To Know God Is to Love Him
A.W. Tozer emphasizes that knowing God leads to loving Him, and that love is cultivated through obedience and faith.
A.W. Tozer emphasizes that God is the source of all love and commands us to love Him with all our hearts. He explains that our ability to love God originates from His love for us, and that true love involves both willing and feeling. Tozer encourages obedience to God's Word as a means to grow in love for Him, asserting that as our knowledge of God increases, so does our love for Him. He concludes that knowing God deeply leads to a greater capacity to love Him.
Text
God is love, and is for that reason the source of all the love there is. He has set as the first of all commandments that we love Him with all our hearts, but He knows that the desired love can never originate with us. We love him, because he first loved us, is the scriptural and psychological pattern. We can love Him as we ought only as He inflames our minds with holy desire. Yet there is also a love of willing as well as of feeling. Though we may not be conscious of any great degree of inward sensation, we may set our wills to love God and the feeling will come of itself. Let us bring ourselves under obedience to His revealed Word and our love for Him will grow.
Obedience will strengthen faith and faith will increase knowledge.
And it is a well-known law of the spiritual life that our love for God will spring up and flourish just as our knowledge of Him increases. To know Him is to love Him, and to know Him better is to love Him more.
Sermon Outline
- I points: - God as the source of love - The commandment to love God - The nature of divine love
- II points: - The role of God's love in our ability to love - The relationship between love and obedience - The importance of faith in understanding God's love
- III points: - The connection between knowledge of God and love for Him - The process of growing in love through obedience - The cyclical nature of knowledge, faith, and love
Key Quotes
“We love him, because he first loved us.” — A.W. Tozer
“To know Him is to love Him, and to know Him better is to love Him more.” — A.W. Tozer
“Obedience will strengthen faith and faith will increase knowledge.” — A.W. Tozer
Application Points
- Commit to studying God's Word to deepen your knowledge of Him.
- Practice obedience in small areas of your life to strengthen your love for God.
- Reflect on how God's love has impacted your life to inspire greater love in return.