He wants us to have freedom, He wants us to have agency. So He gives us work to do. He says, “I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit” (v. 16). So this is how our faith in God and the life we’re supposed to live are woven together: we’re called to keep His commandments, to do the work He’s given us, as though we’re the ones who make the choice and bear the responsibility. And at the same time we’re called to lift our minds, as often as we can, to the truth that He is our Savior and we need Him: the power to do good is His alone to give. So we weave faith in God and the life of charity together—it’s like breathing in and breathing out.

There’s so much more that could be said; but these five points are a doorway to the faith of the New Church.

Amen.

God's Warnings

This sermon was given by Rev. Jared Buss on May 17, 2026

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There are a lot of places in the Word where God warns his people that bad things will happen if they take certain actions. We’ve already heard two different warnings from God today. The first was in the recitation from Deuteronomy (30:15-18), in which He says that if His people walk in His ways He will bless them, and that if they turn from Him and serve other gods they will perish. That formula is repeated many times in the Old Testament: the people are told in no uncertain terms that they will be blessed if they follow God, and will be wretched if they do not.

The second warning was in the reading from 1 Kings. Jeroboam was standing beside the altar that he had made for the worship of golden calves (see 1 Kings 12:28ff), when a man of God came to him to say that that altar would be desecrated: the priests who sacrificed on it would die, and human bones would be burned on it (1 Kings 13:1, 2). And as a confirmation of this prophecy, the altar broke and its ashes were spilled (vv. 3, 5). The warning was clear: what Jeroboam was doing was profane, and it would lead to ruin.

These warnings make sense, in that they’re consistent: the Lord says that bad things will happen if His people turn away from Him, and then His people turn away from Him and bad things happen. But that doesn’t make the warnings easy to digest—at least not for everyone. The Lord’s words are fair, but they can seem so harsh. The consequences for disobedience are often violent and ugly—the prophecy that the priests of the golden calves would be killed is just one example. And when we hear warnings like these, we can be left with a distinct impression that God is out to get His people.

One solution that we sometimes turn to is to avoid the passages where God says these kinds of things—to gloss over them when we hear them, and even to ignore the Old Testament entirely. But that’s not a good solution. Tuning the Lord out when we don’t like what He’s saying is not a recipe for developing a deep understanding and a real relationship with Him. We have beautiful teachings about who the Lord really is—He is our Heavenly Father, He is love itself and wisdom itself—and then we have these warnings. But there is only one God. Can we learn to hear the voice of the true God, or to feel at least a hint of His presence, even when we’re listening to the warnings? That question is at the heart of today’s sermon.

We turn now to a pair of readings, one from the Old Testament and one from the New. In both readings, the Lord warns the city of Jerusalem of the ruin that’s going to come to her, because of her people’s sins. We begin with the reading from the Old Testament, which is from Isaiah. This reading uses the name “Ariel” a number of times; Ariel is a poetic name for Jerusalem. We read [29:1-6].

That reading is characteristic of the prophetic warnings in the Old Testament. Because Jerusalem has forsaken the Lord, she will have “heaviness and sorrow” (v. 2). Now we turn to the reading from the New Testament, which is from Luke. This reading, like the one before it, says that Jerusalem will be besieged. The reading is part of the Palm Sunday story. The Lord has been approaching Jerusalem; He’s in the midst of a crowd of people who are shouting “blessed is the King (19:18); and now the city—His destination—comes into view. We read [vv. 41-44].

Those two readings have a common theme, but there are at least two very significant differences between them. First of all, both readings say that Jerusalem will be destroyed, but in 1 Isaiah the Lord says that He will destroy the city, whereas in Luke He says that someone else will do so. In Isaiah He says, “I will lay siege against you with a mound, and I will raise siegeworks against you” (29:3). He also says, “You will be punished by the Lord of hosts” (v. 6). Whereas in Luke He says, “For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side” (19:43).

The second difference between these two readings is that in Luke, the Lord reveals how He feels about the destruction that’s coming to Jerusalem. When He sees the city, He weeps for her (v. 41). The things He says about Jerusalem are not said with anger; He’s not saying that Jerusalem is “going to catch it” because He’s had it with her people and their faithless ways. He does not despise the city, and there is no satisfaction in His voice—He is not exulting because Jerusalem is finally getting what she deserves. Those are all things that we might read or project into the text, if the text didn’t tell us how the Lord really feels. But they don’t belong. The Lord is simply sad.

When the Lord was born on earth, He made it possible for us to see Him more clearly. So of the two readings, it’s the one from Luke that shows us more clearly who He really is. But the New Testament doesn’t show us a new God: it reveals who God had been all along. This means that we’re meant to look for the God of the New Testament in the Old Testament.

And specifically, because the subject matter in the readings from Isaiah and Luke is so similar, we can treat these two passages as two versions of the very same message—or even as two different ways that people hear a single message that proceeds from the mouth of God. When we hear the passage from Isaiah, we can take what the Lord reveals about Himself and His heart in the passage from Luke, and use that truth as a lamp to illuminate what He’s really saying in Isaiah. When we do this, we notice things we might not otherwise have noticed. For example, the first word in the reading from Isaiah is “woe.” “Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt! (29:1). “Woe” means grief. The Lord isn’t wagging His finger at Jerusalem: He’s lamenting for her.

Here’s a brief passage from the Heavenly Doctrine that talks about weeping, and the deeper meaning of the parts of the Word in which the Lord is said to weep. This reading is printed on the back of the handout: [read SH §5480].

Weeping is an expression of grief and love; so it is an expression of mercy, because mercy is love that is grieving. The Lord has mercy on us—His love grieves for us—when He sees that we’re far away from Him, because when we’re far away from Him we are in hell. And the really important thing to understand about that is that hell is not some fantastical punishment that God has cooked up for us—it’s not a dungeon that He chucks us into when He’s ticked off with us. Hell is simply what we’re left with when He is removed from our lives. He is love itself, He is wisdom itself; He is the source of every blessing and every living thing, in us and around us. When we distance ourselves from Him (which is what happens when we break His commandments) all of those things recede from our lives. And what we’re left with is wretchedness. All of the ugly things that are described in the warnings that He gives throughout the Old Testament are pictures of what we’re left with when we distance ourselves from His spirit: we’re left with enemies that surround us, with hopelessness, with weakness; our voices whisper out of the dust (Is. 29:4). That’s not what He wants, but it’s what happens when we won’t let Him near. And He can’t truly be near to us unless we live in such a way that He can be part of our lives; and that’s why He warns us—urges us—to keep His commandments. And He grieves when we don’t.

The point is that we can choose to read everything written in the Word in this light. When we recognize what the Lord is like in His heart, we can choose to hear His heart in everything that He says—even the tough passages, even the warnings and the descriptions of punishments.

There are some stumbling-blocks that we’re likely to run into when we try to do this. First of all, why does the Lord sometimes say that He is the source of the bad things that happen to us? For example, in Isaiah He says, “I will lay siege against [Ariel]” (29:3). What He says in Luke is closer to 2 the truth: “your enemies will … surround you and close you in on every side” (19:43). No evil ever comes from God: it comes from the hells. So why does He speak as though He is the source of our punishment?

The answer, in brief, is that to a certain state of mind it seems that He is the source of our punishment, and the Lord works with that state of mind. It takes humility and spiritual maturity for us to recognize that the consequences of our bad choices are things we bring upon ourselves, and sometimes that’s just not where we are. Picture a man who’s facing a prison sentence because of a string of burglaries that he committed. He might say, “I’m here because I chose to break the law;” but he also might say, “I’m here because the police caught me, and the unsympathetic jury found me guilty.” Making bad choices and deflecting responsibility often go hand in hand. And if we’re not responsible for what happens to us, but our actions still have consequences, the only thing left for us to believe is that someone else is out there enforcing the consequences. The Lord is willing to stand in that space, if that’s what it takes for us to believe that our bad choices won’t make us happy. There are two truths that He wants us to learn: the first is that in His kingdom there is justice, and bad choices have consequences. The second is that He never punishes anyone, but that evil is its own punishment. In His wisdom, He teaches us those two truths in that order. The Old Testament tends to focus on the first of them.

Another thing that we might wonder about, as we try to hear the Lord’s heart in the hard things He says, is why He’s so intense about the bad stuff. Why the vivid, violent imagery? Why the prophecies about human bones burning on profane altars (1 Kings 13:2), and so on? One answer to those questions is that He wants us to see that the stakes aren’t low. Evil isn’t a cute little monster. We don’t need to dwell on evil; but it is useful to every now and then see evil in its nakedness and feel appalled by it, and recoil from it. We’re not meant to be comfortable with the images of evil that we’re given in the Word—that’s really the entire point.

And it’s important to remember that an overwhelming number of the passages in the Word that describe the consequences of evil are paired with clear reminders that the Lord offers us something better, and that He is always willing to forgive. In the story from 1 Kings, the Lord restores Jeroboam’s withered arm (13:6). He’s clear with Jeroboam about the awful consequences of the kind of worship that he’s chosen, but He also makes it clear that He still wants to heal him.

The reading from Isaiah consisted entirely of unhappy messages—but we didn’t hear the whole chapter. Here are some of the things that the Lord says later on in that same chapter:

In that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness. The humble also shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. (29:17-19)

His warnings are never that far away from a reminder that He is able to heal and to save. Which means that the warnings are not there so that we can get bogged down in them. The Lord wants us to see the truth. The whole truth: hell is real, but so is heaven. He shows us two paths, and for the sake of our freedom it’s important that we see both of them. But with all His heart, He urges us to take one and not the other. The chapter from Deuteronomy that today’s recitation was taken from goes on to say:

… I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live. (30:19)

Amen.

Overcoming the Power of Hell

This sermon was given by Rev. Michael Gladish on May 3, 2026

Text:

“Jesus said to His disciples, ‘Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’

“When His disciples heard it, they were greatly astonished, saying, ‘Who then can be saved?’

