You Shall Not Murder

For a full description of these resources and how to use them, read the Introduction to Section F (PDF).

For a printable version of the resources: You Shall Not Murder (PDF).

During Step 4.2 of the BNL process, review the resources and select the descriptors that resonate most with you. Then, transfer them to the Step 4.2 worksheet.

Resource 1: Secrets of Heaven

Forms of goodness related to the commandment on murder:

  • Hold your neighbor in love.

  • Wish well to your neighbor.

  • Will well to your neighbor.

  • [Editorial note: Emanuel Swedenborg suggests that your “neighbor” is the person next door and also people in general. More specifically, your neighbor is any good, noble, or honorable qualities that exist in a person and help make them who they are, including yourself.]

  • Welcome good feelings for your neighbor.

  • Support life.

    • Be supportive of a person’s life in the world.

    • Be supportive of a person’s inner life—the life of heaven.

  • Support spiritual life.

  • Support what is innocent.

    • Help keep innocent souls alive.

      • Scripture: Keep souls alive that should live.

  • Support simple goodness in your neighbor.

    • Support the goodwill in a person.

  • Support the truths and goods that are of faith and goodwill.

  • Support the truths and goods of the church.

  • Breathe out support.

    • Support of body and soul

    • Supportive actions and words

  • Enter the life of heaven.

  • Enter spiritual life.

  • Enter a life of faith and goodwill.

    • Have goodwill and faith.

    • Turn toward goodwill.

      • Have the faith of goodwill, or in other words…

        • Have faith that results from goodwill.

        • Be in truths from good.

    • Scripture: Find one who executes judgment, who seeks truth.

    • Goodwill defined:

      • Goodwill is willing well to others, and from willing well, doing well to them.

      • Goodwill itself is acting justly and faithfully in our position and our work, and with people with whom we interact.

  • Be zealous for what is good and true.

  • Uphold what is good and true.

  • Uphold the truths and goods of faith.

  • Uphold all goodness and truth.

  • Scripture: Feed the sheep.

Results of abstaining from murder:

  • Love of the Lord arises.

  • Goodwill and faith arise.

  • Goodness is seen.

  • Truth is seen.

    • Knowledge of truth and goodness shines with its light.

    • The light of heaven flows in through faith that is the product of goodwill.

  • Goodness and truth flourish and burgeon.

  • Goodness and the desire for it burgeon.

  • Truth and the desire for it burgeon.

  • A new church arises within the individual.

    • This new church will take root in outward life.

    • It will blossom and flower internally.

    • It will be productive of what is good—filled with produce.

    • Scripture:

      • Jacob will take root in those who are to come;

      • Israel will blossom and flower,

      • So that the faces of the world will be filled with produce.

  • A person can be regenerated.

Resource 2: The Apocalypse Explained

Forms of goodness related to the commandment on murder:

  • Be a good person—one who is in love toward your neighbor.

  • Love your neighbor.

  • Let love be the very delight of your life.

  • Love your neighbor in your spirit as well as in outward life.

  • Be a lover “from the beginning.”

  • Heavenly love for all who are in good

  • Love all of heaven.

  • Love what is good and true.

  • Be allies and lovers of good and truth.

  • Love the good of the church and its truth.

    • Note: If people love what is good and true, they love their neighbor; and to love is to will supporting the neighbor.

  • Take delight in supporting what is good and true.

  • Love the faith and love within a person, thus the person him- or herself.

  • Love the essence of your neighbor.

    • Note: A person is a person from the Lord through the reception of good and truth; therefore, to support what is good and true in a person is to support humanness itself, thus to support your neighbor.

    • Be eager to support what is truly human, which is good and truth.

  • Welcome good feelings for your neighbor.

  • Support your neighbor.

    • Wish support for your neighbor.

    • Will support for him or her.

    • Breathe out support.

    • Make an effort to support your neighbor.

      • Supportive actions and words

      • Do the works of goodwill and love.

      • Act from love, compassion, and forgiveness.

      • Love your neighbor in outward life.

    • Support your neighbor’s bodily life.

      • Note: The life of the body serves a person’s spiritual life as the instrument of a higher purpose.

    • Support your neighbor’s good reputation and honor.

      • Build up your neighbor’s good reputation in the hearing of others.

      • Promote your neighbor’s good and truth among others.

      • Note: A person’s reputation is the source of his or her civic life, which is his or her life among others.

  • Number your neighbor among the good.

  • Support the life of heaven.

  • Support a person’s spiritual life.

    • Will to support a person’s spirit.

    • Will to support his or her spiritual life.

      • Note: From this life a person is a person.

    • Support the faith and love of God.

  • Note: Three of the things listed above, namely, support for a person’s faith and love, support for a person’s good reputation and honor, and support for a person’s bodily life are said to follow in a series, one from the other, like cause and effect.

  • Be reconciled to your neighbor.

    • Scripture: If you would offer your gift on the altar, and there remember that your brother has anything against you, leave there your gift before the altar, and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then coming, offer your gift. 

      • [Editorial note: Emanuel Swedenborg suggests that a “brother” in Scripture refers to anyone—male or female—who is in good. Abstractly, “brother” refers to the goodness itself that is within the individual.]

  • Be well disposed toward your adversary.

    • Scripture: Be well disposed toward your adversary while you are in the way with him or her.

  • Be in heaven so to speak.

    • Be in heaven, where all the good are.

    • Belong to heaven.

  • Be in zeal for what is good.

    • Notes on zeal:

      • There is a seeming hatred and consequent anger with good people against what is evil.

        • This is not hatred, but an aversion to evil.

        • Neither is it anger but a zeal for what is good.

