On Loving Our Neighbor — and Ourselves (Rewritten)

We now turn to a topic that naturally follows from the previous post: love for our neighbor, and more broadly, love for all created beings. The central idea is this: if our love for God is pure, unselfish, and rightly placed above everything else, then every other form of love will fall into its proper place beneath it. 

When we love God in the highest and fullest sense, all other loves become secondary and take their direction from that primary love. In that case, we come to share God’s own way of loving. We begin to care about what God cares about. Our love flows along the same path as God's love. Whatever God values — whether great or small, material or spiritual — will matter to us in proportion to how well we perceive it and how capable we are of loving it.

Seen this way, the world itself takes on a new meaning. Remembering the Creator gives a sacred quality to everything He has made. Forests, rivers, mountains, the sky, the ocean — all begin to reflect something of God’s wisdom and goodness. Beauty in creation no longer stands alone; it points beyond itself. Even the smallest creatures — the birds, the animals on the hills, the insects buzzing at our feet — remind us of the One who “does all things well.” If God takes an interest in what He has made, we cannot be indifferent to it either.

As we move up from the natural world to human beings — creatures with reason and moral awareness, people who share our humanity and often our family ties — the same principle applies. We do not deny natural affection. Of course we feel it. But whether our love arises from family bonds or from recognizing someone’s admirable qualities, it must remain governed by our love for God.

Put simply, we love everything in God and for God.

To love something in God means loving it because it is God’s work, reflects God's image, and matters to God. To love something for God means that whatever we desire or do for it is done out of love for God, for God's honor, and in line with God's will. This is not a clever theological trick or an abstract theory. It is a basic spiritual law—a necessary bond between the Creator and the creature. When love does not begin and end in God, the creature drifts away from Him and loses the life that comes from union with Him.

This idea is powerfully expressed in William Law’s Spirit of Prayer.

"But what is loving any creature only IN and FOR God? It is when we love it only; as it is God's work, image and delight; when we love it merely as it is God's, and belongs to Him. This is loving it IN God. And when all that we wish, intend or do to it, is done from a love of God, for the honor of God, and in conformity to the will of God. This is loving it FOR God. This is the ONE LOVE that is, and must be the spirit of all creatures, that live united to God. Now this is no speculative refinement or fine spun fiction of the brain; but the simple truth, A FIRST LAW OF NATURE and a necessary bond of union between God and the creature. The creature is not in God, is a stranger to him, has lost the life of God in itself, whenever its love does not thus begin and end in God." — William Law (1686-1761), Spirit of Prayer, Pt. I, Ch. 2. 

Under this great law of supreme love for God, we learn not only how to love others rightly, but also how to love ourselves rightly. God intends for us to seek our own happiness. He created us that way and commands it. But what is our true happiness?

It is loving God with our whole heart and holding every other love in proper subordination to that supreme love. It is allowing God to be the standard by which all other desires are measured. Our happiness lies in being drawn away from the outer edges of self-centered living and back toward the center — toward God Himself. It is the restoration of our broken union with God, the experience of being part of the fullness of divine life.

In this sense, we truly love ourselves — not because we seek something apart from God, but because God made us, cares for us, and desires our good. We value both our bodies and our souls because they are God's creation, meant to reflect God's image and to be dwelling places of God's Spirit. We cannot rightly desire anything for ourselves that conflicts with God’s will or glory. When love is ordered this way, every lesser love — whether directed toward ourselves or others — ultimately becomes an expression of love for God.

(1) Loving Others Becomes Natural

One important result of this view is that loving our neighbors “as ourselves” becomes far easier than we might expect. We love ourselves only insofar as our love is guided by love for God. That means we seek nothing for ourselves except what contributes to God’s glory in us.

Since the love of neighbor is measured by the love of self, and since both are governed by the same divine standard, they naturally align. Both are streams flowing from the same source. When the heart is full of love for God, love for others flows out freely and effortlessly, just as water flows downhill from a mountain lake. There is no need to strain or force it. When circumstances arise, the heart simply opens, and love pours out.

This idea appears repeatedly in the writings of figures such as Augustine, Johannes Tauler, and François Fénelon, and has been supported by many other respected spiritual writers as well. The truest way to love our neighbor, they argue, is to love them in and for God — and we never love them more purely or fully than when we do.

(2) Love Adapts to Real Life

Love that flows from this divine source is remarkably flexible. It meets people where they are. It leads us into the homes of the poor and the rooms of the sick. It shares in others’ suffering and rejoices in their comfort as naturally as it would in our own.

As Fénelon explains, souls that are no longer centered on themselves — like the saints in heaven — rejoice just as much in blessings given to others as in blessings given to themselves. The personal “me” fades away. Love no longer revolves around self-interest. God becomes everything. All joy flows from loving God, delighting in God's grace, and rejoicing in the good God brings to others. He writes:

"Such souls as are really detached from themselves, like the saints in heaven, regard the mercies distributed to others, with the same complacency as those they receive themselves; for, esteeming themselves as nothing, they love the good pleasure of God, the riches of his grace, and the glory he derives from the sanctification of others, as much as that which He derives from them. All is then equal, for the personal self or ME is lost. The ME is no more ME than another person. It is God alone, that is ALL IN ALL. It is God, whom they love and admire; and who, in the exercise of this disinterested or pure love, causes all the joy of their hearts." 

(3) Even Loving Our Enemies Becomes Possible

This understanding also explains how we can obey Christ’s command to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who mistreat us. On purely human terms, this seems practically impossible. But when love is rooted in God, it becomes possible — even natural.

As Francis de Sales observed, 

"We cannot love God as we ought, without adopting his sentiments and LOVING WHAT HE LOVES." 

We cannot truly love God without learning to love what God loves. And God loves even those who reject Him. God loved us when we were His enemies. God loved the world enough to give His Son for it. If we share God's spirit, we will love the same way.

When we love only what God loves and hate only what He hates, personal injury no longer blocks love. No matter how unjust or cruel someone’s behavior may be, the simple fact that God loves them removes the obstacle and opens the heart.

Love That Endures

Finally, love grounded in God has a strength and consistency that no other love can match. Because it rests on God’s unchanging will rather than on the unreliable behavior of people, it does not rise and fall with circumstances. It continues steadily, whether it is returned or not. In this way, it reflects — however imperfectly — the constancy of the divine nature itself.

 

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This is a revision of Part 1, Chapter 13 of Thomas C. Upham's book The Interior or Hidden Life (2nd edition 1844), written with the assistance of Microslop CoPilot. The original chapter can be found here: On the Love of our Neighbor and of ourselves.