“But Jesus looked at them and said to them, ‘With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible’” (Matthew 19:23-26)

The teachings for the New Church are very clear that hell, and specifically, the falsity from evil that rules in hell, has no power. Indeed, as we read throughout the Gospels, “With God all things are possible.” And yet story after story in the Scriptures, not to mention our own experience in the world, testify that hell does have power, indeed, very real power in certain circumstances. Here is one of several passages that speak to this point, from HH 233. Note the qualifier:

As truths from good have all power, so falsities from evil have no power at all, and as all in hell are in falsities from evil, they have no power against truth and good.

Here is another:

Whatever is in good and at the same time in truth has reality; and whatever is in evil and at the same time in falsity has no reality…. By having no reality is meant that it has no power and no spiritual life. Those who are in evil and at the same time in falsity – and all such are in hell – have indeed power among themselves; for one who is wicked can do evil, and does it in a thousand ways. Nevertheless, he can only do evil to the wicked from their evil [that is, from the evil in them], but cannot do the least evil to the good, except, as sometimes happens, by joining forces with their evil (DP 19).

So we see that hell does have power in a context of evil and falsity, most of all in hell itself, where there is constant, selfish competition for everything, and where evil spirits get their main delights from controlling and punishing one another. Such order as there is in hell, is therefore largely due to the restraint caused by fear of these punishments (HH 543, 574).

But what about our lives in this world? Clearly, “with God all things are possible,” but this simple truth raises two logical questions:

1. What “things,” exactly, was the Lord talking about, and

2. Why do good people, who believe in God, suffer so much from falsity and evil?

Well, whole books have been written about the second question, generally referencing the issues in the first question, making it clear that God looks to what has eternal value in human life, not only to what is natural or material, and that for the faithful, even serious hardships can be opportunities to grow in some spiritual virtues.1 This is not to deny or minimize the harm that is done in the world, or the suffering that results, but it does speak to the point about what is real or unreal, and what is or is not possible with God.

With this in mind, let’s have a careful look at the story in Matthew 19. At face value, it’s about how difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. But note that the story begins with the question, “What good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?” And the Lord said, simply, “keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:16-17). But then the man who asked was also told to go and sell what he had and give to the poor, at which point “he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”

The disciples were, as we noted, “greatly astonished” at this, saying, “Who then can be saved?” And THAT is when the Lord replied, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:23-26).

Now, here is where it gets interesting, because the Lord had a lot to say about riches on several other occasions, most notably His opening sentence in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). And again, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24). Further, in the parable of the Sower, He said, “the [seeds] that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard [the Word], go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity” (Luke 8:14).

So what is it to be rich or “poor in spirit?” What is it to be conflicted about spiritual and natural values? Well, we know from our doctrine that real wealth consists of the knowledge that provides for our spiritual lives. Yet even then, we need to remember that what we know is virtually nothing compared to what we don’t know, so it’s critical that we maintain a posture of humility, even curiosity, about how much more we could learn. If our lives are “choked with cares” about what we already know, there won’t be any room for growth. The kingdom belongs to those who are poor in spirit, that is, who recognize their need for ever greater wisdom (AC 7640).

Then again, the literal meaning of the teachings on wealth is also important. In Luke 12:13-21, the Lord tells the parable of the rich man, whose ground yielded a plentiful crop – too much for him to store in his barns – and of how he planned to build bigger barns, store it all away, and take it easy for the rest of his life. “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then who’s will those things be which you have provided?” And He concluded, saying, “So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” In fact, whether we understand riches to be natural or spiritual, the Lord’s teachings consistently emphasize the importance of sharing, and not hoarding, what we have, even to the point of laying down our whole lives for His sake and for others.

This is the critical point about the Lord’s power and the power of hell. We can’t expect the Lord to help us in the fight against falsity and evil if we are conflicted about it, and have only a partial loyalty to Him. This is where our lesson from True Christian Religion is so insightful.

As the passage says,

Can anyone skirmish with his squadron between two armies and be on both sides at once? Can anyone cherish evil against his neighbor and at the same time good towards him? If he does, the evil conceals itself in the good. Although evil which conceals itself may not be seen in actions, still it shows itself in many things when they are properly considered? (TCR 437).

This illustration occurs in a short chapter with the heading, “The first thing in charity is to banish evils, the second is to do good deeds which may be of use to the neighbor.” This teaching is often rendered, “the first of charity is to shun evils,” and not just because they are bad but because the Lord said so, and therefor they need to be acknowledged as sins against Him (Charity 1-2). This has the effect of bringing the Lord, with His goodness and truth, into the contest, so that He, with all His power, can protect us.

In fact, this teaching is so important that it is repeated in many other books of the Writings,2 not to mention the Prophets of the Old Testament, where we read, for example, “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good…” with examples following (Isaiah 1:16-17). But still, it sort of begs the question, how can we shun evil in the first place without the Lord’s help? So, let’s think this through.

The universal teaching of the whole Word is that we can’t do anything good of, or from, ourselves. Yet there is a very strong and providential appearance that we can. This is because, buried deep down in the interiors of our natural memories, we all have what the Scriptures call “remnants,” or “remains” of goodness and truth, implanted by the Lord Himself, often before we are even conscious of this happening (AC 1050). These are the goods and truths that keep us alive and give us hope in times of spiritual famine or captivity. They constitute the Lord’s own presence within us, but because they are so deeply hidden, they seem to be our own.

This is a profoundly wise provision of His Divine providence. The Lord knows we need to act “as if of ourselves” or we would just rebel against His authority (CL 134:5, e.g.). As we all know, nobody really likes being bossed around! But we all love a challenge, so if we come up with something as if of ourselves, we can happily do it, even if it’s difficult. But here’s the critical qualifier: when it comes to doing anything really good, the first thing we have to do is, as Isaiah said, learn: “Learn to do good.” And we learn this from the written Word, to which we can freely turn our minds “as if of ourselves,” through self-disciplines of reading and reflection. This reading and reflection don’t make us good, but they show us what to do and how to do it, so that the Lord Himself can make us good – little by little (Deuteronomy 7:22), from the inside out.

This is how it works: even though the outward good we do in the first place isn’t really good inwardly (because there’s so much of self in it), the behaviors themselves provide a basis for the Lord to affect us with His powerful influence and gently, gradually, change our attitudes (AC 5828:3). So the actions become routines, we grow accustomed to these new routines, and we begin to experience a transformation from a state of conscientious discipline to one of new love, that is, a new will, formed in and through our understanding (AC 4353:3, HH 533).

And the most amazing thing about this whole process is that the more we do what we’re taught in the Word, as if of ourselves, the more genuine freedom we feel, as we read in these passages:

The more closely a person is conjoined with the Lord, the more distinctly does he appear to himself to be his own person, and the more clearly does he recognize that he is the Lord’s (DP 42).

He appears to himself more and more distinctly to be his own person because Divine love is such that it wills what it has to be another's, thus to be a person’s or an angel’s. That is the nature of all spiritual love, especially of Divine love. And besides, the Lord never compels anyone, because everything to which someone is compelled does not appear to him as attributable to him, and whatever does not appear to him as attributable to him cannot be made a matter of his love and so be assigned to him as belonging to him. Therefore a person is continually led by the Lord in freedom, and is also reformed and regenerated in freedom (DP 43).

The bottom line is that, despite the fact that we can’t do anything genuinely good from ourselves, (because selfishness and worldly loves are in it, like the poisonous tares among the wheat in Matthew 13:24-30), we can do good from the Lord when we do it FOR the Lord, by shunning, avoiding , or turning our backs on what is wrong, because then we are actually recruiting HIS help to overcome the power of hell in us.

Can we do this every day? Can we do it every time a mean thought or a careless remark comes to mind? Can we do it to break the power of a bad habit? Yes. We can. As we read, “It is not so hard to lead the life of heaven as people think, because it is simply a matter of recognizing, when something attractive comes up that we know is dishonest or unfair, that this is not to be done because it is against the Divine commandments. If we get used to thinking like this, and from this familiarity form a habit, then we are gradually united to heaven. To the extent that we are united to heaven, the higher levels of our minds are opened, and to the extent that they are opened, we see what is dishonest and unfair; and to the extent that we see this, these qualities can be dispelled” (HH 533). Then the Lord Himself will overcome the power of the hells within us.

Amen.

1 Notably, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Rabbi Harold Kushner (164 pp.), and Why Does God Let It Happen, by Bruce Henderson (published by the Swedenborg Foundation, 112 pp.)

2 For example, The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine 65-106, The Doctrine of Life 19-31, and The Doctrine of Charity 1-12 , not to mention several more

Being Fed in the Wilderness

This sermon was given by Rev. Dan Calvo on April 26, 2026

Text:

There is something striking and even confusing about the story of Elijah. The Lord sent His prophet to confront an evil king. A drought came upon the land because of the people’s wickedness. Elijah was then led away from society and into the wilderness, where the Lord provided for him. So far in the story, all of this follows a pattern that we see again and again in the Word.

But there is one detail that makes this story stand out. It is how the Lord provides sustenance in this story. The Lord sent ravens to feed Elijah.

Ravens were considered unclean birds by the very laws the Lord had given to the people of Israel. And yet here they were, bringing bread and meat to the Lord’s prophet, keeping him alive in the wilderness.

It is such an unusual, almost contradictory image that it makes us wonder: Why would the Lord choose ravens to care for His prophet? What was the Lord trying to teach us in this story?

If we pause to reflect on the spiritual meaning of this story, we are led to an important truth: the Lord can use even what is imperfect, even what is false, to bring good to us, especially when we need it the most.

And to understand why this is so, we need to look more closely at the wilderness where Elijah was sent, and what that wilderness represents in our own spiritual lives.

In the story, the wilderness is a dry and barren place. There was no rain in the land because of the drought. Water was scarce and life was fragile. But in the internal sense of the Word, the wilderness describes a state in our spiritual life when we are going through temptations and spiritual challenges.

In the book Secrets of Heaven we read:

“The wilderness” in the spiritual sense symbolizes a situation in which there is no good or truth. (SH 8098)

This is something we all experience. There are times when truth feels clear and steady, and times when we feel uncertain and struggle with doubt. When we deal with grief, anxiety over the state of the world, or difficulties in our personal relationships, it can feel as though we have nothing to help us survive our challenges—this is the wilderness.

