Remembering the Lord’s Life
The Rev. Coleman S. Glenn
I
n the New Church, we tend to focus more attention on what the Lord does
for us now than what He did for us when He walked on the earth. And when
we are looking to the internal sense of the Word, we tend to focus more on
what it says about our own regeneration than on what it says about the Lord’s
process of glorification.
There are good reasons for these emphases: it is easier to see how they
relate directly to our lives. It can be harder to see that practical use in reflecting
on what the Lord went through 2,000 years ago.
But if we only focus on the here and now, and don’t take time to reflect on
what the Lord did in the world, then we are really missing out. The Heavenly
Doctrine focuses a great deal on what the Lord did in the world. A huge portion
of Arcana Coelestia focuses on the internal sense of the Word as it related to
the Lord’s glorification. And the universal faith of the New Church is that “the
Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, came into the world to subjugate the hells
and to glorify His humanity; and that without this no mortal could have been
saved, and those are saved who believe in Him.” (True Christian Religion 2)
Notice that that universal faith is almost entirely about what the Lord did
for the human race 2,000 years ago – and because of that, what He can do for
us now.
There are two times a year when we do tend to focus our attention on what
the Lord did in the world: Christmas and Easter. At Christmas, we focus on
the miracle of the incarnation: that God Himself was born in this world. And
at Easter, we focus on the incredible things that the Lord completed in His last
week on earth: fully subjugating the hells, fully overcoming all temptations,
and by doing so, fully making His human Divine.
One key teaching of the New Church, which helps us even more to
appreciate how much the Lord did for us, is that it was not His death on the cross
that redeemed the human race, but His entire life of constantly overcoming in
temptation, as well as His crucifixion and resurrection. The cross was just the
last and most difficult of these temptations, by which He completely glorified
His human, that is, made it Divine. (See Doctrine of the Lord 34)
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