Unto Us a Child Is Born

Old Testament

“[T]he virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.”

Isaiah 9:2

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

“[U]nto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace, there will be no end…”

[I]t will be said in that day: “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for Him; we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.”

Arise, shine; For your light has come! And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you….
The Lord will be to you an everlasting light.

The Lord my God will enlighten my darkness.

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

The New Testament

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.”

“Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, for He has visited and redeemed His people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David…. [T]hrough the tender mercy of our God, with which the Dayspring from on high has visited us; to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

[Said by Simeon when He saw the baby Lord]“Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel.”

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it…. That was the true Light which gives light to every man who comes into the world.

“When He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth…”

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory.

To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”

The Heavenly Doctrines

Why the Lord Came on Earth

The Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, came into the world to subdue the hells and to glorify His Human. Without this no mortal could have been saved, and those are saved who believe in Him.

The one God who is invisible came into the world and assumed a Human, not only that He might redeem people, but also that He might become visible, that thereby conjunction with people might become possible…. It was frequently declared in the Prophets that Jehovah Himself would come into the world, and would be a Redeemer; which He also became in the Human which he assumed.

“The People Who Walked in Darkness Have Seen a Great Light”

The Lord is light, that is, good itself and truth itself, and thus from Him stems all intelligence and wisdom, consequently all salvation.

Divine good itself and Divine truth, from which light comes, is the Lord. The Divine Human, which was from eternity (John 17.5) was this light itself. And whereas this light could no longer affect the human race, which had removed itself so far from good and truth, thus from light, and had cast itself into darkness, therefore the Lord willed to put on by birth the human itself. For in this way He could light up not only the rational [ideas] but also natural [ideas] of a person in the world. For He made both the rational and the natural [levels of the mind] in Himself Divine, in order that He might also be a light to those who were in such gross darkness

“[T]he glory of the Lord” means to enlighten angels and people, and to bestow intelligence and wisdom, and to bless with felicities and delights…. Nevertheless, the Lord cannot give His glory to anyone and fill him with wisdom and blessedness unless he acknowledges and worships the Lord, for it is by this that a person conjoins himself to the Lord by love and faith.

The Lord’s Presence with Us

The Lord is present with every man, urging and pressing to be received; and His first coming, which is called the dawn, is when man receives Him, which he does when he acknowledges Him as his God, Creator, Redeemer, and Savior. From this time a person’s understanding begins to be enlightened in spiritual things…

The Lord’s presence is unceasing with every person, both the evil and the good, for without His presence no person lives. But His Coming is only to those who receive Him, who are such as believe on Him and keep His commandments. The Lord’s unceasing presence causes a person to become rational, and gives him the ability to become spiritual. This is brought about by the light that goes forth from the Lord as the sun in the spiritual world. The person receives this light in his understanding. That light is truth, and by means of it the person has rationality. But the Lord’s coming is to him who joins heat with that light, that is, love with truth. For the heat that goes forth from that same sun is love to God and love toward the neighbor. The mere presence of the Lord, and the resulting enlightenment of the understanding, may be likened to the presence of solar light in the world. Unless this light is joined with heat all things on earth become desolate. But the coming of the Lord may be likened to the coming of heat, which takes place in spring. Because heat then joins itself with light, the earth is softened, and seeds sprout and bring forth fruit. Such is the parallelism between the spiritual things which are the environment of a person’s spirit, and the natural things which are the environment of his body.

The Lord’s Mission

The Lord’s affection or love was Divine, being toward the universal human race, which He willed to completely adjoin to Himself, and to save to eternity, by means of the union of His Human Essence with His Divine Essence; and that from this love the Lord continually fought against the hells; also that in the union of His Human with His Divine, He regarded nothing but the conjunction of the Divine with the human race. Love such as the Lord had transcends all human understanding, and is in the highest degree incredible to those who do not know what the heavenly love is in which the angels are. To save a soul from hell, the angels would regard death as nothing, nay, if it were possible they would undergo hell for that soul.

The Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, came into the world to subjugate the hells and to glorify His Human; and without this no mortal could have been saved; and those are saved who believe in Him….

It is a universal principle of faith that:
♦ God is one in essence and in person, in whom is a Divine trinity, and that He is the Lord God the Savior Jesus Christ.
♦ No mortal could have been saved unless the Lord had come into the world.
♦ He came into the world to remove hell from man, and that He did remove it by means of contests with it and victories over it, and thereby He subdued it and reduced it to order and made it obedient to Himself.
♦ He came into the world to glorify His Human which He took on in the world, that is, to unite it with the Divine from which [are all things], and thereby He eternally holds hell in order and under obedience to Himself. As this could be accomplished only by means of temptations admitted into His Human, even to the last of them, which was the passion of the cross, He endured even that.

The universal principle of faith on a person’s part is that he should believe in the Lord; for by believing in Him there is conjunction with Him and thereby salvation. To believe in the Lord is to have confidence that He saves; and as only those who live rightly can have this confidence, this, too, is meant by believing in Him.