Non-ulterior love of God and the neighbor in the Word

 One begins with a favorite passage. In Arcana Coelestia we read:

"The delight itself which is in the love of doing what is good without any end of recompense, is the reward which remains to eternity; for every affection of love remains inscribed on the life. Into this there is insinuated by the Lord heaven and eternal happiness" (9984).

It is the will of our Father in Heaven that we should delight in doing good for goodness' sake without ulteriority. This He consistently taught in the Hebrew Testament, the Greek Testament, and the Latin Testament. Here it is in the Greek:

"But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil" (Luke 6:35).

One can personally confirm the kindness which accompanied His presence with one who did not deserve it and had been and was living an evil life. There was no question that He meant business and expected one's life to change dramatically, but there was not a speck of anger, not a trace of wrath. 

There was nothing but the most incredible love I had ever met with, and it is that love which we receive in our hearts and then manifest in our deeds, including the diligent performance of our jobs and any other good deeds which we happen to do.

He does not want people to do good in order to be seen doing good, or thought saintly, or otherwise to take advantage. He does not want people to paste a sad, pious expression on their countenances and hold an icon of a guy with a beard as though this really accomplished something:

"Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward" (Matthew 6:16). 

When you fast, which does not refer to avoidance of eating but to fasting from sin that one's flesh craves to commit, your primary goal should be to clean up sufficiently to properly receive the love of God and the neighbor, or charity, in your heart. Engaging in religious acts for any other reason than to shun sin and error, cultivate love and truth, and facilitate these matters with others is abominable. 

God further says: 

"Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 6:1). 

These alms literally refer to what modern people call charity, which involves giving to causes and the poor; but spiritually these alms involve all the good that we do, which should be done for the sake of a good job and not to be seen.

If we labor to be seen doing good, like those people who make certain I see them emptying the trash once so as to curry favor, then we do not obtain that eternal reward which is delight in well doing for its own sake; and which is the eternal reward of all who dwell in Heaven.

In the quote with which we began, wherein doing good for goodness' sake is identified as the reward that lasts forever, we also read: 

"Into this there is insinuated by the Lord heaven and eternal happiness" (9984).

You see, spiritual truth is a container; we learn spiritual truths in order that the love and wisdom of God may dwell with us. We learn divine truth, or the doctrine of the Church, in order to become a more hospitable environment for charity and the supportive ideation thereof.

God gets annoyed with fake religious people who appear very pious and saintly in people's sight because they destroy the vessels that He designed to contain His love and wisdom:

"For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water" (Jeremiah 2:13).

Fake religious people are like someone who bulldozes the runway of the airport and the conning tower thereof and replaces these with a bunch of a palm leaf and coconut shell mockups; and then expects the planes not to crash and, indeed, even to land.

It is when people absorb pure teaching about non-ulterior love, charity, and its relation to every aspect of the Word -- "all the law and all the prophets hang from these two commandments", to love God and the neighbor -- that they optimize themselves for receiving divine love and wisdom.

For in that case, God's plane has a proper airstrip and conning tower in place wherewith to land. Or again, it is as though He were a radio transmission and had been received by a proper antenna; rather than a wooden pole carved with the faces of bearded men with hangdog expressions. 

As in the Latin Testament and the Greek, so has our Father made His will that we should manifest non-ulterior love clear in the Hebrew Testament. It is simply more cryptic, because the Testaments are less and less clear the further back in time one goes; for humankind was not ready for more sophisticated truth at that time.

Here it is in the Hebrew Testament:

"1 Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people: for thou hast gone a whoring from thy God, thou hast loved a reward upon every cornfloor. 2 The floor and the winepress shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail in her" (Hosea 9:1-2).

To go a whoring from thy God means to falsify the Word, in other words to replace what God actually said -- which pours fertilizer on charity and serves as a container for His love -- with some garbage that does not benefit anyone at all except those weevils in the flour who want to look religious without being so from the heart. Verily, they have their reward.

But they shall not be fed by such a reward, which merely involves looking good before humankind -- who tend to be easily impressed by flowing robes and three-piece suits -- and they will cease to understand divine truth. 

Here it is again in the Hebrew Testament:

" The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? none evil can come upon us" (Micah 3:11).

Now, it is not wrong to make money off of teaching the Gospel per se. Paul confirms this in 1 Corinthians 9:14. The spiritual meaning of these words involves the same kinds of things to which Jesus referred in the Sermon on the Mount as being the opposite of asking nothing in return.

In other words, whether people make money off of teaching the Gospel or not, they should not be teaching it for the sake of personal advantage and other ulterior motivations.

But people who pretend to be religious, not manifesting non-ulterior love and thus genuinely caring about love of God and the neighbor from the heart, will say: "Is not the LORD among us? none evil can come upon us".

The Word refers to charity and its opposites in quite various ways. We will probably get into the meaning of Abel as charity next week, but for now one will only mention it in passing. And as for the opposites of charity, we have seen it expressed as loving a reward. It can also be expressing as loving gifts or as charging usury. Why usury? Because usury involves receiving interest on money that has been lent, and to expect personal advantage over and beyond the delight of doing good and one's duty thus charges interest spiritually-speaking. 

Let us when reading the Word ever ask: what does this passage have to do with manifesting non-ulterior love of God and the neighbor, charity? And let us practice it to the extent that we can in our lives, because it is why we are alive: to practice it and to delight in it.

Charity is not merely giving to causes, as Paul confirms: 

"And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:30).

No, charity is much, much for than that. It is the presence of God in one's heart and one's deeds and all duty done well for its own sake. 

Let us optimize our receipt of love and wisdom from God, never forgetting that it is the very point of true religion. All else is dross.

If you want to support this ministry, then you can do that as simply as posting the following somewhere that people can see it:

"The delight itself which is in the love of doing what is good without any end of recompense is the reward which remains to eternity". 

Amen!