6818. EXODUS CHAPTER 3.

TEACHINGS ABOUT CHARITY

More needs to be stated regarding the neighbour, for unless one is aware of what is meant by the neighbour one cannot know how charity should be exercised. In the preliminary section to the previous chapter it was stated that each individual person is the neighbour, yet no one person in the same way as another, and that one governed by good is pre-eminently the neighbour, which means that the good present with a person is what one should love. For when one loves good one loves the Lord since the Lord is the One from whom Good comes, who is present within Good, and who is Good itself.

6823. The Lord's kingdom is the neighbour in a higher degree than the Church in which anyone is born, for the Lord's kingdom is made up of all those who are governed by good both on earth and in heaven. This means that the Lord's kingdom consists in good, which includes all kinds of good in their entirety. When this good is loved so are individual persons who are governed by good. Thus the whole, that is, all good in its entirety, constitutes the neighbour in the first degree. It constitutes the Grand Man, which was the subject at the ends of quite a number of chapters, the Man who is an image representative of the Lord Himself. This Man, which is the Lord's kingdom, is loved when from deepest affection good is done to those who are by means of that Man made truly human by the Lord, thus those among whom the Lord's kingdom is established.