The Lord's individual help is especially active during temptations— temptations that occur when our own inclinations are allowed to surface in order to be dealt with.

And this brings us to the necessity of self-examination. Self-examination is regular and honest investigation to see what particular evils we are inclined to. What inclinations would we follow if there were no law, no prison, no reprisals, no personal harm in it? Without this self-examination there is no struggle against the hells, and we carry these evils with us through life and into the next life. It is too late then to change. Now is the time to act. The choice between heaven and hell is in our own hands.

The whole Divine purpose of temptation is to bring us to the place where we can see and acknowledge our own assortment of evils and then avoid them as sins against the Lord. This way the Lord can prepare us for our angelic lives in His new heavens. "Enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it" (Matt. 7:13-14).

The many who go in by the broad way to hell are those who are filled with self-interest and worldliness and who, in their hearts, reject the Lord's love and wisdom, even if many of them may outwardly appear to be honest and just. These are the people who have never examined themselves or practiced repentance against their evil inclinations and have refused to accept Divine truth or face up to the reality of themselves.

The few who go by the narrow way to heaven are those who have developed love for the Lord through self-examination and shunning their evil inclinations as sins against Him. They have accepted Divine truth, have let it apply to their lives, and have acknowledged in their hearts as they turned from evil ways that the Lord alone has won the victories for them.

The Lord shows us the way, but it is a personal choice, as the following quotations from "The True Christian Religion" (TCR), and "The New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine" (HD) will show.

Active repentance is investigating yourself, recognizing and acknowledging your sins, taking responsibility for them, confessing them before the Lord, praying for help and power to resist them, and in this way ceasing to do them, and leading a new life. And doing all this as if by yourself. And then, when the sins you have been guilty of return, you say to yourself, "I don't want them, because they are sins against God." This is active repentance.

Who cannot understand that whoever does not explore and see his sins stays immersed in them? For from birth everything bad is fun. Isn't it pleasant to take revenge, fornicate, defraud, blaspheme, and especially to control other people out of self-interest? Doesn't the pleasure make these sins invisible? And if they happen to be called sins, aren't they excused for the pleasure in them, even by specious demonstrations that they aren't sins? And don't you go on with them this way and later do them more than before, until you don't know what a sin is or whether there is sin?

It is different with someone who actively repents. He recognizes and acknowledges his evils and calls them sins, and so he begins to avoid them and turn away from them, and eventually he finds that his pleasure in them is no fun. The more he does this, the more he loves good things and eventually feels pleasure in them.  This is the pleasure of angels in heaven.

In a nutshell, the more someone puts the devil behind him, the more he is chosen by the Lord, is taught and led by Him, withheld from evil ways, and kept in good ways. This way and no other is the way from hell to heaven. [True Christian Religion 567^5-6]

Someone who just acknowledges that he is a sinner in general, admits that he is guilty of all sins, and does not examine himself— i.e., look at his sins—is making confession, but he is not making the confession of repentance. Since this person does not find out about his evil inclinations, he lives the same way afterwards as before. [The New Jerusalem and it's Heavenly Doctrine 162]

Anyone who is living a life of belief and of love for others repents every day, reviews the bad inclinations in himself, acknowledges them, is on his guard against them, and asks the Lord for help. For on his own a person is always slipping, but the Lord is always raising him up and leading him to a good life. This is the status of people who live right. [The New Jerusalem and it's Heavenly Doctrine 163]

A person who is examining himself in order to repent should investigate his thoughts and his wilful intents, and what things among them he would do if he could—namely, if he were not afraid of laws and the loss of his reputation, status, and assets. These are the source of all the bad things a person does physically. People who do not explore their bad thoughts and intentions cannot repent, because they have the same thoughts

The evils of a person are in his thoughts and intentions.

and intentions afterwards as before. And yet to intend evils is to commit evils. This is what self-examination is all about. [The New Jerusalem and it's Heavenly Doctrine 164]

Oral repentance without living repentance is not repentance. Sins are not taken away by oral repentance but by living repentance. The Lord is always forgiving a person his sins, for He is mercy itself. But no matter how much a person thinks that his sins have been taken away, they stay with him, and they are only removed through a life that follows the concepts of real belief. The more someone lives by this, the farther the sins are removed from his life, and the farther they are removed, the more they are taken away. [The New Jerusalem and it's Heavenly Doctrine 165]

Anyone can reasonably conclude that the church cannot be in the person until his sins are removed—which can be illustrated by these analogies: Who can put sheep, and their young and lambs into fields or woods where there are all kinds of wild animals, before driving out the wild animals? And who can make a garden out of ground full of thorns, briers, and nettles before rooting out those weeds? Who can set up a government and a system to administer justice by law in a city held by the enemy before driving out the enemy? The evil inclinations in people are the same. They are like the wild animals, the briars and thorns, and the enemies. The church can no more share living space with them than someone can live in a menagerie where there are tigers and leopards, nor any more than anyone can lie in a bed with its mattress and pillows stuffed with poisonous weeds. [True Christian Religion 511]

