BY ITS VERY NATURE, LOVE MUST BE VOLUNTARY
“If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God….” (JOHN 7:17)
How can the sincere Christian fulfill the scriptural command to love God with all his heart and his neighbor as himself?

Of all the emotions of which the soul is capable, love is by far the freest, the most unreasoning, the one least likely to spring up at the call of duty or obligation, and surely the one that will not come at the command of another.

No law has ever been passed that can compel one moral being to love another, for by the very nature of it love must be voluntary. No one can be coerced or frightened into loving anyone. Love just does not come that way!

The love the Bible enjoins is not the love of feeling: it is the love of willing, the “willed tendency” of the heart.

God never intended that such a being as man should be the plaything of his feelings. The emotional life is a proper and noble part of the total personality, but it is, by its very nature, of secondary importance. Religion lies in the will, and so does righteousness. The only good that God recognizes is a willed good; the only valid holiness is a willed holiness.

It should be a cheering thought that before God every man is what he wills to be. The first requirement in conversion is a rectified will. To meet the requirements of love toward God the soul need but will to love and the miracle begins to blossom like the budding of Aaron’s rod!

A. W. Tozer