However, Elijah was not sent into the wilderness with nothing. He was sent to a brook—a small source of water where he could drink and be sustained during the drought. Even when it seems that we have no truth to hold onto when we are going through life’s challenges, we must remember that the Lord never leaves us without any truth whatsoever. We always have at least one small truth remaining in our lives. It may be as simple as the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule. That small source of truth is the brook, and while it does not remove the wilderness or end the drought, it can be enough to keep us alive.

Elijah was not only in need of water to drink, he also needed food. In the internal sense, food represents something essential to our spiritual life: good—the good of love and charity that we need to stay alive.

In fact, Secrets of Heaven says:

In the internal sense “food” means those things which nourish a person's soul. (SH 5293)

So while Elijah had access to water from the brook—that is, some truth—this alone was obviously not enough to sustain him. He still needed food. He still needed good to nourish his soul.

In the story, we might have expected the Lord to send food to Elijah through something beautiful or majestic: a dove, an angel, or some clear sign of heavenly purity and order. After all, this was the Lord’s prophet, and the nourishment that sustained him seems as though it should have come through something that reflected the Lord’s goodness and power.

And yet the Lord did something unexpected. He sent ravens to bring Elijah food. In the literal sense, ravens are unclean animals. They are not what we would expect as instruments of the Lord’s providence. In the spiritual sense, this becomes even more striking. The Heavenly Doctrines teach that birds correspond to ideas, and specifically, unclean birds correspond to falsities.

In this passage from Secrets of Heaven which you can read in the back of your handout, we read that:

“Ravens” symbolize falsities. Birds symbolize intellectual concepts, rational concepts, and facts, and in like manner the opposite of these, which are reasonings and falsities. Both sets of things are described in the Word by various species of birds, things of a true understanding by harmless, beautiful, and clean birds, and those of a false understanding by harmful, ugly, and unclean birds, each depending on the species of truth or falsity under description. Gross and impenetrable falsities are described by “ravens” in the Word. (SH 866)

So here is the picture: Elijah, in a state of temptation and with only a small bit of truth to get him by—symbolized by the brook—was being nourished with good, but that good was being delivered through things that correspond to falsity.

We need to be very clear about this. Falsity cannot be misunderstood as something good. The ravens were still unclean animals. The Lord does not desire falsity, and He does not call falsity good. And yet, in His providence, He can use what is imperfect — even what is false — to serve something good.

We can see the Lord working with our imperfect and false ideas to bring good into our lives in many different ways.

All of us, at different times, hold ideas that are not fully true. We may believe that the opinions of others matter more than the laws of the Lord, that material wealth and status matter more than spiritual life, or even that simply having the “right beliefs” is more important than living a life of charity and doing good for others.

These are forms of falsity that can exist within us, often without us even realizing it. And yet the Lord does not reject us because of them. He works with us as we are, not as we ideally should be.

He can take what is incomplete or flawed and still lead us toward what is good.

While we may not have a fully accurate understanding of truth, there are still many cases where our understanding—though imperfect—can lead us to live good lives. A person may pray sincerely, try to live honestly, and care for others, even if their understanding of spiritual truth is mistaken or incomplete.

This can be seen clearly in how people understand the Word. Some see the Word only in its literal sense, without awareness of its deeper spiritual meaning. The New Church teaches that the Word has an internal sense beyond the literal, yet those who hold a more literal understanding can still live lives of charity and kindness toward their neighbor.

We are all capable of misunderstanding truth in different ways. And yet the Lord can still work with us, so long as we are willing to be led toward what is better.

In the book Secrets of Heaven, we read:

Falsities as well as truths exist with those ruled by evil, and also falsities as well as truths exist with those who are governed by good. (…) The falsities present with those governed by good are accepted as truths, for those falsities are tempered by the good and put to good and useful purposes, and the truths present with them are the truths of good, which are alive. (SH 10109)

A different passage from Secrets of Heaven goes deeper into this idea, by saying that:

Falsity can exist devoid of evil, as it does with some upright people among nations outside the Church, and even with some among Christians within the Church. (…) Falsity existing with those governed by good has not been defiled by evil; rather it has been purified from it. For this reason also such falsity is accepted by the Lord, almost as truth, and is also easily changed into truth; for those governed by good are eager to receive the truth. (SH 10302)

The Lord always looks first to the good—our intentions and our lives—rather than to perfect understanding. And because of that, He can lead us step by step into a higher, clearer truth.

Another example of how the Lord can bring good out of imperfect or mixed ideas is how we sometimes do what is right for reasons that are not fully honest. At times, we may act honestly and justly in public, even when our internal motivation is more self-centered—such as concern for reputation, or the desire to be seen in a positive light by others. These are not the highest or most noble motives or ideas, but they are not useless either. The Lord can still work with that.

The Heavenly Doctrines explain in Secrets of Heaven that:

Countless causes exist as the origin and the reason for a person’s love of learning what is true and wanting what is good. Very many have a worldly origin and also very many have a bodily origin; and sometimes it is not heaven, still less the Lord, that is the reason. A person is thus introduced by the Lord into truth and good by means of affections, one person in an entirely different way from another, each one according to his innate and acquired disposition. And since he is introduced into truth and good constantly by means of affections, and so constantly by means of the freedom he has, and is at length introduced into affections for spiritual truth and spiritual good, the Lord alone knows those times and those states, and He alone organizes and governs them as is appropriate to the inclination and life of the individual. (SH 2878)

What this teaches is that the Lord does not only work with our highest and purest motives at the beginning. The Lord can use even these early, imperfect motivations as a starting point. And as we continue to live in that good externally, He gradually leads us internally toward better and more selfless and honest motives—until what begins as a concern for reputation becomes a genuine love of doing good for others.

Another example of the Lord using imperfect or incomplete ideas to bring about good in our lives can be seen in the concept of holy fear. Many people—especially children—begin by doing what is right because they are afraid of punishment. They may believe that if they do not follow the Lord’s commandments, they will be punished to eternity. This kind of thinking is not a true understanding of the Lord’s nature. The Lord does not desire to harm or punish anyone, it would go against His very nature as a being of love.

And yet, the Lord can use that fear to help restrain us from doing what is evil. And as we continue to grow, He gradually leads us into a deeper understanding—that the Lord is not seeking to punish us, but to save us, and that the consequences of evil do not come from Him, but from evil itself.

In Secrets of Heaven we read:

All worship of God inevitably has its beginning in holy fear, which holds within it the belief that God rewards good people and punishes the bad. Although to begin with it is out of fear that people do not dare to do evil, love accompanied by good is gradually introduced, and then people start to know and perceive that nothing but good comes from God, and that evil comes from themselves; then at length that all evil comes from hell. (SH 6071)

So even something that begins in fear can be turned, over time, into something much higher—a love for what is good and a genuine understanding of the Lord’s mercy.

In the end, the story of Elijah teaches us that the Lord’s providence is wiser and more patient than we often realize. When Elijah entered the wilderness, the Lord did not abandon him. The Lord gave Elijah water from the brook—small but vital truths—and He fed him through ravens, showing that He can use even imperfect means to bring good.

The same thing happens in our lives. When our understanding is incomplete, our motives are mixed, or we begin in fear rather than love, the Lord still works for our salvation. He does not wait for us to be perfect or have a complete understanding of His truth. Instead, He meets us where we are, using even flawed ideas and selfish motives to lead us toward what is true and good. This is the message of hope in Elijah’s story: the Lord is always working to nourish our souls, gently leading us from falsity into truth, and bringing good into our lives in the most unexpected ways.

Amen.

Something That Important

This sermon was given by Rev. Jared Buss on April 19, 2026

Sermon text:

The story of Elisha and the Shunammite woman isn’t over, and we’re going to hear the second half of it now: the reading you’ll hear in a moment picks up right where the earlier reading ended. That earlier reading was a pleasant story about a woman who builds a room for a prophet, and is rewarded. She’s given a child, which is clearly what she wanted most of all. But this next reading is different. This part of the story is about what it looks like to go all the way to the Lord, because we need help and we know it, and because the things that we stand to lose are too important for half-measures. We read: [2 Kings 4:18-37].

This whole episode is a testament to the power of minimalist storytelling. For example, when the sick child is taken to his mother, the story says, “he sat on her knees till noon, and then died” (v. 20). That’s just ten words, and none of those words describe emotions. But what a painful picture those ten words paint. The mother then leaves her son on the bed in the room that she and her husband built for Elisha, and shuts the door (v. 21). Her silent self-control tells us exactly how she feels: she is not ready to accept what’s just happened, and she will not accept it until she’s done everything she can to reverse it. She calls for a servant and a donkey, because she’s going to find the man of God (v. 22).

And as she journeys to Elisha she demonstrates single-minded determination. She doesn’t want to talk to her husband. Clearly he has no idea what’s going on: he asks her why she wants to see the man of God, since it’s not a holiday. She puts him off, saying, “It’s well.” It’s fine (v. 23). Obviously this story isn’t here to say that married partners shouldn’t talk openly and honestly about their problems. The story doesn’t set this woman up as a saint, it just shows us what she did. She didn’t want to talk to her husband because her husband couldn’t fix the problem. She was going to Elisha. She was going to the Lord.

When Elisha’s servant Gehazi comes to meet her, she puts him off the same way. Gehazi even asks, “Is it well with the child?” and she just says, “It is well” (v. 26). She doesn’t want to talk to Gehazi: she wants to talk to Elisha. Only when she gets to Elisha does her bitter self-control begin to crack: the story says that she catches him by the feet (v. 27). In other words, she throws herself to the ground in front of Elisha. Gehazi comes to push her away, because she’s invading the personal space of an important person, but Elisha stops him: he perceives the woman’s grief. And when the woman finally says what she’s come all that way to say, her words are angry: “Did I ask a son of my lord? Did I not say, ‘Do not deceive me?’” (v. 28). In other words, “You were the one who gave me this gift: why did you give it to me and then take it away? I told you not to give me false hope—not to tell me that I could have this thing that I want so much, and then take it away.”

Elisha immediately goes to this woman’s son. He sends Gehazi on ahead, presumably because Gehazi is a young man and can travel faster; and note how he instructs Gehazi to travel with the same unwavering resolution that characterized the mother’s outbound journey. He says, “If you meet anyone, do not greet him; and if anyone greets you, do not answer him; but lay my staff on the face of the child” (v. 29). Gehazi is unable to wake the child (v. 31), but when Elisha gets there he prays to the Lord, and twice he stretches himself over the child’s body; and then the child opens his eyes (vv. 33-35).

