Pure Love vs. Selfish Love (Rewritten).

Up to now, we tried to show that evangelical holiness is essentially the same thing as perfect love. 

Scripture makes this plain in the great commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself.” The moment a person begins to love, holiness begins. But holiness is complete only when love has fully overcome selfishness — when a person loves with the whole heart.

Faith, without question, comes before love. Whether we look at this biblically or psychologically, faith is the foundation and the necessary starting point. But even so, Scripture gives love the highest honor, calling it “the fulfillment of the law.” So the most important question we can ask — whether we truly belong to God and are genuinely holy — ultimately comes down to this: Are we perfected in love?

Subjection to God

"See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no God with me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; neither is there any that  can deliver out of my hand." — Deut. 32. 39.

Sometimes doth my uplifted heart suggest
It is not good Jehovah's yoke to bear;
Forgive, oh God, the thought, and teach my breast,
There's safety in thine arm, and only there.
If God be not my master, where's my place?
If I his kingdom leave, where shall I go?
E'en frighted Chaos bows before his face,
And Hell's dark world doth his dominion know.
May my poor will, O God, be bowed to thine,
Each thought, each purpose, feeling, as thine own,
Ever harmonious with thy great design,
And humbly circling round the central throne,
In thee I live, with thee move joyous on,
Without thy power am lost, extinct, and gone.

— The Religious Offering (1835) Scripture Sonnets XI.

The Family Will Be Sustained in Heaven

The social principle will be sustained in full exercise in heaven. It seems to us that the law of sociality, out of which spring families and societies, is universal and eternal. It would, perhaps, not be too much to say, that the perfect development of the social principle constitutes heaven; — and that, on the other hand, perfect isolation, which is the complete or perfected result of selfishness, constitutes hell. It is a great mistake, as the matter presents itself to our apprehension, to suppose that heaven is a solitary place; and much more that it is so spiritualized as to be a mere abstraction, — a place without locality, an existence without form, a form without beauty. Heaven has far more substance in it, than such shadowy conceptions would seem to imply. Heaven is not the extinction of existence, nor the mere shadow of existence, but a higher and purer state of existence; the growth and perfection of that, of which we have the obscure idea in the present life.

And, accordingly, reasoning from the identity of truth, which is the same above as it is below, we cannot hesitate in saying, that love is the life of heaven, as it is of earth. And such is the nature of love, that it must have objects there, as it has here. It must have its laws there, as it has here.  It  must have its great centre and also its subordinate centers there, as it has here. It must fulfill its own ends and grow up into society there, as it does here. To be in heaven, and not to be in the exercise of love, is a contradiction. Angels have their loves; — and heaven, if they were not allowed to exercise their benevolent affections there, and to group themselves together in bright clusters,  in accordance with the constitutive and eternal laws of moral beings, would cease to be heaven to them, and would become a place of sorrow. And it is one of the consolations which God allows us in the present state, in being permitted to believe that the wants of the heart here will be met and solaced hereafter; — that those suffering, but holy, ones, who have been smitten and robbed in the rights of the affections here, will find kindred spirits, (celestial stars, as it were, reflecting their own brightness,) who will mast and embrace them, and will wipe away their tears at the threshold of the New Jerusalem.

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 7, Chapter 6.

Leave Your Eternal Destiny in the Hands of God

If we would reach the highest results in religion, we must be willing, not only to suffer a separation from all present possessions and pleasures both of body and mind, in subordination to the will of God, but must be willing to leave our eternal interests entirely and quietly in his hands. It is true, God does not require and does not expect us to be willing, in the absolute and unconditional sense, to be cast off. Nevertheless, in point of fact, if God should see fit to do it, we ought willingly to submit to it, and to glorify his name in it. Because he could not do it without doing what is right; and to wish or expect him to do otherwise than right, would be to expect and desire him to tarnish his own character, to stain deeply and irretrievably his own spotless nature. This no one can possibly do, who loves God with a perfect heart. The language of such an one is, 'Let me rather perish a thousand times and God be holy, than saved a thousand times and God be unholy!' Indeed he knows no salvation, and no possibility of salvation, but in the love of God's holiness. It  is that which occupies his thought; it is that, which fills and dilates his soul with the elements, and perhaps we may add, with the only elements of substantial bliss. 

The Localities of Heaven and Hell

The Scriptures assert the doctrine of a local heaven, and also of a local hell. But  it  is not the locality or place which constitutes either the one or the other. Supreme love to God is the element or constituting principle of heaven. And nothing more is wanted than its opposite, viz., supreme selfishness, to lay the foundation of all the disorder and misery of hell.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CXIX.

