Print this page

The Commandment of Excellence

Love your neighbor as yourself Love your neighbor as yourself

The teaching of Jesus: "Love your neighbor as yourself", Mark 12:31; is known as the commandment of love, Agape or love of charity. The commandment is equivalent to the phrase "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect"  Matthew 5:48.
Love your neighbor as yourself is the love perfected by the nature of the good, is the love proyected to the whole creation of God, is to expand our love to the others, in the good love our neighbor matters.  In consecuence our neighbor becomes our brother. From there the phrase: Jesus loves you.
The good is expansive, edifyng and consequently the good love. This love is the opposite to the self-love.
In metaphysics, a perfection is that which can not be superated or completed in its own genre. Example: the equity completes the justice, the counsel complete the prudence.
The love of charity can not be completed and therefore it is an excellence, a perfection, a spiritual gift. This commandment can be interpretated as the commandment of excellence, be excellent as God is excellent, be perfect as God is perfect expression of Matthew 5:48.
This form of love differs from the love of friendship (philia) and love of lovers (eros) because it is in direct relationship with the eternal life, with the spiritual gift of knowledge and perseverance
The Old Law, the Ten Commandments, express the ethic and moral of the ancient world, but The Old Law has a weak point: when the truth and the life are opposed a commandment must be violated.
The Old Law is unattainable. That is why Christ left the Old Law for this new commandment. This is the commandment that makes us like God and gives us the gift of his grace.

16 comments

StartPrev12NextEnd