Agape, the christian love: I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. 2 John 1:5

The gospels say that John was the most beloved disciple of Jesus, and probably for this reason, this beloved apostle in all his writings highlighted the importance of love. But the christian love is a special love and different from others, because this love is a grace, a gift from above.
The Greeks had a name for each form of love, which is why in the first gospels written in this language, this form of love was designated with the name of Agape. Agape is neither Eros nor Philia, the natural loves of the soul.
Agape is a mysterious and selfless love that purifies the soul. And it is a grace because it is a perfection from above and cannot be obtained by human intellectual effort. The spiritual love is the love for the good or the love projected toward the whole creation of God. In other words, the love of God is the progressive, expansive, and benevolent love.
And the apostle John mentioned it briefly in his second epistle as the love towards the neighbor, the new commandment: "I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love" 2 John 1:5-6.
And this love has a great reward, the apostle John taught us, and this reward is the communion with God and the perception of the divine realities, that is, the contemplative life; this is why the spiritual love (Agape) is the true hidden treasure of the parables of Jesus (Matthew 13:44), a treasure that makes men new people.
Like the apostle John in his writings, all the christian texts call men to the spiritual perfection: "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" Matthew 5:48, because that is what the Kingdom of God is like.

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