The Divine needs to connect with what's been created, especially to what is human. Since the Divine Itself is, in its essence, beyond human comprehension, we can see and know it from its visible forms which are the Word, Jesus Christ, the created universe, and even the the human mind and body. These and many other things express the Divine Human.

To understand this further, imagine that you are completely paralyzed, to the point that you can’t make a sound or even move your eyes or the muscles of your face. Someone you love walks up to you. Inside, you feel a surge of affection. But how can you show it? You can’t say it, can’t smile, can’t even form an expression in your eyes. It can’t be done; you have no communication at all.

To be expressed, then, love needs a vessel, something capable of communication. That vessel is what Swedenborg calls the “human.”

For us, in the physical world, that “human” is in the form of our physical bodies. Through them we can smile, laugh, speak, hug, kiss, write - and can also strike out, shout in anger and criticize. Our bodies are the vessels that let us share what’s inside with the people around us. Through our bodies we also see, hear and feel the things inside others. They are the mode through which we interact.

But imagine if you could read minds, and could allow your mind to be read by others. You would no longer need your body as a vessel, but the things you shared would still be human; they would be human thoughts, human feelings, human ideas, still distinctly your own and reflective of the kind of person you are. You’d still have a “human,” but it would be your mind instead of your body.

That can give us some idea of what the Lord’s “human” is: it is the vessel through which we can receive His love and His guidance. It’s not something physical, like our human bodies, but is spiritual, as our minds are spiritual. And it puts His love into feelings, images and ideas, just as our minds do.

Put that way, it’s easy to see that the Lord’s humanity has always been, and was indeed an agent of creation: in creating the universe, the Lord used his human to give form to His love, forms that would be separate from Him, forms that He could love. It’s also easy to see that His humanity will always be: He is love itself, and that love will always need a vessel.

The Lord’s “human” also fills another great need. We are finite; the Lord is infinite. We live in a world of dead physical matter; the Lord is life itself. We are born into selfish loves; the Lord loves us infinitely. We live in time and space and can only think in terms of time and space; the Lord is outside of time and space, uncontained and uncontainable. For these and many other reasons the Lord, in His essence, is inconceivable to us; we have no mental tools to form an idea of the infinite. We can, however, think of the Lord as a human, and can thus worship him in the form of His divine human. By relating his love to us, his humanity makes it possible for us to relate to Him.

That leaves one great question: what about Jesus? He was human, but also kind of God, too. How does that relate to the idea of the divine human?

The answer lies in how we receive what the Lord gives us, and how that reception has changed over the millennia.

The Lord’s love is conveyed to us through the divine human in the form of what Swedenborg calls “divine truth,” which is essentially the Lord’s thoughts, His ideas. These thoughts are, of course, all about love, and are filled to overflowing with His love.

The earliest people, those of what Swedenborg calls the “Most Ancient Church,” could receive those thoughts directly, and accept the love in them directly. From this they were pure and innocent to a degree we can barely imagine, with wisdom and insight that sprang from the love they shared.

As people drew away from the Lord, though, their ability to accept the love contained within the divine truth began to degrade. In what Swedenborg calls the “Ancient Church” people received it in the form of love of one another, and accessed it through powerfully symbolic stories and the symbolism of nature. Finally, with the Children of Israel, the love and the truth were almost completely separated, with the Lord’s ideas contained within ritual, but His inspiration to be good operating in a disconnected way. Ultimately those people grew so evil that the desire for good was in danger of being choked off forever.

So the Lord rendered his “human” into physical flesh, born as a child to the virgin Mary. As always, that human was a vessel for the Lord’s love, but it was a vessel that could share divine truth in a tangible way. Swedenborg’s works say that Jesus spent his life stripping away His mortal aspects by battling temptations, and was a form of divine truth when He began His ministry. During His ministry he stripped away his mortal loves, until in the final temptation on the cross he was fully reunited with the divine love that was His soul. In His ministry, then, he shared His deepest ideas, and in His death He shared the love that formed and filled those ideas. It was enough to save humankind forever.

In doing this the Lord also changed His relationship with us. He gave us deeper truths about how to be loving, and taught us that love is more important than ritual. He also opened for us the idea that the Bible is full of deeper and richer meanings: that it is itself a form of divine truth. With these tools we now have the ability to use the Lord’s ideas as a key to accept His love. By knowing what’s right, knowing what the Lord teaches, we can compel ourselves to act in loving ways even if we don’t feel the love, and the Lord will use that to reform us so that we come to actually love what is good.

So the Divine Human is still a vessel for the Lord’s love, as it has always been. It’s a vessel that has adapted according to our needs and the paths the Lord can use to draw us toward heaven.

(References: Apocalypse Explained 26, 151; Apocalypse Revealed 613; Arcana Coelestia 2716, 3061 [2-3], 4180 [5-6], 4687 [2-3], 4724 [2-4], 4735 [2-3], 6280 [1-6], 6804 [4], 6831, 7211, 9303, 10067 [3], 10267, 10356; Divine Love and Wisdom 14-17-18-22, 52, 285; Heaven and Hell 80, 101; On the Athanasian Creed 27, 62, 209)

151. These things saith the Son of man, signifies the Lord in respect to the Divine Human, from which is that essential of the church. This is evident from the signification of "the Son of man," as being the Lord in respect to the Divine Human, and in respect to Divine truth, since Divine truth proceeds from Him (See above, n. 63); also as being that from which is that essential of the church, namely, the opening of the internal or spiritual man, and the conjunction thereof with the external, since everything of the church with man is from the Lord's Divine Human. For everything of love and faith, which two constitute the church, proceeds from the Lord's Divine Human, and not immediately from the Divine Itself; for what proceeds immediately from His Divine Itself, does not fall into any thought and affection of man, nor consequently into faith and love, because it is far above them. This can be seen from the fact that man is not able to think of the Divine Itself apart from the human form, except as he thinks of nature, as it were, in things least. Thought that is not determined to a certain figure is diffused in every direction, and what is diffused is dissipated. This has been given me to know most especially from those in the other life who are from the Christian world, who have thought only of the Father, and not of the Lord, that they make nature in its minutest parts their God, and finally fall away from all idea of God, consequently from the idea and faith in anything of heaven and the church.

