4956. Essentially charity towards the neighbour is an affection for goodness and truth and a recognition of oneself as being nothing but evil and falsity. Indeed the neighbour is one and the same as goodness and truth, and to have an affection for these is to have charity, while the opposite of the neighbour is evil and falsity, which a person who has charity turns away from. Anyone therefore who has charity towards the neighbour is moved by an affection for goodness and truth because they come from the Lord, and such a one turns away from evil and falsity because these come from himself. When he does this, humility is present in him as a consequence of his recognition of what he is in himself; and when such humility is present his state is one in which goodness and truth are received from the Lord. These essential ingredients of charity are the message in the internal sense of the following words used by the Lord,
I was hungry and you gave Me food, I was thirsty and you gave Me drink, I was a stranger and you took Me in, naked and you clothed Me around, I was sick and you visited Me, I was in prison and you came to Me.
Except from the internal sense no one can know that these words hold the essential ingredients of charity within them. The ancients who possessed teachings regarding charity knew these things, but at the present day matters such as these seem so far-fetched that everyone will be astonished by the assertion that those words hold the essential ingredients of charity within them. What is more, the angels present with a person do not perceive those words in any other way, for by 'the hungry' they perceive those led by affection to desire good, by 'the thirsty' those led by affection to desire truth, by 'a stranger' those wishing to receive instruction, by 'the naked' those acknowledging that no goodness or truth at all is present within them, by 'the sick' those acknowledging that within themselves there is nothing but evil, and by 'the bound' or 'those in prison those acknowledging that within themselves there is nothing but falsity. All these if taken as a whole mean the aspects of charity described immediately above.
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