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)

27. These things have been presented so that some idea about the Divine Human from the Father may be obtained - namely, that the Divine clothed itself with the Human according to Divine order from first things to last. Wherefore there was Divine order in the Human Itself. Consequently, it thus instills all things or is everywhere omnipresent.

4464. 'Only on this [condition] will we consent to you: If you will be as we are' means acceptance of their semblance of religion. This is clear from the meaning of 'consenting' as acceptance, and from the meaning of 'being as they are' as being interested only in external things and not in internal ones, for they would in that case have been as they were, see just above in 4459. There it was shown - in 4459 - what an interest only in external things is and what an interest in internal ones is. Here the reason why a person ought to be interested in internal ones is going to be stated. Anyone who reflects may see that man has communication with heaven by means of internal things, for the whole of heaven dwells within internal things. Unless a person is in heaven as regards his thoughts and affections, that is, as regards the thoughts in his understanding and the affections in his will, he cannot go to heaven after death, since he has no communication with it at all. During his lifetime a person secures that communication by means of truths in his understanding and goods in his will, and unless he secures it then he cannot do so subsequently, since his mind cannot be opened after death to interior things if it has not been opened to them during his lifetime.

[2] Man is not immediately conscious of the fact that a spiritual sphere surrounds him, the nature of which is determined by the life of his affections. That sphere the angels are able to perceive more clearly than any aroma reaching the keenest sense of smell in the world. If in his life he has been interested only in external things, that is to say, in the pleasures that are gained from hatred against the neighbour, from consequent revenge and cruelty, from committing adultery, from self-aggrandizement and consequent contempt for others, from unseen acts of robbery, from avarice, from deceit, and from luxuriousness, and other vices like these, the spiritual sphere which surrounds him is as offensive as the aroma in the world coming from dead bodies, dung, stinking refuse, and other things such as these. Anyone who has been leading a life like this takes that sphere with him after death; and being entirely surrounded by that sphere he cannot exist anywhere else than in hell where such spheres belong. Concerning spheres in the next life and their origins, see 1048, 1053, 1316, 1504-1519, 1695, 2401, 2489.

[3] People however who are interested in internal things - that is to say, who have taken delight in expressing good-will and charity towards the neighbour, and most of all who have found blessedness in love to the Lord - have a pleasing and lovely sphere surrounding them, which is the heavenly sphere itself; and for that reason they are in heaven. All the spheres which are perceived in the next life have their origin in the loves and in the affections deriving from those loves which have governed them. Such spheres have their origins as a consequence in their life, for their loves and affections derived from these loves constitute their life itself. And because they have their origins in their loves and affections derived from these they have their origins in the intentions and the ends in view which cause a person to will and to act in the way he does. For everyone has as his end in view that which he loves, and therefore a person's ends determine what his life is and constitute the essential nature of it; and this is the main source of the sphere around him. That sphere is perceived most perfectly in heaven the reason being that the sphere emanating from ends in view exists throughout the whole of heaven. These considerations show what someone is like whose interest is in internal things and what someone is like whose interest is in external ones, and why a person ought not to be interested only in external things but to be interested in internal ones also.

[4] But someone who is interested only in external things pays no attention to internal ones - no matter how skillful he may be in the conduct of public affairs and no matter how great a reputation he has earned for being learned - because he is the kind of person who does not believe in the existence of anything which he does not see with his eyes or feel by touch, and therefore does not believe in heaven or in hell. And if he were told that he was going to enter the next life immediately after death, where he will see, hear, speak, and enjoy a sense of touch more perfectly than when in the body he would reject it as an absurdity or sheer fantasy, when in actual fact that happens to be the truth. His reaction would be the same if anyone were to tell him that the soul or spirit which lives after death is the real person and not the body which he carries around in the world.

[5] From this it follows that those who are interested only in external things pay no attention at all to what is said concerning internal things, when yet it is these that make people blessed and happy in the kingdom which they are going to enter and in which they are going to live for ever. Such unbelief is present in most Christians, as I have been allowed to know from those to whom I have spoken who have entered the next life from the Christian world. For in the next life they are not able to conceal what they have thought since thoughts are laid completely bare there; nor are they able to conceal what ends they have had in view, that is, what they have loved, for this reveals itself through the sphere surrounding them.