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Love, self, the other
The "neighbour" is a core element of christianity. Unselfishness in relation to other people is accentuated:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.
Matthew 22,37-39
Being a central concept of christianity it marks the difference from the religion of the Old Testament, that law; commands and not least prohibitions, are replaced or supplemented by love.
Example :
"The labor of righteousness is peace"; and again it is written: "The wages of sin are death!" Much has been said and written that one does not know – or, as it was with Anne Lisbeth, does not remember – but such things can appear before one's subconscious self, can come to mind, though one is unaware of it.
The germs of vices and virtues are alive deep in our hearts – in yours and mine; they lurk like tiny invisible seeds. There comes a ray of sunshine or the touch of an evil hand; you turn to the right or to the left, and the little seed quivers into life, puts forth shoots, and pours its life throughout all the veins. Walking in a daydream, one may be unconscious of many painful thoughts, but they have their being within us all the same; thus Anne Lisbeth walked as if in a daydream, but her thoughts lived within her.
From Candlemas to Candlemas the heart has much written upon it, even the record of the whole year. Many sins are forgotten, sins in word or thought, sins against God or our neighbor or our own conscience;
According to the commentary in H.C. Andersen eventyr, DSL, Borgen, Copenhagen 1990, vol. 7, p. 203, "The labor of righteousness is peace" comes from The Book of Wisdom, one of the deutero-canonical writings of the Old Testament, and "The wages of sin are death!" from Paul's Letter to the Romans 6.23.
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