Kierkegaard on the importance of universal love for neighbor-- to fulfill the command and to actually love friends and family effectively

If anyone asks, “Who is my neighbor?” then Christ’s reply to the Pharisee, who asked this same question, contains the only answer, for in answer to this question Christ turned everything around. Christ says: “Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” The Pharisee answers correctly, “The one who showed mercy to him” (Lk. 10:36). This means that by doing your duty you easily discover who your neighbor is. The Pharisee’s answer is contained in Christ’s question. He towards whom I have a duty is my neighbor, and when I fulfill my duty, I prove that I am a neighbor...Choosing a lover, finding a friend, yes that is a long, hard job, but your neighbor is easy to recognize, easy to find – if you yourself will only recognize your duty and be a neighbor.

I love that last sentence! The paragraph is too strong on "duty" for my tastes, but I like the point that being a "neighbor" is proved by showing mercy / being neighborly.

The poet and Christ explain things in opposite ways. The poet idolizes feelings and since he has only romantic love in mind, believes that to command love is the greatest foolishness and the most preposterous kind of talk: Love and friendship contain no ethical task. Love and friendship are good fortune, the highest good fortune...For the poet, the highest task in life is to be properly grateful for one’s good fortune. But one’s task can never be an obligation to find the beloved or to find this friend...

Christianity, however, dethrones feeling and good fortune and replaces them with the shall. The point at issue between the poet and Christ may be stated precisely in this way: romantic love and friendship are preferential, the passion of preference; Christian love, however, is self-renunciation’s love and therefore trusts in the you shall. According to Christ, our neighbor is our equal. Our neighbor is not the beloved, for whom you have passionate preference, nor your friend, whom you prefer. Nor is your neighbor, if you are well educated, the learned person with whom you have cultural affinity – for with your neighbor you have before God the equality of humanity...

...love your beloved faithfully and tenderly, but let love to your neighbor be the sanctifier in your covenant of union with God. Love your friend honestly and devotedly, but let love to your neighbor be what you learn from each other in the intimacy of friendship with God! Moreover, the person who does not see that his wife is first his neighbor, and only then his wife, never comes to truly love his neighbor, no matter how many people he loves...

 

In this sense love is blind. Perfection in the object has nothing to do with perfection in love. Precisely because one’s neighbor has none of the excellencies which the beloved, a friend, or an admired one may have...

Therefore he who in truth loves, loves his neighbor. And he who in truth loves his neighbor loves also his enemy. This is obvious; for the distinction of friend or enemy is a distinction in the object of love, but the object of love to your neighbor is always without distinction...

Kierkegaard distinguishes between different sorts of love, arguing that love of neighbor is primary and should be universal-- even loving one's wife as a neighbor first. And by implication, if one does not generally love one's neighbor, then love for a spouse-- without that-- will be distorted, likely to be temporary, etc. In sum, "love your beloved faithfully and tenderly, but let love to your neighbor be the sanctifier in your covenant of union with God."