1 John

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NASB	1 John 4:19 We love, because He first loved us.
AMPLIFIED 2015 2015	1 John 4:19 We love, because He first loved us.

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Bible Question: Do we "will" to love? Was our will renewed to love Christ? Or, was our love a response?

Bible Answer: Hi, Terrib...

In the fall, our ability to love God and desire His will was effected. You are also correct in linking the love with the will. Scriptural love is not primarily or even secondarily emotional, but an active choice.

"True religion consists, in large part, in the affections ... and this begins with the initial step of saving faith all the way through to final perseverance. But how can the natural man, who 'loves darkness' (John 3:19), work up any affections or desire for God? or apprehend His beauty and excellence? We know that human reasoning is never free from the effects of sin, and that people deny God, not because they lack evidence, but because their hearts are rebellious. So the unbelievers' problem is ethical first and then intellectual and thus he/she requires a supernatural work of God to understand and apprehend spiritual truth as revealed in Scripture. Those who know facts, therefore, are not the same as those who forsake sin and come to love God. We must therefore appeal to the entire person and not merely their intellect. God is hidden from man because he loves sin and remains in hostile rebellion against God. This antagonism for the gospel is seated in the affections, not because we lack data or are not smart enough. So we appeal to the heart because God is not just a precept or an axiom as found in mathematics. To come to faith in Christ one must first desire Christ, perceive and take delight in His unmatched beauty, and have a love for Him that is greater than a love of sin. Faith will never 'just happen' out of thin air but actually requires that we desire Him, for we only choose that which we most desire. But to be sure, the Scriptures teach that these holy affections are not produced by our unregenerate human nature (Rom 8:7; 1 Cor 2:14). And since the root of faith cannot be indifferent or neutral, a full orbed gospel is not merely a list of impersonal propositions for our intellectual assent, but it is proclaiming the full person of Christ in His love for sinners shown in His life, death and resurrection. Words are not enough, however, to persuade those bent on rebellion because spiritual knowledge, which is relational, requires a new sense of God's unsurpassed excellence ... and this is possessed only by the regenerate. Paul, when speaking to the Thessalonians makes this clear when he says, 'for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction...' (1 Thess 1:5)." --John Hendryx

See the full paper at

http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/spirit_affections.html

In Him, Doc

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1 John