God Can't Create or Demand Love?

Reprint from May 2, 2008 in The Baptist Gadfly (see here)

In my recent postings of conversations with Ben Witherington over the question of the kind of "influence" the Holy Spirit exerts on the hearts of all men, and of the elect more particularly, when he saves and regenerates them, when he "draws," and "calls" and "woos" them, Ben gave the common response regarding "loving" God. He argued that for any love to God to be valuable or virtuous, it must be freely given to God, without anything that could be called "coercing" or "forcing" or "compelling" or "manipulating" from God. If God, it is argued, somehow "forces" or "compels" or "causes" the person to love him, then such a love is NOT virtuous or praiseworthy.

There are several things wrong with this proposition.

First, it says that God cannot demand love! For God to command men to love him, according to this view, contradicts the idea that God wants men to love him by their "free will." God is not simply asking for love, as a seeker of love, but he is demanding it.

Second, if love be that which is NOT demanded, then it can be no sin NOT to love God. Is it a sin or an evil for a woman not to choose to be won by a lover's advances? By Ben's definition it would be no sin! Yet, in the bible, men will be condemned for their not choosing to love God!

Third, the same argument that Ben makes about the virtue of love could also be said about faith and any other spiritual grace. Ben's logic and proposition affirms that anything like love, faith, goodness, yea, even virtue itself, is of no value or is not praiseworthy UNLESS it is self produced. If God GIVE love for him to another person, then, by Ben's proposition, it is NOT true love, or a love that is good, beautiful, or praiseworthy. To him, self produced love for God (granting, for the sake of argument, its reality) is of a higher quality than divinely produced love!

Fourth, the scriptures plainly teach that God not only demands love but that he actually gives love, and creates it in the heart of men. Men cannot therefore boast or credit themselves for their love for God, as Ben must do, reductio ad absurdum.

"Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'" (Matthew 23: 7 NIV)

"And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother." ( I John 4:21)

"The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live." (Deuteronomy 30: 6 NIV)

"The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness." (Jeremiah 31 3 NIV)

"I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love; I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them." (Hosea 11: 4 NIV)

"But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another." (I Thessalonians 4: 9 AV)

"And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works." (Hebrews 10: 24 AV)

"We love him, because he first loved us." (I John 4: 19 KJV)

Certainly all these verses, taken together, teach that God is the author of our love for him. As we "provoke" (incite) love in others, so God does the same, and he does not "violate" any law in doing so.

Throughout history, philosophy and religion speculated much on the phenomenon of love. In the last century, the science of psychology has written a great deal on the subject.

People will often say - "Love is a decision, not just a feeling." Yet, others know that there is a "deterministic character to love" and so people are said to "fall in love," people recognizing that love, at least sometimes, is compulsive and irresistable.

Finally, love is said to be God's gift, as is everthing good in us. (See James 1: 17 & I Corinthians 4: 7)

Also, the uniting of two hearts in love is but one of many types of metaphors used to describe the work of salvation. We cannot exclude them either. Being saved is a time of "falling in love" with Christ, but it is also a time of being born, and of being resurrected from the dead, and of being rescued.