A company might have executives setting policy and strategy, engineers designing products, managers handling personnel and others handling various functions. They all do different things -- but if they're doing them with a shared underlying purpose, the company -- and the individuals in it -- will likely be successful. The Lord wants all human society to function in a similar way. We have different skills and individual loves, but if we all share a mutual love -- a love of serving others -- then society will function as one, will be a reflection of heaven and will be a good receptacle for the Lord's love. This can also happen within each of us, as we unify our talents and ideas around a central love. And in an abstract sense, it illustrates how a wide collection of varying ideas can be unified around a shared good intention. That is the kind of love pictured when “one” is used in the Bible, either as a specific number or in the sense of several people or objects “being one.” In more casual references -- when used to identify a specific person or object -- the meaning is relatively literal, and is connected to that person or object.

17. These approximate or general explanations of the preceding words, not being presented in a continuous series, will appear disconnected; and this must be the case when each word or phrase is expounded separately, and the internal sense is immediately joined to the literal sense, which is diverse from it, and each is viewed by itself. But nevertheless, with angels, who are in the internal sense, this is not so. They do not see the sense of the letter, nor do they know anything about it; they see only the internal sense; and because they see this in the light of heaven, they see it in such a series and connection, and also in such abundance and thence in such wisdom, as cannot be expressed and described in human words. The ideas of angels, which are spiritual, also conjoin all things in a wonderful manner, and comprehend more than man can include or express in his ideas, which are natural, even as to a thousandth part thereof.