So the story has a happy ending—which is a mercy. It would be a hard story to hear if it didn’t end with a miracle. Like many stories in the Word, it shows us that the Lord has the power to do things that seem impossible. Elisha was able to raise the dead child because he was a prophet and the Lord was with him. And in the internal sense of the Word, Elisha represents the Lord Himself, specifically “the Lord as to the Word” (SH §§2762.2, 5247.6, 5321.5 et al.). But today’s sermon isn’t about what Elisha did; we aren’t going to focus on the happy ending, or the details of how the child was healed. We’re going to focus on the child’s mother, and that journey that she made. She shows us what it looks like to confirm that something we say we love actually is that important to us; and what it looks like to show the Lord that we actually want His help. There are two aspects of her journey that we’re going to pay special attention to. The first is her mute, unwavering determination. There were no half-measures in her response to her child’s death: she was all in. The second thing we’ll pay special attention to is that her journey was a journey to Elisha—a journey to the Lord.

There are a lot of things that we know we’re supposed to be better at. We should all exercise more, eat less junk, get more sleep, spend less time on screens, regularly read the Word, pray more habitually, express less road rage, be more patient, volunteer more, spend more quality time with the people we love, and be more productive at work. When all of the “shoulds” are lined up like that, it becomes pretty obvious that we have to pick our battles. We can’t be good at everything—and thankfully that’s not what the Lord requires. But the fact we can’t do it all doesn’t mean that none of it matters. What it means is that we need to pick the things that are most important to us, the things that are too important not to do, and make sure that we at least do those things.

How many things that we say are important to us are things that we say we’ll “get around to someday,” when yet, “someday” keeps never coming? And maybe a more useful question is, how often do we allocate the best of our time and energy to less important things, or unimportant things, and save only the scraps for the things that we say are most important? The classic example of this is a parent who prioritizes success at work, and says that he loves his kids, but is forever giving his kids his second-best self. It is not uncommon for people to say that things are important to them, yet fail to act like those things are important. But of course, there can only be a small number of things that are “most important” to us. In practice, those are the things that we do not do second, the things that we do not do halfway.

The mother in today’s story shows us what it looks like to say—or to testify—“this is what’s important to me.” It looked like she was going to lose her son, and she would not accept that, at least not until she’d done everything in her power to find healing for him. She didn’t sit around wringing her hands: she got to work. Because that’s what we do when something is actually that important to us. What are the things in your life that you would pause everything else for—the things for which you say, “I will do what it takes”? Our children are an easy example: children make it easy to see what it means to love something that much. What about the spiritual things that we know are supposed to be important? What about honesty; what about forgiveness; what about the Lord Himself? Would we say “I will do what it takes” for those things?

The second thing that’s notable about the behavior of the mother in today’s story is that she doesn’t waste time trying to fix her problem on her own. She doesn’t set out on a journey to find a doctor or a mystical fountain of health. She goes to Elisha. She goes to the Lord. What she’s lost is too important to her for half-measures or pride or pretending. She goes to Elisha, even though she’s angry with Elisha, because she knows that the Lord is the only one with the power to heal her son. And she goes all the way to Elisha: she seeks him out with single-minded determination. And once she’s found him she says, “As the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, I will not leave you” (2 Kings 4:30).

Sometimes when we seek the Lord, we actually go only halfway to Him. We recognize that we need some Divine help, so we say a prayer, or the beginning of a prayer; and then we recede into our familiar thoughts. We go back to trying to figure it out without the Lord. But many—if not all— of the things that we want most are things that, in truth, only He can give us. Healing and peace are His to give. If something is important to us, and if God has all power in heaven and on earth to give it to us (Matt. 28:18), then why wouldn’t we keep searching for Him until we’ve found Him? Why wouldn’t we figure out how to let Him in? What does it look like to go all the way to the Lord, to figure out how to bring your life into the presence of His power so that He can change what needs to be changed?

There are two simple spiritual principles in the background of today’s story, and the mother in this story shows us how they go together. The first principle is that if something is important to us, we have to do something about it; it’s not enough to sit around lamenting, or to sit around waiting for an opportunity that might never materialize. And the second principle—which might seem like a contradiction of the first—is that all power is from the Lord and the Lord alone. At least when it comes to spiritual battles, we will never be victorious unless the Lord fights for us. Listen to these two passages from the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church, and note how they seem to be in tension with one another [read TCR §331.4 & SH §8159.5)

So if we want to be washed clean, we need to get up and wash ourselves—we can’t sit around waiting for the Lord to do it for us. And yet, the Lord is the one who fights the evil within us, and we can’t win that fight on our own. If both of those ideas are true, then what are we supposed we do? One answer is that we’re to do what the mother in today’s story does. And here’s what that looks like: we get to work bringing the Lord into our lives. We take responsibility, we go on a journey—but the journey is a journey to the Lord. We show Him what we care about, and show Him that He is actually invited to come into our lives with healing power.

Of course we don’t always get exactly what we want. The mother in this story gets the miracle that she goes looking for, but we won’t always be able to say the same. Really this is a subject for its own sermon, but it’s important to at least mention that the Lord’s priorities have to do with eternal things—especially our eternal salvation—and He won’t give us the natural things we ask for if, for any reason, those natural things would get in the way of eternal things. We’re allowed to tell the Lord what’s important to us, but we also need to let Him tell us what’s important to Him. What we can know for sure is that if we bring a good love to the Lord and we tell Him, “this matters to me,” He will honor what we’ve brought to Him. He will answer us, like Elisha answered the Shunammite woman. He will go to that upper room in our minds and heal what can be healed.

We’ll close this sermon with one last reflection on the masterful, minimalist style of this story. The story never explains what the mother is feeling; when her son is awakened, it says nothing about joy or wonder or relief. But consider these words, the last words of the story:

… he said, “Pick up your son.” So she went in, fell at his feet, and bowed to the ground; then she picked up her son and went out. (2 Kings 4:36, 37)

Amen.

You Shall Not Covet

This sermon was given by Rev. Dan Calvo on March 29, 2026

Text:

The Ten Commandments are all related to our actions. Some of the commandments describe things that we must actively do, like keeping the Sabbath day holy and honoring our father and mother, while many of the commandments describe things that we must not do, such as not committing adultery, not using the Lord's name in vain, and not worshipping idols. All these commandments focus on our external actions. They describe things that can be seen and heard by others.

Then we come to the ninth and tenth commandments. These commandments are different from the rest. Instead of focusing on visible actions, they focus on something that cannot be seen or heard by anyone else: our desires.

The ninth and tenth commandments say this:

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” (Exodus 20:17)

Unlike the other commandments, these ones do not describe something that we do with our bodies or our words. Instead, they address something happening inside of us. They speak about what we desire.

The ninth commandment, which tells us not to covet our neighbor’s house, and the tenth commandment, which tells us not to covet anything else that belongs to our neighbor, are given as separate commandments by the Lord. Yet their spiritual meaning and their application in our lives are very closely related to the point in which they are written in the same verse in the Word.

These commandments reveal something very important about the Lord's concern for us. The Lord doesn’t just care about our external behavior. He also really cares about our inner life.

We all know that it is possible for someone to behave well externally while keeping evil desires internally. A person might avoid stealing but secretly wish to take what belongs to another. A person might avoid lying, but they still may take pleasure in imagining ways to deceive others. A person might avoid adultery but still have fantasies of betraying their spouse. The Lord always sees beyond the external actions and into our intentions.

This teaching is explained clearly in the Heavenly Doctrines. In the book True Christian Religion we read:

The ninth and tenth commandments look back to all the commandments that precede them. They teach and enjoin that we are not to do evil and that we are also not to desire doing evil. Therefore the Ten Commandments are not only for the outer self but also for the inner self. Someone who does not do evil things but nevertheless desires doing them is still doing them. (TCR 326)

These commandments act like a mirror at the end of the list. They look back at everything that came before them and ask us to reflect on our intentions. It is not only a matter of whether we refrain from evil actions. It is also a matter of whether we are holding on to the desire to do those things in our hearts.

The Lord spoke about this same issue during His ministry on earth. He warned the scribes and the Pharisees about focusing too much on external appearances while neglecting their inner spiritual lives. He said to them:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, because you clean the outside of your cup and plate, but the insides are full of plundering and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of your cup and plate, so that the outside may be clean as well.” (Matthew 23:25-26)

This is a very simple message. A cup may look completely clean on the outside, but if the inside is filthy, the cup is still unclean. In the same way, we may appear good and clean externally while our inner life is still full of selfish desires.

Whenever we desire to break any of the ten commandments, whenever we desire to commit adultery, whenever we desire to lie, or whenever we desire to steal, we are still engaging with all the evils described in the earlier commandments, and we are breaking the commandments against coveting.

Following the commandments against coveting may sound like a pretty tall order. It is already difficult to avoid doing evil actions all the time. Now the Lord is telling us that we should not even want to do those things. If we follow that line of thinking, the commandment can begin to feel overwhelming.

After all, temptations show up in everyone’s mind. We all experience passing thoughts that we know are not good. We might suddenly feel anger toward someone, or envy toward a neighbor, or lust toward someone who is not our spouse. If every fleeting thought counted as breaking the commandments, then none of us would have any hope at all of ever seeing Heaven.

But this is not what the Lord is teaching.

The Lord is not concerned with every passing thought that enters our minds. Instead, He is concerned with something deeper: whether we welcome those thoughts, dwell on them, and eventually make them part of our intentions.

This important distinction is explained in another passage from the Heavenly Doctrine. In the book Divine Providence we read:

Nothing that we simply think about becomes part of us, even though we think we intend to do it, unless we intend it to the point that we would actually do it if the opportunity arose. As long as it is a matter of thought alone it cannot be made part of us, because our understanding does not unite itself to our will, or the thinking of our understanding to the desire of our intent. (DP 80)

This teaching brings an important sense of balance. We have thoughts constantly passing through our minds. Many of them appear and disappear without leaving any kind of a lasting impression. What matters is whether we hold onto those thoughts and nurture them until we would be willing to act on them if the opportunity presented itself. When we begin to imagine carrying out an evil and secretly wish that we could do it without consequences, then that desire has begun to take root in our heart.

