If you have read this far, you know where temptations come from, why they are permitted, and how to deal with them.

Or you may be saying, "Nice try, but you don't know what I'm up against! I know from bitter experience that I always give way. I go forward one step and back three. I'm headed right for hell. But I'll have plenty of company there, so why worry?"

And if you are saying that, you have met temptation! This is exactly how those hellish influences want us to talk. If they get us into this frame of mind, they have us, and we may not find out until too late. After this worldly life, we have lost our chance to change.

Obviously a person is led away from evil in order to be remade, for whoever is bad in the world is bad after leaving the world. If evil is not removed in the world, it cannot be removed later. Where the tree falls, there it lies, and as someone's life has been when he dies, so it stays. Moreover, everyone is judged by the things he has done. It is not that the things are listed, but it is that he goes back to those things and acts 

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whoever is bad in the world

is bad after leaving the world

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the same way, since death is a continuation of life, with the difference that a person cannot be remade then. [Divine Providence 227b]

This is something the Lord wants us to know, and know now, not after death, when it is too late. He is always leading us away from our bad ways to reform and regenerate us, but it has to be our choice. He cannot and will not act unless we address our own evil ways of our own free will and call on Him for the victory over them that He alone can win (see section 10, above, about the Lord's aid)

So the lesson we have to learn is not to give up, not to be discouraged, not to weaken, and especially not to lose faith in the Lord, for evil can never win against Him. While He lived on this earth in a human form, He let all the evil powers of the hells attack Him, and He completely conquered them, once and for all (see section 2, above, about the Lord's temptations).

Having won a permanent victory over the hells, the Lord is now able to bring this victory into our lives. In His love for us, He assumed our own frail human form in

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the Lord assumed our own frail

human form in order to conquer

every single evil that ever

crops up in people

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order to conquer every single evil that ever crops up in people. Evils have no power when He is there, and He is with us in every temptation that He allows to attack us. He longs to win the victory for us, and He will if we just avoid our bad impulses and fight them as if it were our personal responsibility.

The Doctrine of the Lord 12-14, written by Emanuel Swedenborg, explains that the Lord came into the world to control the hells and glorify His Human Divinity. The passion of the cross was the final struggle in the completion of the process. Paragraph 33 of the same book reads:

Temptations are nothing other than struggles against evil influences and false notions, and since evil influences and false notions are from hell, temptations are struggles against hell. And when people are undergoing spiritual temptations, there are evil spirits from hell around them, who induce the temptations. People are unaware that it is evil spirits who induce temptations, but I have come to know by many experiences that it is. It is on account of this that when someone conquers in temptations, thanks to the Lord, he is drawn out of hell and raised into heaven. It is on account of this that through temptations, or struggles against evil ways, a person becomes spiritual, and thus an angel.

The Lord, however, fought against all the hells by His own power, and He fully mastered and subdued them. At the same time He was making His humanness Divine, and because of this He keeps the hells mastered and subdued forever.

Before the Lord's Advent, the hells had grown up from below, high enough to start threatening even the angels in heaven as well as every person entering and leaving the world! The hells had grown up that high because the church had been laid waste, and because of idolatries the peoples of the world were believing false ideas and doing wrong things. And hells come from people. In consequence of this, no person could have been saved if the Lord had not come into the world.

In the Psalms of David and in the Prophets there is a great deal about these struggles of the Lord's, but there is little about them in the Evangelists [in the Gospels and

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we are never alone in our struggle

against evil tendencies

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Revelation]. These are the struggles meant by the temptations that the Lord bore, the last of which was the passion of the cross. It is because of them that the Lord is called the Saviour and the Redeemer. This is known in the church to the extent that they say that the Lord conquered death or the devil—i.e, hell—and that He rose again in victory, and also that without the Lord there is no salvation. Later paragraphs [Doctrine of the Lord 34-36] show how He glorified His human nature, and how this made Him the Saviour, the Redeemer, the Re-Maker, and the Regenerator. Through temptations the Lord became the Saviour. [Doctrine of the Lord 33]

So there is fresh hope and courage as we face temptations. The Lord has done all this for love — love for each of us. The span of our earthly lives is short, and the fulfillment the Lord has for each of us in eternity is long.

Salvation, like temptation, is tailored to the individual. No two people are ever born exactly alike (See Divine Providence 56, Arcana Coelestia 7236², Heaven and Hell 405, and True Christian Religion 32). We have our quirks of temperament, our points of view, our own reactions to the world. The world sees us as we want it to, but the one who can assess us from top to bottom, inside and out, is the Lord. In His infinite love for each individual among us, He is able to help our special needs in a special way.

All we have to do is be willing. And take up the struggle as if it depended on us.

We are usually unaware of it, but divine help is active unceasingly throughout our lives. We are never alone in our struggle against evil tendencies. If we were, there would be no hope for us, since we are born into all kinds of evil ways and develop more of our own. Alone we are powerless against the subtle attacks of the hells.

For Comments please E-mail: information@swedenborg.ca
Read the next [12th] chapter "The necessity of self-examination and repentance"

Or go to the previous [10th] chapter "The Lord's help in temptation"

[Top]

Introduction   

[1] Where temptations come from    
[2] The Lord's temptations    
[3] All kinds of temptations
[4] The struggles of temptation   
[5] Inward, rational and worldly    
[6] Evil from Hell and Good from Heaven
[7] The mechanics of temptation    
[8] The use or purpose of temptation    
[9] Transformation
[10] The Lord's help in temptation    
[11] It all applies in our daily lives
[12] The necessity of self-examination and repentance    

Appendix
An investigation into the implications of Spiritual Temptations