BLESSED ARE THE THAT DO HIS COMMANDMENTS
By A. W. Tozer
Blessed are they that do his commandments,
that they may have right to the tree of life, and
may enter in through the gates into the city.
Revelation 22:14The command to love God with our whole being has
seemed to many persons to be impossible of fulfillment,
and it may be properly argued that we cannot love by
fiat.Love is too gentle, too frail a creature to spring up at
the command of another. It would be like commanding
the barren tree to bring forth fruit or the winter forest
to be green.What then can it mean?
The answer is found in the nature of God and of man.
God being who He is must have obedience from His
creatures. Man being who he is must render that
obedience, and he owes God complete obedience
whether or not he feels for Him the faintest trace of love
in his heart.It is a question of the sovereign right of God to require
His creatures to obey Him.Man's first and basic sin was disobedience. When he
disobeyed God he violated the claims of divine love with
the result that love for God died within him.Now, what can he do to restore that love to his heart
again?The heart that mourns its coldness toward God needs
only to repent its sins, and a new, warm and satisfying
love will flood into it. For the act of repentance will bring
a corresponding act of God in self-revelation and
intimate communion.Once the seeking heart finds God in personal
experience there will be no further problem about
loving Him.
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Yours in Christ,
Paul N. F.