§525 not by mercy alone 313
a. Divine truth emanating from the Lord is the source of his design, and divine good is the
essence of the design: 1728 , 2258 , 8700 , 8988. As a result, the Lord is the design: 1919 , 2011 , 5110 ,
5703 , 10336 , 10619. Divine truths are the laws of the design: 2247 [ 2447 ], 7995. The whole heaven
is arranged by the Lord according to its divine pattern: 3038 , 7211 , 9128 , 9338 , 10125 , 10151 , 10157.
So heaven’s form is a form in accord with the divine design: 4040 – 4043 , 6607 , 9877. To the
extent that we live according to the design, that is, to the extent that we live intent on what is
good according to divine truths, we accept heaven into ourselves: 4839. The human being is
where all the elements of the divine design are gathered together, and by creation we are the
divine design in form because we are its vessels: 4219 , 4220 [ 4222 ], 4223 , 4523 , 4524 , 5114 , 5368
[ 4839 ], 6013 , 6057 , 6605 , 6626 , 9706 , 10156 , 10472. We are not born into what is good and true
but into what is evil and false, and therefore not into the divine design but into a pattern contrary
to it, which is why we are born into pure ignorance and need to be born again or regenerated; the
Lord effects this through divine truths, in order to bring us back into the design: 1047 , 2307 ,
2308 , 3518 , 3812 , 8480 , 8550 , 10283 , 10284 , 10286 , 10731. When the Lord is forming us afresh or
regenerating us, he arranges everything in us according to the design, or into heaven’s form: 5700 ,
6690 , 9931 , 10303. Evil and false things are contrary to the design, but still people who are
absorbed in them are governed by the Lord, not according to the design but from it: 4839 , 7877 ,
10778 [ 10777 ]. It is impossible for someone who is living in evil to be saved out of pure mercy,
because this goes against the divine design: 8700.
This shows again that the Lord’s divine mercy is pure mercy but not
unmediated.a
If we could be saved by nothing but mercy then everyone would be 524
saved, even the people in hell. In fact, there would not be any hell because
the Lord is mercy itself, love itself, goodness itself. So it goes against his
essential divine nature to say that all people can be saved directly and
that he does not save them. We know from the Word that the Lord
intends the salvation of all and the damnation of no one.
Many people who arrive in the other life from the Christian world 525
bring with them a faith that they are going to be saved out of sheer mercy
because they plead for it. When they are examined, though, it turns out
that they have believed that getting into heaven was simply a matter of
being let in, and that people who had been admitted were in heavenly joy.
They have had no notion of what heaven is or what heavenly joy is. So
they are told that the Lord does not deny heaven to anyone. They can be
let in if they wish and even stay there. Some who wanted to were actually
let in; but at the very threshold, at the touch of heaven’s warmth (that is,
of the love angels are engaged in) and the infl ow of heaven’s light (which
is divine truth), they were seized with such pain in the heart that they
felt themselves in the torments of hell rather than in the joys of heaven.
Struck by this, they plunged down headlong. In this way they were taught
by fi rsthand experience that no one can enter heaven out of sheer mercy.