[2] The reason why 'driving out', when it has reference to evils and falsities, means removal is that falsities and evils are not driven out of a person but removed. Anyone who does not know the true nature of human deliverance from evils and falsities, which is the forgiveness of sins, thinks that sins are wiped out when they are said to have been forgiven. The literal sense of the Word which speaks several times in that kind of way leads people to think so. As a result of this the minds of very many people have been taken over by the erroneous idea that they are righteous and pure after they have received absolution. But they have no knowledge whatever of the true nature of the forgiveness of sins. They do not know that no one is purified from sins; rather people are withheld from them by the Lord when they are such that they can be maintained in goodness and truth, and they can be maintained in goodness and truth when they have been regenerated, because then they have acquired the life of the good of charity and of the truth of faith. All that a person thinks, intends, says, and does from earliest childhood enters into the composition of his life. Those things cannot be banished, only removed; and when they are removed it seems as though the person is without sins, because they have been removed, see 8393, 8988 (end), 9014. The Word speaks in keeping with the appearance that a person thinks and does what is good and true unaided, by himself (the reality being that he does so not by himself but with the Lord's aid) when it says that he is free from sins, and also is righteous, as for instance in Isaiah,

Though your sins are like scarlet, they will be as white as snow. Though they are as red as crimson,^a they will be as wool. Isa 1:18.

[3] The like is said many times elsewhere. The state of souls in the next life enables anyone to know that all this is true. All people take with them from this world into the next all that composes their life, that is, whatever they have thought, intended, spoken, or done, also indeed whatever they have seen or heard from early childhood right through to the last phase of their life in the world; not even the smallest detail of any of this is lacking, 2474. Those who have led a life of faith and charity while in the world can be withheld from evils and maintained in good, and so can be raised to heaven. Those however who have not led a life of faith and charity while in the world but a life of self-love and love of the world sink down to hell because they cannot be withheld from evils or maintained in good. From all this it is evident why it is that 'driving out', when it refers to what happens to falsities and evils, means removal. In this verse and the next that removal is the subject in the internal sense; there the arcana of it are disclosed.

Notes