Who does not know from common sense that it is not repentance just to confess vocally that you are a sinner?   For what is easier for someone in trouble and under stress than to fetch sighs and groans from his lungs and spill them out through his lips, and beat his breast, and hold himself guilty of all sins, even though he is not familiar with one sin in himself? Does the hellish crowd that inhabits his loves exit on his sighs? Wouldn't they be more apt to hiss right along and stay with him the same as before, as their  home? This  shows that this kind of repentance is not what the Word means, but

before repentance a person is like an

uninhabited place with

ferocious creatures in it

repenting bad actions. [True Christian Religion 529]

Before repentance a person is like an uninhabited place with terrible ferocious creatures in it, dragons, horned owls, screech-owls, vipers, poisonous snakes, and in the shrubbery lewd demons and harpies, and leaping satyrs. But once these have been driven out by the person's diligence and work, the wilderness can be ploughed and cultivated into fields, and these can be planted, first with oats, beans, and flax, and later with barley and wheat.

And an analogy with malice may be drawn. Plenty of it prevails among people. If malicious people were not corrected by laws and punished by flogging or death, no city would last, nor would any kingdom. A person is like a society in miniature. If he did not treat himself in spiritual terms as the malicious are treated in worldly terms, he would be corrected and punished after death, until he did not do wrong for fear of punishment. Yet he could never be forced to do good for the love of good. [True Christian Religion 531]

Real repentance is to examine not just your acts but also your voluntary intentions, because understanding and willing become acts. A person speaks from thought and acts from will, so speech is thought speaking, and action is will acting. And because these are the source of speech and actions, it necessarily follows that your thought and will sin when your body does. People, moreover, are also able to repent of bodily misdeeds but still think and will evil. But this is like cutting down the trunk of a harmful tree and leaving its root in the ground. The same bad tree grows out of the root and spreads. But it is different when the root, too, is removed, and in a person this happens when he explores his willing intentions as well, and removes evils through repentance.

A person explores his wilful intentions when he examines his thoughts, because intentions show up in thoughts—explores how, when thinking about it, he wants and intends revenge, adultery, theft, and false testimony, and lusts after these things, as well as blasphemy against God, the Holy Word and the holy church, and so on. If he concentrates further on this and questions whether he would commit these wrongs if fear of the law and his reputation did not interfere, and if after questioning it he decides that he does not want those things, because they are sins, then he is truly and inwardly repenting. And all the more if when he senses a thrill in those evil acts and is free to commit them, but then resists and does not do it. For anyone who keeps doing this over and over, the pleasure of those evils, when they return, seems misery, and in the end he condemns them to hell.

This was the meaning of the Lord's words, "Whoever wants to find his soul must lose it, and whoever has lost his soul for Me, finds it" (Matt. 10:39). [True Christian Religion 532]

Anyone who expels his wilful evils through this kind of repentance is like the man who pulls up the tares sown in his field by the devil in time for the seed planted by the Lord God the Saviour to fall on clear soil and grow into a crop (see Matt. 13:25-31).

People who do not examine themselves are like sick people whose blood is corrupted by vascular constriction, causing atrophy, numbness of the limbs, and acute chronic illness due to thickening, tenacity, acridness, and acidity of fluids and consequently of the blood. But those who examine their voluntary intentions are like people who are cured of those illnesses and return to the life they enjoyed when they were young. Those who examine themselves properly are like ships from Ophir loaded with gold, silver, and valuables. But before examining themselves they are like garbage scows which carry away the filth and dung of the streets.

People who examine themselves inwardly become like mines whose walls all glitter with the ores of precious metals, but before this they are like reeking fens with snakes and poisonous reptiles that flash their scales, and noxious insects with glittering wings. Those who do not examine themselves are like dry bones in a valley. But after self-examination they are like the same bones, which the Lord Jehovah endowed with muscles, made flesh come over them, covered them with skin, put breath in them, and they lived (Ezek. 37:1-14). [True Christian Religion 534]

It is a commonplace that habit is second nature, and it makes something easy for one person which is hard for someone else. This goes for self-examination and confessing what it discloses. What is easier for a servant, porter, or farmer than to work with his hands from dawn to dusk? Someone high-born and pampered, on the other hand, cannot do the same work for half an hour without sweat and fatigue. It is easy for a scout with a staff and comfortable shoes to hike for miles, while someone used to going by vehicle can hardly run slowly for a block. Every devoted craftsman does his work with ease and willingly, and when away from it is eager to get back, while another one, skilled in the same trade, but lazy, can hardly be driven to it.

