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.

2001. The name 'God' is used because God Shaddai whom Abram worshipped represents the Lord, and also because truth that was to be united to good is the subject. This is evident from what has been stated already. In the Word the Lord is sometimes called Jehovah, sometimes Jehovah God, also the Lord Jehovih, and sometimes God; and there is always a hidden reason for this in the internal sense. When love or good is the subject, or the celestial Church, the name JEHOVAH is used, but when faith or truth is the subject, or the spiritual Church, GOD is used. This is invariably so, the reason being that the Lord's actual Being (Esse) consists of love, and the Being (Esse) emanating from it consists of faith, 709, 732. Here therefore God is used because the subject is truth that was to be united to good. A second reason here is that the Lord was willing to be represented as the god Shaddai, whom Abram worshipped. This is why the name God is retained in what follows, for in this chapter the name Jehovah is mentioned only once but God several times, as in verses 7-8, 15, 18-19, 22-23.