          • A heavenly fire lies concealed within this zeal.

      • Good people turn away from evil and are seemingly angry with their neighbor.

        • They do this in order to remove what is evil.

        • In this way they have positive regard for their neighbor’s good.

The good that is to be done after abstaining from the evil of murder, continued:

  • Be in good as to life.

  • Be honest and proper, just and equitable, good and true.

    • Be these things inwardly as well as in outward life.

  • Be in good and truth,

    • Thus pass over to the side of heaven,

    • And in this way come into the delight of doing what is good from love.

  • Be in the delight of doing what is good from love.

  • Take delight in doing good.

    • Note: This delight is a heavenly fire that burns with desire for supporting souls.

  • Be in truths from good.

  • Love the Lord.

    • Love the Lord Himself.

  • Notes on love of the Lord and love of your neighbor:

    • Love of the Lord and love of your neighbor are what make heaven in a person; nor is heavenly warmth anything else than love.

    • Love constitutes heaven with a person.

  • Let the fire of heaven, which is spiritual love, flow into you and give you life.

  • Let love, goodwill, mercy, and leniency (clemency) flow into you from the Lord through heaven.

    • Note: The above two things are achieved when a person abstains from hatred, turns away from it, and shuns it as diabolical.

    • Note: The fire of heaven, which is spiritual love, cannot flow in as long as the fire of hell, which is hatred, stands in the way and shuts it out.

Resource 3: Principles of Life

The form of goodness that is the opposite of murder:

  • Love

  • Love toward your neighbor

    • Note: When a person is in this form of goodness, it removes the evil of murder. The reason is that two spiritual opposites cannot be together.

Forms of goodness related to the commandment on murder:

  • Turn to heaven.

  • Turn to the Lord.

  • Turn to what is good.

  • Note: People are free to turn.

  • Support your neighbor’s bodily life.

  • Breathe out support for your neighbor.

  • Support people’s souls.

  • Love, compassion, and forgiveness

    • Note: Life lies hidden in these things.

    • Note: Heavenly life is nothing else.

  • Do what is good from love for your neighbor.

    • Do good works.

    • Examples:

      • A priest who teaches and leads from the love of saving souls.

      • Public officials who deliver decisions or judgments from a love of caring for their country, their community, and their fellow citizens

      • Traders who do their trading from a love for their neighbor, their country, the community, their fellow citizens, and also the members of their households; and who thus care for their welfare and provide for their own.

      • Workers who work faithfully from a love for their neighbor, working for others as they would for themselves; fearing their neighbor’s loss as they would their own.

  • Note: People are able to do what is good from love for their neighbor when they are no longer in the evil of murder, or more specifically, to the extent that they shun murders of every kind as sins; for to the extent that people shun evil as a sin, to the same extent they do what is good. In addition, they who shun evils as sins do good from the Lord and not from themselves.

  • Be reconciled to your neighbor.

    • Scripture: If you are offering your gift on the altar, and there remember that your brother has anything against you, leave there your gift before the altar and go your way, first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

    • Note: To be “reconciled to your brother” in the above Scripture means to shun resentment, hatred, and revenge as sins.

  • Be well minded toward your adversary.

    • Scripture: Be well minded to your adversary quickly, while you are in the way with him or her.

    • Scripture: All things whatever you would that people should do to you, do you even so to them; for this is the Law and the Prophets.

    • Thus people should not do evil.

  • Love the Lord.

  • Note: The three kinds of love and support mentioned above—support for your neighbor’s bodily life, support of your neighbor’s soul, and love of the Lord—form a single entity and are bound together. For they who support the bodily life of people in this world support their souls after death. They also love the Lord, for they burn with love for Him and a desire to exalt His name.

  • Act according to the three kinds of love mentioned in the note just above, both inwardly and in outward life.

Resource 4: True Christianity

Forms of goodness related to the commandment on murder:

  • Harbor love in your heart.

  • Will well to your neighbor.

  • Support your neighbor’s body and bodily life.

  • Support your neighbor’s good name and reputation.

  • Welcome good feelings for your neighbor.

  • Supportive actions and words

  • Love, compassion, and forgiveness

    • Notes:

      • Love, compassion, and forgiveness are support for your neighbor in intention.

        • Whatever is part of your intention is also part of your will, and so it is essentially (or in essence) part of any action that comes forth from these things.

      • These feelings breathe out support for your neighbor.

      • Heavenly fire is nothing else.

  • Support your neighbor’s soul.

    • Support those who are devoted to the Lord.

    • Support their souls.

    • Protect the innocence in them.

      • Note: Innocence is their willingness to be led by the Lord.

    • Support faith and goodwill in them.

    • Support the angel in them (that is, the truth and goodness in them).

    • Turn people toward…

      • God.

      • Religion.

      • Worship of the Divine.

    • Offer supportive thoughts in favor of God, religion, and worship of the Divine.

    • Support people’s souls by means of truths.

    • Uphold the sanctities of the church.

    • Scripture: Feed the flock.

  • Love heaven.

  • Love the Lord’s New Church.

    • [Editorial note: In the theological writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, “the New Church” does not refer to a church organization, but rather, to all people throughout the world who pattern their lives after genuine truths of religion. (See Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christianity, paragraph nos. 307-308. These paragraphs are outlined in Sourcebook Section D, The Fourth Commandment: Honor Your Father and Your Mother, the last two subsections, titled, Heavenly meaning and Final notes.)]

    • Support the goodness and truth of the Lord’s church.

    • Will to support it.

  • Love the Lord.

  • Exalt the Lord.

    • Have it constantly in mind to exalt the Lord.

    • Wish to exalt His name.

    • Will to exalt it.