39. From this it may be evident that the Word is the Word itself in its sense of the Letter, for within this there reside spirit and life; the spiritual sense is its spirit, and the celestial sense is its life. This is meant by what the Lord says:
The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. John vi 63.
The Lord spoke His words before the world, and in the natural sense. The spiritual and celestial senses are not the Word, without the natural sense, which is the sense of the Letter; for they are like spirit and life without a body; and they are, as has been said above in No. 33, like a palace which has no foundation.
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