This approach to life and relationships can seem maximalist and therefore not very realistic, but only at first glance. In fact, the apostle's words...
This approach to life and relationships can seem maximalist and therefore not very realistic, but only at first glance. In fact, the apostle's words are deeper than they appear at first, and therefore they are entirely realistic, provided, of course, that one looks at love not as emotions, dividing everyone around by the principle "like - dislike," "appealing - unappealing," but as relationships that do not depend on emotions or sympathies. In that case it becomes clear that relationships are precisely what condition everything else, everything included in the concept of the inner Torah. Indeed, the inner Torah is above all the aspirations, desires, and intentions that determine a person's spiritual life. These can either correspond to God's commandments, experienced by the person as an inner spiritual and moral imperative, or fail to correspond to them.
It is customary to think that physically we are what we eat, and psychically we are what we think and feel. Spiritually, however, we are what we desire and what we strive for. Jesus Himself says this briefly and simply: where your treasure is, there your heart is also. But desires, aspirations, and the intentions connected with them can exist in our heart in different ways.
They can be something self-sufficient, governing us and determining our attitude toward those around us and toward the world in general, while submitting to no one and nothing, including ourselves. Or they can be part of relationships and work to support and build them. In the first case, one can speak of love only in a certain sense and only up to a certain point, because often it is precisely our desires that destroy our relationships with other people when they become self-sufficient.
At times relationships can collapse because of the most ordinary and not very deep negative emotions, which take our will captive and force us to desire, or more precisely in this case not to desire, what in fact is important and dear to us but does not look that way when emotions gain the upper hand over us. In the second case, however, when relationships themselves are experienced by a person as true value, no emotions or desires in themselves become self-valued for him anymore. And then he can be at peace about keeping the commandments: with such an attitude toward one's neighbor, it is hard for a person to think of violating them, at least those that define his relationships with that very neighbor.
If you love, you no longer need to train yourself in polite words and polite smiles; you no longer need to restrain negative emotions toward another person: they simply are not there, and words and smiles arise on the tongue and on the face by themselves. Then following the inner Torah becomes completely natural and organic for a person. All the more if we are speaking of the love that unites the inhabitants of the Kingdom: here there is the fullness presupposed by the ideal of the living Torah, toward which in Gospel times every Christian strove as the goal of spiritual life, as that which would make him like Christ.
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13:8 From our duty to magistrates he passes on to general duties. To love one another - An eternal debt, which can never be sufficiently discharged; but yet if this be rightly performed, it discharges all the rest. For he that loveth another - As he ought. Hath fulfilled the whole law - Toward his neighbour.
13:9 If there be any other - More particular.Commandment - Toward our neighbour; as there are many in the law.It is summed up in this - So that if you was not thinking of it, yet if your heart was full of love, you would fulfil it.
13:10 Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law - For the same love which restrains from all evil, incites us to all good.