[2] It is otherwise with those who have thought of God under the human form; these have all their ideas determined to the Divine, nor do their thoughts, like the thoughts of those mentioned before, wander in every direction. And as the Divine under the Human form, is the Lord's Divine Human, therefore the Lord bends and determines their thoughts and affections to Himself. This, because it is the primary truth of the church, unceasingly flows in out of heaven with man; consequently it is, as it were, implanted in everyone to think of the Divine under the human form, and thus to see His Divine inwardly in himself, with the exception of such as have extinguished in themselves this implanted thought (See in the work on Heaven and Hell 82). From this the reason can also be seen, why all men, whatsoever after death, when they become spirits, turn themselves to their own loves, and thus why those who have worshiped the Divine under the human form turn themselves to the Lord, who appears to them as a sun above the heavens. But those who have not worshiped the Divine under the human form, turn themselves to the loves of their natural man, all of which have reference to the loves of self and the world, thus turning backwards from the Lord; and turning oneself backwards from the Lord is turning towards hell. (That all in the spiritual world turn themselves to their own loves, see in the work on Heaven and Hell 17, 123, 142-145, 151, 153, 255, 272, 510, 548, 552, 561).

[3] All who lived in ancient times and worshiped the Divine saw the Divine in thought under the human form, and hardly anyone thought of an invisible Divine; and the Divine under the human form was even then the Divine Human. But as this Divine Human was the Divine of the Lord in the heavens and passing through the heavens, when at length heaven became enfeebled, because men, of whom heaven is made up, from internal successively became external and thus natural, therefore it pleased the Divine Itself to put on a human, and to glorify it, or make it Divine, that thus from Himself He might affect all, both those who are in the spiritual world and those who are in the natural world, and might save those who acknowledge and worship His Divine in the Human.

[4] This is clearly stated in many passages in the Old Testament Prophets, as well as in the Evangelists; of these I will cite only the following in John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that hath been made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And that Light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not. It was the true Light, which lighteth every man coming into the world. He was in the world, but the world acknowledged Him not. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory (John 1:1-14).

It is plainly evident that the Lord in respect to the Human is here meant by "the Word," for it is said, "the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory." It is also evident that the Lord made His Human to be Divine, for it is said, "the Word was with God and God was the Word, and this became flesh," that is, a man. And since all Divine truth proceeds from the Lord's Divine Human, and this is His Divine in the heavens, therefore by "the Word" is also signified Divine truth; and thence He is said to be "the Light which lighted every man coming into the world." Moreover, "light" is Divine truth; and because men from being internal became so external or natural as no longer to acknowledge Divine truth or the Lord, therefore it is said that "the darkness apprehended not the light," and that "the world acknowledged Him not." (That the Word is the Lord in respect to the Divine Human and Divine truth proceeding therefrom, see The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem 263, 304. That "light" is Divine truth, and "darkness" the falsities in which those are who are not in the light, see in the work on Heaven and Hell 126-140, 275.)

[5] That they who acknowledge the Lord and worship Him from love and faith, and are not in the love of self and the love of the world, are regenerated and saved, is also taught in these words in John:

As many as received Him, to them gave He power to be children of God, even to them that believe in His name; which were born, not of bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:12, 13).

Here "of bloods" means such as destroy love and charity. "The will of the flesh" is every evil from the love of self and love of the world, also man's will-proprium, which in itself is nothing but evil; "the will of man" is falsity thence that comes from that will-proprium. That those who are not in these loves receive the Lord and are regenerated and saved, is meant by its being said that those who "believe in His name become children of God," and are "born of God."

(That to "believe in the Lord's name" is to acknowledge His Divine Human and to receive love and faith from Him, see above. n. 102, 135.

That "bloods" are the things that destroy love and charity, see Arcana Coelestia 4735, 5476, 9127; that "flesh" is man's will-proprium, which in itself is nothing but evil, n. 210, 215, 731, 874-876, 987, 1047, 2307, 2308, 3518, 3701, 3812, 4328, 8480, 8550, 10283, 10284, 10286, 10732; and that man's proprium is the love of self and the love of the world, n. 694, 731, 4317, 5660.

That "man" [vir] is the intellectual, and therefore truth or falsity, since the intellectual is of the one or the other, see n. 3134, 3309, 9007.

Thus "the will of man" [viri] is the intelligence-proprium, which, when it exists from the will-proprium [which in itself is nothing but evil], is nothing but falsity, for where evil is in the will there is falsity in the understanding.

That to be "born of God" is to be regenerated by the Lord, see The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem 173-184.

Moreover, that all in the universe, from influx out of heaven and from revelation, worship the Divine in the human form, see Earths in the Universe 98, 121, 141, 154, 158, 159, 169; likewise all angels of the higher heavens, see in the work on Heaven and Hell 78-86.)

[6] From this it can now be seen that everything of the church, thus also everything of heaven with men, is from the Lord's Divine Human. For this reason "the Son of man," who is the Divine Human, is described in the first chapter of Revelation by various representatives; and from that description the introductory sentences to each of the churches are taken (as may be seen above, n. 113, and what is said to this church in particular treats of this chief essential of the church, namely, the conjunction of the internal and external, or the regeneration of the man of the church; for it is said to the angel of this church, "These things saith the Son of God, that hath His eyes as a flame of fire."