AE 815 - Faith in the Lord When He Was In This World

AE 815 [5, 6, 7, 9]

There were three reasons why
faith in the Lord healed these;
first, because they acknowledged His Divine omnipotence,
and that He was God;
secondly, because faith is acknowledgment,
and from acknowledgment intuition;
and all intuition from acknowledgment
makes another to be present;
this is a common thing in the spiritual world.
So now, when a New Church
was to be established by the Lord,
it was this intuition
from an acknowledgment of the Lord's omnipotence
from which they were first to look to the Lord;
and from this it is clear what is here meant by faith.
The third reason was,
that all the diseases healed by the Lord
represented and thus signified
the spiritual diseases that correspond to
these natural diseases;
and spiritual diseases can be healed only by the Lord,
and in fact by looking to His Divine omnipotence
and by repentance of life.
This is why He sometimes said,
"Thy sins are forgiven thee; go and sin no more."
This faith also was represented and signified
by their miraculous faith;
but the faith by which
spiritual diseases are healed by the Lord
can be given only through truths from the Word
and a life according to them;
the truths themselves and the life itself according to them
make the quality of the faith.

. . . it was faith in the Lord's omnipotence that healed them,
and that the same faith remitted, that is, removed, sins.
The reason of this was that this woman not only had faith
in the Divine omnipotence of the Lord, but also loved Him,
for she kissed His feet.
Wherefore the Lord said,
"Thy sins are forgiven thee, thy faith hath saved thee,"
(Luke 7: 38, 48, 50)
because faith makes the Divine of the Lord to be present,
and love conjoins.
It is possible, however, for the Lord to be present
and not be conjoined;
from which it is evident that it is faith from love that saves.

The Lord called the disciples "men of little faith"
when they were unable to do miracles in His name,
and He was unable to do miracles in His own country
because of their unbelief,
for the reason that while the disciples believed
the Lord to be the Messiah or Christ,
also the Son of God,
and the prophet of whom it was written in the Word,
yet they did not believe that He was God Almighty,
and that Jehovah the Father was in Him;
and yet so far as they believed Him to be a man,
and not at the same time God,
His Divine to which omnipotence belongs
could not be present with the disciples by faith.

. . . faith does not save until a person lives the life of faith,
which is charity;
for he then wills and does what he believes,
and to will and to do is of the love,
and love conjoins to Him whom faith presents as present.