444. When our moral life is also spiritual, it is a life of goodwill, because the practices involved in a moral life and in a life of goodwill are the same. Goodwill is wishing our neighbors well and therefore treating them well. This is also a moral way of life. The following statement by the Lord is a spiritual law:

All things whatever that you want people to do for you, do likewise for them. This is the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:12)

This same law is universally applicable to a moral life as well. But listing all the practices related to goodwill and comparing them with the practices related to a moral life would require many pages. Just take six commandments from the second tablet of the Ten Commandments for an illustration - it is clear to everyone that they are principles for a moral life. (As for their containing all aspects of loving our neighbor, see 329, 330, and 331 above.)

The following statement in Paul makes it clear that goodwill fulfills all the commandments:

Love each other, for those who love others have fulfilled the law. The commandments that you are not to commit adultery, you are not to kill, you are not to steal, you are not to bear false witness, you are not to covet, and anything else that has been commanded, are included in the following saying: "You are to love your neighbor as yourself. " Goodwill does not do evil to its neighbor. Goodwill is the fullness of the law. (Romans 13:8-10)

People who think only with their outer selves cannot help being astounded that the seven commandments on the second tablet were proclaimed by Jehovah on Mount Sinai in such a miraculous way, given that these same rules were legal principles of civic justice in all the countries on earth, including Egypt, where the children of Israel had just come from. No country can survive without these rules.

The reason why Jehovah proclaimed them, however, and wrote them with his own finger on tablets of stone was that they are rules not only for all civic communities and therefore rules for a moral earthly life, they are also rules for all heavenly communities and therefore rules for a moral spiritual life. Acting against these rules then is acting not only against other people but also against God.