In the Heavenly Doctrines, sin is sometimes described as a kind of spiritual disease. When we break the commandments, we not only harm the people around us, but we also damage our own spiritual well-being. Evil spreads through the soul in the same way that illness spreads through the body.

The ten commandments act like a treatment plan for healing this illness. By following the ten commandments, we begin to remove the destructive tendencies that separate us from heaven.

The ninth and tenth commandments address something particularly important in this healing process. They draw our attention to the root cause of our spiritual sickness: our inner desires for evil.

The connection between our desires and our actions is described in another passage from True Christian Religion:

A desire and an action are as closely connected as blood and flesh or oil and flame. The desire is in the action in the same way that air from our lungs is in our breath and speech. (TCR 328)

If our desires are dominated by selfishness and envy, those desires will eventually shape the way we treat others. But if we bring our desires into harmony with the Lord's Higher will, then our actions will begin to reflect that transformation.

This is why the commandments ask us not only to avoid doing evil but also to examine the desires that live within us and reject any desires that are against the Lord’s Will for us.

Another passage from True Christian Religion, which you can read in the back of your handout, explains how these commandments look back at all the others and address their spiritual root:

In the spiritual meaning, the Ninth and Tenth commandments prohibit all the cravings that go against the spirit, that is, against the spiritual qualities taught by the church, which primarily relate to faith and charity. If our cravings were not tamed, our flesh would pursue its own freedom and would quickly fall into every kind of wickedness. In brief, these two commandments taken in their spiritual meaning look back to the spiritual meaning of all the commandments previously given, adding that we are not to crave doing those evil things. The same goes for all the commandments previously given in the celestial meaning. (TCR 327)

In other words, these commandments summarize the deeper meanings behind every commandment that came before them. They remind us that the true battle is not only about controlling our external actions. It is about reshaping the desires of our hearts. And when we reshape the desires of our hearts, we experience tremendous spiritual freedom and growth.

The Heavenly Doctrine explains this beautifully in another passage from True Christian Religion:

Eight of the commandments say nothing about loving God or loving our neighbor. They do not say that we must love God or we must keep God's name holy. They do not say that we must love our neighbor, or deal honestly and uprightly with our neighbor. They say only, "There is to be no other God before my face; you are not to take God's name in vain; you are not to kill; you are not to commit adultery; you are not to steal; you are not to testify falsely; and you are not to covet what your neighbor has. " Briefly put, we are not to intend, think, or do evil against God or against our neighbor. We are not commanded to do things that directly relate to charity; instead, we are commanded not to do things that are the opposite of charity. This is because the more we abstain from evils because they are sins, the more we want the goodness that relates to charity. In loving God and our neighbor, the first step is not doing evil, and the second step is doing good. (TCR 329)

The doctrine goes on to explain in the following passage how this spiritual transformation gradually takes place in our lives:

The more we abstain from what is evil, the more we will and intend what is good, because evil and good are opposites. Evil comes from hell and good comes from heaven. Therefore the more hell is removed, the closer we get to heaven and the more we focus on good. The truth of this becomes obvious when we see eight of the Ten Commandments in this way. For example: (1) The less we worship other gods, the more we worship the true God. (2) The less we take the name of God in vain, the more we love the things that come from God. (3) The less we want to kill and to act on the basis of hatred and revenge, the more we want what is good for our neighbor. (4) The less we want to commit adultery, the more we want to live faithfully with our spouse. (5) The less we want to steal, the more we aim to be honest. (6) The less we want to testify falsely, the more we want to think and speak what is true, (8) and the less we covet what our neighbors have, the more we want our neighbors to be doing well with what they have. (TCR 330)

This teaching brings us back to the purpose of the ninth and tenth commandments. They are not simply warnings about envy or jealousy. They are invitations to begin the deeper work of being spiritually born again by abandoning our evil desires and embracing the good desires that the Lord wants us to have.

The ninth and tenth commandments remind us that our duty to follow the Lord’s Will goes deeper than our external behavior. The Lord is not only asking us to change our external actions, He is also asking us to change our desires. When we ask the Lord for help in turning away from selfish desires, we open the door for something better to take their place. When we begin that process by following the commandments, our hearts begin to change, and our actions follow that change. And in that transformation of our desires, the Lord leads us closer to a life that truly follows His loving Will for us to be saved to eternity. Amen.

You Shall Not Bear False Witness

This sermon was given Rev. Jared Buss on March 22, 2026

 Text:

We’ve been working through a series of sermons on the ten commandments, and today’s topic is the eighth commandment: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Ex. 20:16). It’s definitely a bit jarring to switch to this topic right after rejoicing in the baptism of a little child who’s never told a lie in his life. And at the same time, baptism is actually a perfect counterexample to false witness, because baptism is all about choosing the truth. The waters of baptism correspond to truths; and when we or our children are baptized, we’re testifying to a desire to be washed by those truths, and a desire to stand in the company of the angels, who love the truth.

The spirit of false witness that we’re going to talk about now is the dead opposite of that love of truth; and it’s that much easier to see why we need to shun false witness when we also see the power of standing for the truth.

When we teach the eighth commandment to children, we often paraphrase it as, “you shall not lie.” That’s a valid paraphrase, because in a broad sense this commandment does forbid all kinds of lying; but technically what the commandment forbids in its literal sense is bearing false witness, or lying when we’re a witness in court, or some similar situation. It isn’t hard to see that this is an especially destructive kind of lying.

There are a number of stories in the Word that involve bearing false witness in this narrow sense. King Ahab wanted Naboth’s vineyard, but Naboth wouldn’t sell it to him; so the queen orchestrated Naboth’s death, and she did this by hiring men to testify, falsely, that Naboth had “blasphemed God and the king” (1Kings 21:1-14). Something similar happened to the Lord Himself, and that’s the story that we’re going to hear now. This reading is from the gospel of Mark, and it picks up right after the Lord has been arrested in Gethsemane: [read 14:55-64].

This trial is a mockery of justice in so many ways. First of all, it says right at the beginning that they “sought testimony against Jesus, to put Him to death” (v. 55). So they’d already sentenced Him, before the trial even began. Now they’re working backwards, trying to justify their verdict; but the only justifications they can come up with are lies. The story says that “many” bore false witness against Him (v. 56); maybe those false witnesses were council members, who were motivated by their hatred of the Lord, or maybe they were random people who were paid to come in and tell lies, like the scoundrels who were paid to accuse Naboth of blasphemy. In any case it would have been obvious—everyone in that room would have known—that the accusations against the Lord were false, because no one’s testimony agreed with anyone else’s. But they just kept going, kept slinging mud until something stuck.

The best accusation that they could come up with was this claim that the Lord had said that He would destroy the temple and build it again in three days (v. 58). The Lord had said something sort of like this: when His disciples had called His attention to the workmanship of the temple, He had told them, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone shall be left upon another, that shall not be thrown down” (13:2; cf. John 2:19). Those words were a prophecy, and the prophecy was literally fulfilled about forty years later, when the Romans levelled Jerusalem. But the Lord said that the temple would be destroyed, not that He would destroy it—and that’s not a small difference. This accusation made against Him is a textbook example of twisting the truth.

This whole trial is an extreme example of the perversion of justice; but it’s an important story because it so vividly illustrates what happens when people are willing to subordinate the truth to what they want. Without honesty—without the truth—justice falls apart, and so much else falls apart with it. People know this. Perjury, or giving false testimony when you’re under oath, is a crime in virtually every country in the world. Perjury can earn you a prison sentence. So people do take this stuff seriously. Nevertheless, lies are still told; in court, in the public sphere; in this country and in others; and yes, those lies do damage to justice and the rule of law. If we’re bothered when other people tell lies, that’s a good sign; and if we want to see justice done in the systems that we’re part of, then it’s appropriate to say so, to show our neighbors and our leaders that we value truth and will not be content with lies. But, obviously, we as individuals have no power over other people, and are not responsible for what they choose to say. What we actually have power over is whether or not we will stand for the truth ourselves.

We already touched on the idea that, although in a strict sense the eighth commandment only forbids lying in court, it really forbids all kinds of lying. The Heavenly Doctrine says as much, and says it very clearly. We turn now to the reading that’s printed on the back of the worship handout, which is from the chapter on the ten commandments in the book True Christian Religion: [read §321].

Something that stands out about this passage is how it stresses that the things it says not to do are things that cause harm. It says that the eighth commandment forbids “lying and hypocrisy… with evil intent,” and that it forbids criticizing and slandering our neighbor “so as to undermine his honor, name and reputation.” The things the Lord forbids are forbidden because they’re hurtful. But is lying always hurtful? Is it possible to tell a lie with good intent? It isn’t that hard to think of situations in which lying seems like the kinder choice. The classic, stereotypical example is a wife asking her husband, “how do I look in these clothes?” There are answers that the husband should not give, no matter what he actually thinks. But this example is overused, and just to pick on it a little—if the husband feels like he has no choice but to lie, then something unhealthy might be going on. What really matters here is that the husband treat his wife like he loves her and values her beauty; and if he’s wise, he can probably find a way to do that and still share some of his actual thoughts.

But—continuing to use marriage as an example—sometimes husbands and wives don’t feel like they’re in love with each other at all. When this happens, should they act like they love each other, or is that lying? The Heavenly Doctrine says that when a couple is in a cold state, it’s useful and commendable for them to nevertheless act like a married couple, and to simulate friendship (ML §277ff). This might feel false. In any context, acting nice when we don’t feel nice might feel false. But it’s not lying; it’s simply choosing not to act on what we feel. It’s replacing behavior that reflects how we really feel with behavior that reflects what we know is right; so it’s replacing one truth with another, more useful truth. Choosing to say what’s useful instead of saying everything is not lying. The hells that prey on our consciences want us to think it’s lying; they want us to think we have to lie sometimes. But they’re wrong, so ignore them.