Everyone in any function or pursuit is the same. What is easier for someone devoted to piety than to pray to God, and what is harder for someone given to impiety—and vice versa? What clergyman preaching before a king for the first time is not afraid? But when he gets used to it, he carries on unruffled. What is easier than for an angelic person to lift his eyes to heaven, or for a diabolical person to cast his eyes down toward hell? If the diabolical person becomes hypocritical, he, too, can look up to heaven, but his heart turns the other way. The end a person has in view forms his habits and determines his character. [True Christian Religion 563]

Since not many in the Protestant Christian world practice repentance, I might add that someone who has not looked within and sorted through himself cannot tell, in the end, what evil is, which condemns, and what good is, which saves, for he has no scruples by which to know. An evil inclination that the person does not see, recognise, and acknowledge, remains, and what remains takes root more and more until it clutters the more inward reaches of his mind. On account of this, the person becomes first worldly, then sensually, and finally physically obsessed. In these states, he does not know about any evil that condemns nor goodness that saves. He becomes like a tree on hard rock. It spreads its roots out among the chinks of the rock, yet it grows weak for lack of moisture. [True Christian Religion 564]

Who does not know that a hypocrite can talk about God, an opportunist can talk about sincerity, or an adulterer can talk about chastity, and so on?   But if people did not have a knack for opening and closing a door between thought and speech, and between intentions and actions, and did not have Prudence or Cunning there as a doorman, they would rush more savagely than any wild animal into unspeakable and bloody exploits. But after death that door is opened up on everyone, and then it is obvious what  they have been like.  But in  hell the people are restrained by penalties

______________________________________________________

someone who has not looked within

and sorted through himself cannot

tell, in the end, what evil is

______________________________________________________

and by jailers.

So, dear reader, look within yourself, and fish out a bad inclination or two, and turn away from them out of religious principle. If you turn away for any other reason or purpose, you're only turning away to keep the world from knowing. [True Christian Religion 566]

Here are some signs that sins have been remitted, i.e. set aside. People find pleasure in worshipping God for the sake of God and in serving other people for the sake of other people, and therefore in doing good things for goodness' sake and speaking the truth for the sake of truth. They do not hope to build credit through positive actions or through belief. They avoid and turn away from evil acts like enmities, hatreds, vengeance, and adulteries, and even from thoughts with that kind of intentions.

But here are some signs that sins have not been remitted, i.e., set aside. They worship God, not for the sake of God, and they serve other people, not for the sake of other people. So they do good things and speak the truth not for the sake of goodness and the truth, but for the sake of themselves and their material interests. They want to gain credit by what they do. They experience no displeasure in bad acts like enmity, hate, vengeance, and adulteries, and they freely indulge in contemplating these evils for the sake of the evils. [The New Jerusalem and it's Heavenly Doctrine 167]

After someone has examined himself, acknowledged his sins, and carried out repentance, he should remain unwavering  in goodness to the end of life,  for if he slips back into his previous life of wrong, and  embraces it, he profanes, because then he mingles bad with good.   So his later condition  becomes  worse than his  previous

______________________________________________________

______________________________________________________

One who is on a high level as far as intellect goes but whose voluntary love is around his feet is comparable to serpents with iridescent scales. 

(linocut by Donna Heldon © 2009)

condition, according to the Lord's words, "When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first". [The New Jerusalem and it's Heavenly Doctrine 169]

Analogies can illustrate what someone is like whose intellect has been elevated without taking along the love in his free will. He is like a high-flying eagle that immediately plunges down as soon as it sees prey below, such as chickens, young swans, or even lambs, and seizes them greedily. He is also like an adulterer who has a prostitute hidden in a lower room. By turns he goes up to the top floor of his house and sagely discusses chastity with visitors, in his wife's presence, and by turns ducks out of the gathering and satisfies his lust with the prostitute down below. This is what someone is like who is on a high level as far as intellect goes, but his voluntary love takes its place down around his feet, immersed in the filth of nature and sensual pleasures. Such people seem to be intellectually brilliant, yet their will is anti-intellectual, so they can also be compared to serpents with iridescent scales and to beetles that shine like gold, as well as to the will-o-the-wisp in swamps, the glow in rotten wood, and phosphorescent substances.

Some of them can imitate angels of light, among people in this world as well as after death among angels of heaven. After a short examination, however, the angels strip them naked and throw them out. But this cannot be managed in the world, because their spirit is not open there but masked. The fact that they can imitate angels of light in face and speech is the reason why—and also the evidence that—they can raise their intellect almost to angelic wisdom.

Now, since the inner level and the outer level of a person can separate into such opposites, and since the body decays and the spirit remains, the point is that a dark spirit can lurk under a pure face, and a smouldering spirit under soothing talk. Therefore, my friend, know people not by their lips but by their hearts—that is, not by what they say but by what they do, for the Lord says, "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits" (Matt. 7:15-16). [True Christian Religion 590]

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Read the "Appendix"

Or go to the previous [11th] chapter "It all applies in our daily lives"
 

[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