December
3

Walking in all the Commandments.

There was in the days of Herod the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the daily ministry of Abijah; and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both just in the sight of God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless…. And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And Zacharias was disturbed at the sight, and fear fell upon him. And the angel said to him, Fear not, Zacharias, for thy prayer is heard, and thy wife Elizabeth shall give birth to a son for thee, and thou shalt call his name John. And thou shalt have joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice at his birth. (Luke 1:5-6, 11-14)

“To walk in the law of Jehovah” denotes to live a life of truth and good according to doctrine. (Arcana Coelestia 8420)

It is the internal man that should command, and the external that should obey, and that does obey when the man does not have the world as the end, but heaven, and not self but the neighbor, consequently when he regards bodily and worldly things as means and not as the end. And he so regards them when he loves his neighbor more than himself, and the things of heaven more than those of the world. When this is the case, the natural obeys; the natural is the same as the external man. (Arcana Coelestia 5368:1-2)

Men are nothing else than forms receptive of life from the Lord, and these forms are such by inheritance and by actual life that they refuse to admit the spiritual life which is from the Lord. But when these receptacles have been so far renounced that they no longer have any freedom from the man’s own, there is total submission… In order that He may make a man blessed and happy, the Lord wills a total submission, that is, that he be not partly his own and partly the Lord’s, for then there are two lords, which no one can serve at the same time (Matthew 6:24). … That submission must be total is very evident from the first commandment of the church: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God from all thy heart, and from all thy soul, and from all thy mind, and from all thy forces; this is the first commandment.” (Mark 12:30) (Arcana Coelestia 6138.1-3)

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