There is only one kind of love, the love of God, who is unique, united in one. I must love God and my individual neighbor with the same unique, pure, undivided love with which God loves me.
What I will write today is very simple—so simple that many people will not be able to accept it.
There is only one kind of love. The ability to love is something that God has given us. All love, at least true love, the genuine article, is both a picture of God’s love for us and our response to it. Even those who do not know God inwardly recognize His divine nature, Romans 1:20, which includes His love, and respond to His love. Our love is our response. “We love because he loved us first.” 1 John 4:19 (ASV).
But God is the only God, one, united in one. And love is the nature of God. “He who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4:8. Therefore, God cannot be composed of many separate varieties of love, but only of a single love, which defines Him.
For this reason, when Jesus quoted the Shema, the most important commandment in the Law, He included both the statement that God is unique and the commandment that I must love God with my whole being. That is, I must love God with the same unique, pure and undivided love with which God loves me.
Jesus then quoted a second commandment of the Law that is included in the first commandment. I must love my neighbor as myself. It does not say that I should love humanity in the abstract, my country, my race, my tribe, my family, or my community.
It says that I must love my neighbor, the individual who has my attention at this moment, with the same unique, pure and undivided love with which I must love God. This commandment is, in fact, exactly the same as the first, and requires the same love that comes from God alone.
And the way I can tell if I’m showing this love to my neighbor is by asking if I’m loving them the same way I love myself. This is very difficult, but it is what God commands me.
Index to the New Series / Índice de la nueva serie
Next: Love Never Behaves Inappropriately, a personal aside
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I must suggest that there is love which is according to God, and then there are the loves of men, loves of this world, loves all of which do not have happy endings.