There are other examples we could look at—other situations in which a person with good motives might choose not to say the whole truth. We might do this to protect people. If a child asks a question and the real answer is something they’re just not ready for, it isn’t against the eighth commandment to give that child an incomplete answer. Or to pick a really mundane example, sometimes people will ask you how you’re doing, and you’ll say “fine,” even though the truth is more complicated. Maybe it would be useful to be more honest; but choosing to say “fine” is probably fine.

The point is that the eighth commandment is about more than just whether or not the truth is technically spoken: it’s about the choice between the love of truth and the abuse of truth. Will we yield to the truth, so that it can shape our words and actions; or will we subordinate the truth to our own opinions, or to what’s profitable or convenient for us? It’s possible to stand for the truth without saying much at all; and we can subordinate the truth even when the words we speak are technically true. We can quote Scripture with harmful or selfish intent—and that is lying, though the Scripture itself is always true.

Misusing or falsifying Scripture probably involves breaking the eighth commandment not just in its natural sense, but in its spiritual sense. The Heavenly Doctrine says that we break the eighth commandment in its spiritual sense when we persuade (or attempt to persuade) others that what is true is false, and what is good is evil—or vice versa, when we persuade people that evil things are good and false things are true (SH §8908; Life §87; TCR §322; AE §1019.2). The harm that we can do when we muddy the water like this is obvious. In the highest or celestial sense, breaking the eighth commandment means, “speaking blasphemy against the Lord and the Word, thus chasing truth out of the church” (TCR §323). Again, it isn’t hard to see that when we reject and revile the truth at its source, we’re doing something harmful. Bearing false witness, in all its different forms, is forbidden because it’s harmful. And fundamentally, the thing that it harms is the truth.

To conclude this sermon, we’ll consider some thoughts about the power of standing for the truth. We know that the truth matters: we know that justice falls apart when truth is not held sacred, and that when justice goes, a whole lot more goes with it. Even so, we sometimes talk about truth like it’s just a bunch of ideas. Especially in religious contexts:  we talk like “truth” is just what the books say, or those long doctrinal words that the priest is always using. But that’s not what “truth” means. It’s not just so many ideas: the truth is what’s real. The truth is solid ground beneath our feet, air that we can breathe and light that we can see by. To know the truth is to know the difference between good and evil, between health and sickness, between innocence and guilt. Truth can be inconvenient, it can be hard, sometimes it cuts; but it’s real nonetheless. And there’s something so liberating about choosing what’s right and what’s real, even when that means that we don’t get what we wanted. The Lord said, “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). And truth has this power because He is in it.

When the Lord was in the world He spoke the truth, though it cost Him His life. When He was on trial, they bore false witness against Him, but their testimonies were incoherent. They couldn’t convict Him of anything until the high priest asked Him, “Are you the Christ?” (Mark 14:61). He answered with the truth: He said, “I am” (v. 62), though He knew full well that they would regard that truth as a lie, and treat it as a justification for killing Him. But how could He do less than speak the truth? He is the Christ; He stood for the truth and He became the truth. And in the end, that truth rang out, because they couldn’t kill Him at all.

What all of this means is that when we say the truth, the Lord is there. In short, telling the truth is even more powerful than it seems.

We’ll close this sermon with one more reading from the Heavenly Doctrine:

When a person abstains from false testimonies understood in a moral and spiritual sense, and shuns and turns away from them as sins, the love of truth and the love of justice flow in from the Lord through heaven. And when, as a result, the person loves truth and loves justice he loves the Lord, for the Lord is truth itself and justice itself. And when a person loves truth and justice it may be said that truth and justice love him, because the Lord loves him; and as a result his utterances become utterances of truth, and his works become works of justice. (AE §1020.2)

Amen.

Shunning Theft & Protecting Honesty

This sermon was given by Rev. Jared Buss on March 15, 2026

Text: 

Our series on the ten commandments has us in the midst of a set of commandments that are just obvious. Everyone knows that murder and adultery are wrong, and that stealing is wrong. Stealing is illegal everywhere. It seems unlikely that any of you need to be convinced that it’s bad.

Isn’t it nice that some of the commandments are easy to understand? After all, the Lord says a lot of things that challenge our understanding. But it would be much too easy to say, “Well I’m not in the habit of robbing banks, so this one isn’t for me—it’s for other people.” We’re meant to look deeper. If a commandment is easy to understand, that means we can spend our energy not on understanding it but on asking, “Am I really keeping it?” Because all of the commandments run deep, and they all get hard to keep at some point. After all, how many of us can truly say that we have never stolen anything?

So to begin with, we’re going to turn to the Heavenly Doctrine and hear a passage that summarizes the three major levels of the commandment against stealing: the natural, spiritual and celestial levels. This passage is from The Doctrine of Life, and it’s printed on the back of your handout [read §80].

Right off the bat, we should note that pretty much wherever the Heavenly Doctrine talks about stealing, it calls attention to the fact that stealing, in its natural sense, includes both obvious thefts and those that are not obvious (e.g. AE §967.3). Obvious thefts, like robbing banks and mugging people, are obviously wrong, and there really isn’t much to say about those things besides, “don’t do them.” But there are a lot of ways of taking what isn’t ours that are a lot less conspicuous—and we need to understand that those things are forbidden by the seventh commandment, just as much as daylight robbery. The reading says that swindling or taking another person’s goods by subterfuge is stealing (Life §80). And in True Christian Religion we read:

[Stealing] extends to all imposture and unlawful gain, usury and extortion, as well as fraud in payment of dues and taxes and in repaying debts. Workers who do not work in good faith and without deceit offend against this commandment; so do merchants who cheat over their wares, weights, measures and calculations…. (§317)

It’s pretty clear that the seventh commandment isn’t just about robbery: it’s about every method, every pretense, for taking or laying claim to what is not ours.

Now, people know that sneaky stealing is still stealing. White collar crime is still a crime. In general white collar crime is seen as less serious than something like armed robbery, and that holds up to the light of doctrine: if you rob someone at gunpoint you aren’t just stealing, you’re also threatening violence—so you’re breaking the fifth commandment as well as the seventh. And breaking two commandments seems worse than breaking one. But it’s worth nothing that when it talks about stealing, the Heavenly Doctrine highlights the destructiveness of “guile and deceit” (Life §81). Guile, or cunning, and deceit are like poisons that worm themselves deep into our minds. The point is that we need to be careful not to tell ourselves that our crimes “aren’t serious” because they’re subtle. That could be the opposite of the truth: if we embrace the art of deceit so deeply that we learn how to take what isn’t ours in a way that no one on earth will ever punish us for, we may be on the road to becoming someone who lives and breathes deceit. Even if we manage to convince ourselves that what we’re doing “doesn’t count” as stealing.

An interesting thought experiment is to consider the things a person could do that would not be illegal, but would still count as stealing in the Lord’s eyes. And we’re not talking about spiritual stealing yet—we’re still considering literal stealing. For example, if a company technically meets the requirements of the law as far as disclosing what their product is and what they’re going to charge for it, but their advertising and the way they do sales and their entire approach to business is about getting customers to pay more than they think they’re going to have to pay, is that stealing? It probably is. But the only people who can truly know whether or not an individual member of that company is stealing are the Lord and the individual himself. It could simply be that customers are making bad decisions because they’re too lazy to read the fine print. The question that the individual businessman needs to ask himself, in this example, is, “What’s my motive? Do I want my customers to get something that is worth their money, or am I looking for devices that will enable me to take more than I’ve earned?” If the intent is dishonest, then we’re stealing, even if the methods are technically legal.

The world generally views the theft of a valuable item as more serious than the theft of a cheap one. The sentence for stealing a car is greater than the sentence for shoplifting. That isn’t necessarily how the Lord sees it. The value of worldly goods doesn’t mean much in His kingdom. In the long run, it won’t matter much that we “only took a little bit at a time” if the fact is that we’ve given our heart to the art of taking.

As with all of the other commandments, the essence or spirit of stealing is easier to recognize if we also understand the good affection that stealing is opposed to. According to the Heavenly Doctrine, that good thing is honesty. Our reading said, “Insofar as someone refrains from every form of stealing as being a sin, so far he loves honesty” (Life §80). The word “honesty” makes sense here: it’s fairly common to refer to people who don’t lead lives of crime as “honest people.” In this context, “honest” people are people who value the law and live uprightly, people who are what they seem and do what they say. But there’s even more going on if we look at the original language. The Latin word here translated as “honesty” is sinceritas, which is the root of the English word “sincerity.” In English, to be sincere is to really mean what you say. But the Latin sinceritas has a broader meaning. It means cleanness, purity, soundness, wholeness. It describes something that is no more and no less than what it’s meant to be. It overlaps with the English word “integrity,” a word that also has to do with wholeness. If we’re whole, or sincere, or in integrity, or however you want to put it, that means that what we say and what we do are in alignment; but it also means that we know where we end and another person begins. To love honesty (or wholeness, or integrity) is to honor and value the truth that other people are distinct from ourselves. They are their own, and what is theirs is not ours.

For those who like to overthink things, there are a lot of rabbit holes related to stealing that we could descend into. What does it mean to “own” something? Is private property a real thing, or is it an empty social construct? If someone has billions of dollars and will hardly notice the loss of a few thousand, is it really so wrong to take a few thousand from that person? What if that billionaire is a thief—is it really wrong to steal from thieves? Most of the time we can be saved from the rabbit-holes by the simple question: is this mine? If it isn’t mine, I cannot take it. And it isn’t up to me to decide what should theoretically belong to whom. If it isn’t mine, I must not take it.

Beneath this idea is the much bigger idea that everything actually belongs to the Lord. “The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness” (Ps. 24:1). He created all of it; He sustains all of it; no created thing could exist for a moment apart from Him. So who are we to lay claim to any of it? Even our life is a gift from God. Now He wants to share what is His, so He gives us life and lets us feel as though it is our own; and He gives us other blessings, things that we get to call ours—like our children, our homes, our morning coffee. But they’re all gifts, which is why gratitude is such an important mentality; to be grateful is to see reality for what it is. And who are we to decide that what God has given to someone else should be ours instead?

