“ Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
”
Though the fulfilling of the law is the practical form love will take, and the neglect of it is the conviction of lovelessness; though it is the mode in which a man’s will must begin at once to be love to his neighbor, yet, that our Lord meant by the love of our neighbor, not the fulfilling of the law towards him, but that condition of being which results in the fulfilling of the law and more, is clear from his story of the good Samaritan. “Who is my neighbor?” asked the lawyer. And the Lord taught him that everyone for whom he could do anything was his neighbor. Which of the inhibitions of the law is illustrated in the tale? Not one. The love that is more than law, and renders its breach impossible, lives in the endless story, coming out in tenderness and active loving-kindness.
A man, beginning to try to love his neighbor, finds that this can no more be reached in itself, by the man’s will, than the law could be so reached. As a man cannot keep the law without first rising into the love of his neighbor, so he cannot love his neighbor without first rising higher still. It is the man fulfilled of God from whom he came and by whom he is, who alone can as himself love his neighbor who came from God too and is by God too. In God alone can man meet man. When the mind and life of Christ course through the man who has become a part of his body, then the love of his brothers is there as conscious life. From Christ through our neighbors comes the life that makes us a part of his body.
Commentary
by Dale Darling
We confuse reality.
When lists of do this and don't do that lead us out of the Way, we depart Reality.
How easy it is to imagine, or feel, just or a justifier, by following the traditions imposed by man.
Reality is being of the I AM. In Christ, by grace. Not by following steps to perfection, or to balance the Christian life, or to manipulate self into a comfortable place of ease, health, and wealth based on ambition and accumulation.
God is love.
In which Love is all.
Reality is living in the divine condition.