DP 322 - Reformation Not Predestination; DP 326 - Living the Ten Commandments

Every Person Can Be Reformed,
and There Is No Predestination

DP 322

Sound reason declares that all people
have been predestined for heaven and no one for hell.
For all have been born human beings,
and therefore they have the image of God in them.
The image of God in them
is their ability to understand truth
and their ability to do good.
The ability to understand truth
originates from Divine wisdom,
and the ability to do good from Divine love.
This capacity is the image of God,
which remains in a healthy person and is not eradicated.

It is because of this
that a person can become civic-minded and moral,
and someone who is civic-minded and moral
can also become spiritual,
for civic-mindedness and morality
are the recipient vessel of a spiritual quality.
He is called a civic-minded person
who knows the laws
of the kingdom of which he is a citizen
and lives according to them;
and he is called a moral person
who makes those laws his mores and his virtues
and lives them in conformity with reason.

. . . Live those laws not only as civil and moral laws,
but also as Divine laws,
and you will be a spiritual person.

It is owing to the Lord's Divine providence
that every nation has some religion,
and the primary tenet of every religion
is to acknowledge the existence of God,
for otherwise it is not called a religion.
Moreover, every nation that lives its religion,
namely that does not do evil
because it is opposed to their God,
receives some spiritual element in its natural existence.

DP 326 [6-7]

. . . to acknowledge God with the heart
is possible only to people who live rightly.
These the Lord turns away from hell and toward Himself
in accordance with the goodness of their life.
That is because only they love God,
for they love the Divine precepts that they have from Him,
putting them into practice.
The Divine precepts that they have from God
are the commandments of His law.
These are God,
because He is His own Divine emanation,
and to love them is to love God.
Therefore the Lord says,

He who (does) My commandments. . . ,
it is he who loves Me.
(But) He who does not (do) My (commandments)
does not love Me.
(John 14:21-24)

It is for this reason
that there are two tables of the Decalogue,
one for God and the other for mankind.
God works unceasingly to induce a person
to accept the precepts that are on His, God's, table;
but if the person does not put into practice
the precepts that are on his, mankind's, table,
he does not accept
with an acknowledgment of the heart
the precepts that are on God's table,
and if he does not accept them,
there is no conjunction.
Therefore the two tables
were joined together to form a single whole,
and were called the tables of the covenant,
a covenant symbolizing conjunction.
Everyone acknowledges God
and is conjoined with Him
in accordance with the goodness of his life
for the reason that goodness of life
is like the good which is in the Lord
and so which is from the Lord.
Consequently when a person possesses goodness of life,
a conjunction is formed.
The contrary is the case with evil of life.
This rejects the Lord.