So at last we’re ready to talk about the spiritual and celestial levels of this commandment—especially the celestial level, which has to do with claiming what belongs to God. Earlier we read:

In the spiritual sense stealing means to deprive another of the truths of his faith and the goods of his charity. And in the highest sense stealing means to take from the Lord something that is His and attribute it to oneself…. (Life §80)

Before we discuss these ideas any further, we’re going to turn to our final reading for today, which is from John chapter 10. This is a familiar text; but note how, throughout it, the Lord is directly contrasting Himself with thieves and robbers [read vv. 1-10].

In the spiritual sense, stealing means taking spiritual things away from people. True Christian Religion says that the thieves and robbers in this passage from John—the ones who are trying to get the sheep to hear them and follow them—symbolize people who deprive others of truths by means of falsities and heretical beliefs (§318). So to steal, in this sense, is to take a true idea away from someone by hoodwinking them or forcing them or persuading them to accept a false idea in its place. And why would anyone do something like that? “For the sake of power” is the obvious answer. If we can control what people think, then to a certain extent we can control what they do. But we might also do something like this simply because we feel a need for other people to think the way we do. We might feel threatened by the fact that other people think differently than we do. This is especially likely to be the case if we’re doing something wrong, and we know it, and other people also know it—we might attempt to take that truth from them, by persuading them that what we’re doing isn’t wrong, so that we don’t feel threatened. This is very different from trying to share the truths we see. Again, intention makes all the difference. Are we trying to give, or to take? If our object is control—if we’re trying to take a certain perspective or power of thought from someone—we’re stealing. And note how, in the spiritual sense as well, stealing involves a failure to respect the boundary between ourselves and another person—the difference between what is ours and what is not.

In the celestial sense, to steal is to claim what is the Lord’s. In John He says, “I am the door” (10:7, 9), which means that He is the way to life and salvation. These things are His to give. Trying to get these things without Him—without His help, without acknowledging Him—is stealing. In Secrets of Heaven we read:

“The sheep” are those who have charity and consequently faith, and they enter the fold through the Lord when they acknowledge that He is the source of everything composing faith and charity; for then these flow in from Him. But to attribute them to others, especially to self, is to take them away, which is “to kill and destroy” them. (§8906)

Isn’t it interesting that when we take what is the Lord’s and claim it for ourselves we don’t just steal it—we kill and destroy it? It’s like stealing a work of art and smashing it so that the owner can’t take it back from us. It’s a classic case of “the tighter you squeeze, the less you have.” When we feel the need to take instead of accepting good things as gifts, we don’t even enjoy what we have. Whereas the opposite will be the case if we choose gratitude. The more we humble ourselves, the more clearly will we see every gift that God’s given us; and there’s no limit to what He will give. He says, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

Amen.

Shunning Adultery & Protecting Marriage

This sermon was given by Rev. Jared Buss on March 8, 2026

Text: 

            Our sermon series on the ten commandments has brought us to the sixth commandment, which says, “you shall not commit adultery” (Ex. 20:14). Much like the commandment before it—“you shall not murder” (v. 13)—this one is short and straightforward. We all know more or less what adultery is, and we all know that it’s harmful—and that’s why the Lord says “don’t do it.” There’s the sermon.

            But actually, there’s quite a bit more that’s worth saying. This is one of those instances where it makes a big difference to understand what the commandment is there to protect. Another way to put it is, why is adultery harmful? What does it do damage to? We might answer, “well, it’s harmful because it’s a betrayal, and because it’s deceitful.” It’s true that adultery often is those things; but according to New Church teachings, adultery would be harmful even if it didn’t involve betrayal and deceit. If a person had an extramarital affair with the full permission of their married partner, they would still be breaking the sixth commandment. The sixth commandment isn’t there to protect honesty; honesty is protected by its own commandment. The sixth commandment is there to protect marriage.

            So before we reflect any further on adultery, we’re going to look at some teachings that show us what marriage is—or what it was designed to be. We’re going to spend some time reflecting on the good stuff. If we can come to a clear understanding of what marriage is meant to be, then questions about what adultery encompasses and why it should be shunned will almost answer themselves. Teachings about marriage can be challenging in their own right, because many of them present us with ideals, and all of us fall short of those ideals in one way or another. But take those words in: all of us fall short of those ideals. And the Lord knows who He’s created. These teachings were not given for perfect people who don’t exist: they were given for people like us. They’re aspirational, and that’s okay. In other words these teachings are not about where you have to be right now: they’re about what the Lord wants to give you.

            In the gospel of Matthew, the Lord quotes from the story that was read to the children—the story about the creation of woman—and in so doing He establishes that that story is foundational to the way that we’re supposed to understand marriage. He’s asked if it’s lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason (19:3), and here’s His reply: [vv. 4-6].

            There are two ideas expressed in this teaching that, as I said, are foundational to the idea of marriage that’s been given to the church. The first is that God designed marriage. In the beginning, God made them male and female, with the intention that they be joined to one another in marriage. And He had something good in mind when He designed us that way. “Therefore what God has joined together, let not man put asunder” (v. 6). If He made it, it’s not ours to take apart. The second idea is that God designed marriage to join a husband and wife together so that they become one. “So then, they are no longer two, but one flesh” (v. 6).

            New Church teachings build on this idea: they say that men and women are designed to be joined to one another not just physically, not just by living in the same house, but on a spiritual level. The Heavenly Doctrine says that since ancient times the world’s understanding of marriage has steadily declined, and that an understanding of the spiritual potential in marriage was lost; but the Heavenly Doctrine also says that the Lord is working to restore that understanding, by means of new teachings that He’s provided for His New Church (ML §§78.8; 81.5). In the book Married Love we’re told that true married love “originates from the marriage between good and truth” (§60). The idea here, in brief, is that good and truth—or love and wisdom—are meant to be joined together and are always striving to unite themselves (§§88, 89). Love finds its expression in wisdom and wisdom finds its purpose in love. And the book Married Love says that, “Male and female were created to be the very image of the marriage between good and truth” (§100). Men are designed to be forms of the wisdom that clothes love, and women are designed to be forms of the love that clothes wisdom (§32); that’s what we are on the deepest level. So men and women have a capacity to be joined together on the deepest level (§§157, 158).

            Another thing we’re told in the book Married Love is that true married love corresponds to the marriage of the Lord and the church; “In other words,” we read, “as the Lord loves the church and wants the church to love Him, so a husband and wife love each other” (§62).

            We’ve gone over these teachings very quickly. The simple takeaway is that the Lord has designed us with the intention that husbands and wives be joined to each other on the deepest level. There are several reasons why He’s built us this way. One is that unions like this are good for us. Another is that they make us happy. Intimacy—or closeness with another human being—feels good; and in an orderly marriage the deepest intimacy is possible. That intimacy is something that the Lord can bless with all His power. In Married Love we read: [§180].

            That passage goes on to say that the Lord’s desire to share those blessings has everything to do with why He designed men and women the way He did—why He designed us to be married.

            Now that we’ve gone over all of these lofty teachings, it’s important to go back to the idea that these teachings are aspirational. If we look around at the world, it becomes perfectly obvious that every marriage takes work, that every marriage has its unlovely bits, and that some marriages end. If that’s obvious to us, then surely the Lord knows it too. He’s not telling us that we should have figured out all of these things already: He’s saying, “here’s the goal—strive for it!” And if we do what He says we can reach that goal. Even if it takes longer than we want it to. Even if it doesn’t happen in this lifetime. In Married Love we read, “For people who desire true married love, the Lord provides similar partners, and if they are not found on earth, He provides them in heaven” (§229). It’s so important, and so easy to forget, that the Lord sees eternity, whereas we often struggle to see past this week. All of the years that we spend in this world are just a prelude to the life that we were really created to live.

            One more thing that needs to be said about the way that marriage was designed is that sexual intimacy is meant to be part of marriage. It’s part of the mechanism that joins a husband and a wife together (ML §§172, 210; cf. AE §1005.2). Some churches teach or have taught that sex is impure, and that celibacy is preferable to marriage—but the teachings of the New Church say the opposite (ML §156). If sexual intimacy was less than ideal, why would the Lord have designed us to be joined to our spouses and become “one flesh?” (Gen. 2:24; Matt. 19:4, 5). There is nothing shameful or unclean about sexual relations within the context of an orderly marriage—quite the contrary (ML §§143, 144). But by design, sexual intimacy belongs to marriage; and if it’s separated from marriage, then something out of order has taken place. The idea that we’re supposed to be pure and that a mistake makes us impure forever is no good; but it’s also true that sexual intimacy belongs to marriage.

            So we come back to the sixth commandment—which says, “you shall not commit adultery”—because adultery, by the simplest and most common definition, is when a married person has sex with someone other than their married partner. In the light of everything that’s been said so far it should be easy enough to see that an affair like that is fundamentally wrong not just because it involves breaking promises, not just because it involves betrayal, but because it involves breaking apart what God has joined together.

            But the sixth commandment is about more than just extramarital affairs. Last week, when the subject was the fifth commandment—“you shall not murder”—it was said that physically killing someone is not the only way to break that commandment. And that’s because that commandment is really about hatred, hatred that expresses itself in violence to the degree that it can get away with it. That hatred is murderous even if no actual murder is committed. The sixth commandment works the same way. It says, “you shall not commit adultery,” and in a strict sense adultery is a physical act; but in that broader sense, adultery is an intention—an intention that leads to acts that break marriages apart, or that take the clean things of marriage and make them unclean. All of this is explained in the Heavenly Doctrine. We turn now to our final reading for today, which is from True Christian Religion: [§313].

            So looking at someone to lust for them is adulterous, even if that look doesn’t lead to anything. Now, the Lord isn’t saying that if we notice someone and find them attractive we’ve committed adultery. We can’t always help what we notice. But we can decide whether or not we look twice. When we deliberately look at someone in a lustful way, that look expresses an intention; and as far as our spirit is concerned, an intention is the same thing as an action. “Willing and doing obscene things” is also against the sixth commandment. Even if no married people are involved, obscene or criminal sexual acts still do damage to things that belong to marriage; so they are adulterous.

At its heart, adultery is a spirit that opposes true married love; it’s a spirit opposed to the love that joins two together and makes them one flesh. We’re told in the teachings of the New Church that the love of adultery ruins married love, destroys it, and finally loathes it (ML §423). And in so doing, it hurts people. Married Love is a gift the Lord gave us because He wants us to be happy, and adultery takes that gift away from people. And people who willfully damage what the Lord has made are hurting their own souls. That’s why the Lord says, “don’t do it.”

