and I will love them and manifest myself to them, and we will make a
home with them.” (John 14 : 21 , 23 )The “commandments” mentioned here are specifically the Ten Com-
mandments, which prescribe that we should not do, or crave to do, what
is evil. If we do not do evil or crave to do evil, we love God and God
loves us. This is the benefit we receive after something evil has been
removed.
I have stated that the more we abstain from what is evil, the more 330
we will and intend what is good, because evil and good are opposites.
Evil comes from hell and good comes from heaven. Therefore the more
hell—that is, evil—is removed, the closer we get to heaven and the
more we focus on good.
The truth of this becomes obvious when we see eight of the Ten
Commandments in this way. For example: ( 1 ) The less we worship other
gods, the more we worship the true God. ( 2 ) The less we take the name of
God in vain, the more we love the things that come from God. ( 3 ) The
less we want to kill and to act on the basis of hatred and revenge, the more
we want what is good for our neighbor. ( 4 ) The less we want to commit
adultery, the more we want to live faithfully with our spouse. ( 5 ) The less
we want to steal, the more we aim to be honest. ( 6 ) The less we want to
testify falsely, the more we want to think and speak what is true. ( 7 ) and
( 8 ) The less we covet what our neighbors have, the more we want our
neighbors to be doing well with what they have. From this it becomes
clear that the Ten Commandments contain everything about how to love
God and our neighbor. Therefore Paul says,
Those who love others have fulfilled the law. “You are not to commit
adultery, you are not to kill, you are not to steal, you are not to be a
false witness, you are not to covet things,” and if anything else is com-
manded, it is included in this saying: “You are to love your neighbor as
yourself.” Goodwill does no evil to our neighbor. Therefore the fulfill-
ment of the law is goodwill. (Romans 13 : 8 , 9 , 10 )
To the above list, two principles need to be added that will benefit the
new church: ( 1 ) On our own, none of us can abstain from evils because
they are sins or do good things that are good before God. The more we
abstain from evils because they are sins, the more we do good things from
the Lord instead of from ourselves. ( 2 ) We need to abstain from evils and
fight against them as if we were acting on our own. If we abstain from
§330 the ten commandments 387