A Desire for the Good of All that Exists

We have already said that love necessarily has its object. The object of pure love (and we regard this as an important remark) is existence;  all percipient and sentient existence whatever. So that love, in distinction from every appearance and modification of affection which is not true or pure love, may be defined to be a desire for the good or happiness of everything which exists. And, in accordance with this view, everything which has a being, from the highest to the lowest, whatever its position, whatever its character, the whole infinity of percipient and sentient existence, simply because it has such an existence, is the appropriate object of pure love.

This is a great truth, and one which, it must be admitted, is difficult to be realized by those who have not an instinct of perception and of affirmation in their own purified hearts. Those who are the subjects of this exalted feeling sincerely desire the happiness of all those, whoever or whatever they may be, who are capable of enjoying happiness while, at the same time, it may be so, that they disapprove and perhaps even hate their character; and, accordingly, they love the evil as well as the good, sinners as well as saints.

We  have a striking illustration of the nature of pure love in the case of the Savior. He loved sinners. "He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." It was not for angels, but for erring men, that he  died. He bowed his head upon the cross for those that persecuted him, reviled him, slew him. He loved men, not because they were good, for such they were not, and certainly not because they were evil, because evil can never be the foundation of love, but because they were existences, — percipient and moral existences. He  saw them created with the elements of an eternal being, but destitute, in their fallen state, of those attributes which would make that being a happy one. He saw them destitute of truth which they might possess, of holiness to which they were strangers, the enemies of God when they might be his friends, the heirs of hell when they might be the heirs of heaven. He loved them, therefore, not because they were good, but because they had a sentient, and especially because they had a moral, existence. It was their existence and not their merit; it was what they were capable of being, and not what they were, which brought him down from heaven.

— edited and adapted from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 4, Chapter 1.

The Misery of Hell

In the opposite of pure love, that is to say, in selfishness, as it develops itself in a future life, we find the great principle of moral discord, and also that, which constitutes the essential basis of the misery of hell. The misery of hell is not an accident; but just to the extent it is experienced at all, it is a permanent and necessary truth. Like every thing else it has its philosophy. Its leading element is love, terminating in self as the supreme object; in other words, it is supreme selfishness. This principle, wherever it exists and wherever it is transferred, necessarily carries with it the grand element of the world of woe. A being, who is supremely selfish, is necessarily miserable. The result does not depend upon choice or volition, but upon the nature of things. Instead of the principle of unity, which tends to oneness of purpose with other beings, and naturally leads to happiness, he has within him the principle of exclusion and of eternal separation. In its ultimate operation, if it is permitted permanently to exist, it necessarily drives him from every thing else, and wedges him closer and closer in the compressed circumference of his own personality. So that he is not only at variance with God and with all holy beings; but he is not at unity even with the devils themselves. The principle of love, terminating in self as the supreme object and exclusive of other objects, in other words, supreme selfishness makes him at war with all other beings; and it is impossible for him to be happy but in their destruction, which is also an impossibility. This is the true hell and everlasting fire.

— adapted from The Interior of Hidden Life (1844) Part 1, Chapter 12.

A Desire for the Good of All That Exists

Love necessarily has its object. The object of pure love (and we regard this as an important remark) is existence; all percipient and sentient existence whatever. So that love, in distinction from every appearance and modification of affection which is not true or pure love, may be defined to be a desire for the good or happiness of everything which exists. And, in accordance with this view, everything which has a being, from the highest to the lowest, whatever its position, whatever its character, the whole infinity of percipient and sentient existence, simply because it has such an existence, is the appropriate object of pure love.

This is a great truth, and one which, it must be admitted, is difficult to be realized by those who have not an instinct of perception and of affirmation in their own purified hearts. Those who are the subjects of this exalted feeling sincerely desire the happiness of all those, whoever or whatever they may be, who are capable of enjoying happiness while, at the same time, it may be so, that they disapprove and perhaps even hate their character; and, accordingly, they love the evil as well as the good, sinners as well as saints.

We  have a striking illustration of the nature of pure love in the case of the Savior. He loved sinners. "He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." It was not for angels, but for erring men, that he  died. He bowed his head upon the cross for those that persecuted him, reviled him, slew him. He loved men, not because they were good, for such they were not, and certainly not because they were evil, because evil can never be the foundation of love, but because they were existences, — percipient and moral existences. He  saw them created with the elements of an eternal being, but destitute, in their fallen state, of those attributes which would make that being a happy one. He saw them destitute of truth which they might possess, of holiness to which they were strangers, the enemies of God when they might be his friends, the heirs of hell when they might be the heirs of heaven. He loved them, therefore, not because they were good, but because they had a sentient, and especially because they had a moral, existence. It was their existence and not their merit; it was what they were capable of being, and not what they were, which brought him down from heaven.

—edited and adapted from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 4, Chapter 1.