I said earlier that many of Lord’s teachings about marriage are aspirational. We don’t have the power to make all of these beautiful promises come true right now. The sixth commandment, however, is not aspirational—it’s not something we’re meant to get to “someday.” The sixth commandment is where the Lord tells us what we can do right now. Everyone has the capacity to reject acts of adultery, and to search inside themselves for the spirit of adultery and shun that too. That’s true even if we’ve done adulterous things in the past. The Lord has the power to separate us from the past. He’s looking at who we’re choosing to be right now; and if we’re willing he can make us clean (Mark 1:40).

What’s wonderful is that the sixth commandment—this unlovely, down-to-earth commandment—is also the most powerful tool for finding the happiness promised in those lofty teachings. The Heavenly Doctrine says that to the degree that we shun any evil, we love the good that that evil opposes. Specifically it says, “insofar as someone refrains from adultery, so far he loves marriage” (Life §75). To the degree that we shun adulterous things, a love of marriage will flow into us and become strong; and the Lord, in His time and according to His wisdom, will bless that love, and bring it to fulfilment.

Amen.

You Shall Not Kill

Rev. Dan Calvo

Pittsburgh New Church; March 1, 2026

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In 1955, in Mississippi, a 14-year-old Black teenager named Emmett Till was brutally murdered by two grown men. Emmett was accused of whistling at a woman during a quick visit in a store, and in revenge, the woman's husband and his half-brother kidnapped Emmett in the middle of the night, beat him up, shot him in the head, and dumped his lifeless body in a river. A 14-year-old teenager, lynched, because he allegedly whistled when he saw a woman in a store. The initial accusation, which was used as an excuse to commit unspeakable violence against a child by men whose hearts were full of hatred, acted in a way as the murder of Emmet Till’s reputation, which ultimately led to the horrendous physical murder of his body.

Today we will be discussing the fifth of the ten commandments: “You shall not murder.” Many of us don’t tend to think too much about this commandment, both because it is so straightforward and because most of us have never been faced with the moral dilemma to either take or spare a human life. For the vast majority of people in this day and age, it is not exactly a struggle to follow the fifth commandment by not killing a human being, but once we dive into the different meanings of this commandment, we may find that we are struggling to follow it, even though we may not realize it just yet.

Each one of the Ten Commandments has three different meanings: a literal meaning, which is what we read in the book of the Word itself; a spiritual meaning, which relates to how we treat our neighbors; and a celestial meaning, which relates to our personal relationship with God. Today we will explore all three of the meanings of the commandment against murder, starting with the literal meaning of what we read in the book of the Word itself.

While the commandment as found in the Word is quite self-explanatory, the Heavenly Doctrines expand on the literal sense of this commandment in the book True Christian Religion, where it says that:

This commandment, 'You shall not murder', means in the natural sense that it is forbidden to kill a human being or inflict upon him any wound that might prove fatal; also to mutilate his body. It also means not doing any drastic injury to his name or reputation, since to many people their reputation is as precious as their life. In a wider natural sense murder includes feelings of enmity, hatred and revenge which are murderous in intent. For these have the idea of murder lurking in them. These are murders in intention, but not in deed. (True Christian Religion 309)

When we allow ourselves to hold resentment against other people, to the point in which we believe that they are worthless, and that the world would be a better place if they did not exist, that resentment can continue to grow and fester inside us, until it explodes into real physical violence. Even if it never manifests as a physical act of violence, if the only thing keeping us from hurting another person is a fear of consequences, such as jail or the loss of reputation, then we are still guilty of committing murder in our heart.

Even if we don't physically take a person’s life, there are countless examples in history, besides the case of Emmett Till, that show that the destruction of the reputation of a person or group can lead to the physical murder of human beings. The movie “Birth of a Nation” which depicted Black men as being violent criminals who targeted innocent women, directly inspired the creation of the second iteration of the KKK, which was responsible for hundreds of brutal murders of innocent people. The Nazi propaganda machine which depicted Jewish people as being responsible for all the problems that Germany was facing, led to a horrific genocide of the Jewish people during World War II. Destroying the reputation of someone, whether we are talking about an individual or a group of people, may lead to the loss of human life in a way that goes against the Lord’s will for us, which is for us to live in peace, respect, and love with one another.

Now many of us may feel that we are doing a really good job following the fifth commandment so far. If we don’t physically injure anybody or hold any murderous hatred against any other person, and if we don't destroy someone's reputation, then we may look at ourselves and say that we are doing an incredible job. And perhaps we are, but the Heavenly Doctrines are very clear that even if we are not actively doing something evil, we can still be guilty of those very evils, if we support them in others. Even if we are not killing another person, or destroying their reputation, if we see other people doing those things, and we support it or believe that it is acceptable, then we are also participating in murder and we are breaking the fifth commandment.

The book Divine Providence explains this further by saying this:

If we believe that particular evils are permissible, then they do become part of us even though we do not do them, since the permission we grant them in our thought comes from our intent, and there is an agreement. As a result, when we believe that some particular evil is permissible, we have relaxed the inner restraint against it and are kept from doing it only by outward restraints, which are fears. (Divine Providence 81)

We must always be vigilant that we do not condone violence done by other people, even against those that we think deserve it for whatever reason we may have. The Lord has taught us that we must take care of our neighbor’s well-being on multiple levels, not only on a natural and physical level, but also on a mental, emotional, and spiritual level as well. When violence is done to a person's reputation or body, and we don't react to that violence with reprehension, sadness, or disgust, but rather we decide to celebrate it or support it, even if we do so quietly, we are breaking the fifth commandment, even if we are not the ones committing the harm.

The spiritual meaning of the fifth commandment focuses on our relationship with our neighbors. Now the literal sense of the fifth commandment is already very focused on how we treat other people, since it tells us not to destroy a person's body or their reputation, but the spiritual meaning of the fifth commandment goes deeper than the physical level, and it tells us to not destroy our neighbor's connection with the Lord and the church.

According to this passage from the book True Christian Religion:

In the spiritual sense murders mean all manners of killing and destroying human souls. These are of many and varied kinds, for instance, turning them away from God, religion and the worship of God, making these things the subject of scandal, and persuading people of things which cause them to be hated and rejected. (True Christian Religion 310)

When we push people away from religion we are committing murder in the spiritual sense. If we go through life saying “the church is evil and it has nothing to offer, it’s just a bunch of lies, and all the church wants is to take your money, and it’s full of uppity hypocritical people who think they’re better than you,” if we go through life saying those things or pushing people away from engaging with religion, then we commit murder in the spiritual sense. Now, this doesn’t mean that we should never criticize a church when it is doing something evil, and it especially doesn’t mean that people who have been victimized by organized religion shouldn’t be allowed to speak about their experience. In fact, priests or church communities that commit evil are also murdering in a spiritual sense because they are pushing people away from God with their very actions. However, when we unjustly push people away from religion and God altogether, saying that it’s all worthless, we are closing the door on a lot of possibilities for support, community, love, and guidance for people who need it.

Sometimes this can even happen in church communities with people who have the best of intentions. For example, if we meet a newcomer who came to church on Sunday, who has some opinions that we don't like, or has some lifestyle choices that we disagree with, but they are coming to church with a genuine desire to connect with God and live a good life, if we were to push that person away and not welcome them into our church, we would be committing murder in the spiritual sense because we would be pushing that person away from possibly having a life-changing experience of connecting with God and finding support in a community of believers. This is why it is so important to foster an environment in church that is welcoming to others and that is open for people of all walks of life who are willing to listen to the Word of God and live by it, because when we don't have that kind of community, we run the risk of murdering someone’s spirit who is trying to approach God.

Finally, since we have talked about the literal meaning of the fifth commandment which is about the murder of someone's body or reputation, and the spiritual meaning of the fifth commandment which is about the murder of someone's spirit, we arrive at the celestial meaning of this commandment, which is about our personal relationship with God. If the spiritual meaning of murder is to push people away from God and religion, it follows that the celestial meaning of murder, is to want to destroy God Himself.

The book True Christian Religion says that:

In the celestial sense murdering means being unjustifiably angry with the Lord, hating Him and wanting to blot out His name. These are the people who are said to crucify Him; and they would actually do so if He came into the world as before. (TCR 311)

Holding a resentment against God Himself to the point where we think that God should not exist and that He is worthless, is murder in the celestial sense. This often comes from feelings of superiority and selfishness where we think that we should be the ones in charge, that we should be the ones who are in control of the universe, and everyone should be under our power. When we hate God to the point where we cannot even bear to hear His name mentioned, we are committing murder in the celestial sense.

Even though the very idea of killing God is nonsensical (because who could ever kill infinity itself?) when we resent the values and love of God, when we want to destroy love, wisdom, respect, and human dignity, we are committing a murder of the very idea of God in our own hearts. And as we mentioned earlier, even if we do not physically hurt someone, if we hold a resentment against a person to the point that we would actually hurt them if we could, we are still guilty of committing murder, and this is the case for those who want to murder God Himself.

The fifth commandment can be difficult to talk about, because of all the suffering that is related to it. When this commandment is broken families are destroyed, dreams are shattered, and the world becomes a worst place to live in. The Lord called on us to follow this commandment in its entirety, to never destroy a person's body, to never hold hatred in our heart, to not destroy a person's reputation, to not push people away from religion, and finally to not hate the Lord Himself whose only desire is for us to be happy and to feel His infinite love for us. Whenever we break the fifth commandment in any of its forms, we not only commit a murder that hurts others, we murder our own spirit, because we move further away from God, who is the source of life itself.

The fifth commandment is a reminder of the Lord’s great commandment for us when He said: “Love one another as I have loved you.” The Lord loves us with all our imperfections, even when we make it very difficult for Him to connect with us. He wants nothing but the best for us, and He is willing to walk alongside us as we go through life, and He wants us to have that same love and care for each other. When we follow the fifth commandment and reject the hatred that comes with murder in all its forms, we can live more fully with the Lord's presence in our hearts, so that we may be the kind of useful, wise, loving servants that the Lord called us to be.    Amen.