Love Cannot Be Pumped Up to Order

The tension between commandment and love seems irreconcilable. How can Christ command what must spring spontaneously from the heart? Maclaren pierces this paradox with surgical precision: we cannot manufacture emotion by sheer will, yet we possess far greater control over our affections than we suppose. The cultivation of love is not direct—we cannot pump it up to order—but it is deeply indirect. We choose which facts to contemplate: the lovable or the unlovable in our brothers. We select which attitude to assume, whether favourable or unfavourable to affection. We decide whether to wage conscious war against our predominant self-absorption, or to lazily acquiesce in it. In these manifold ways, our feelings toward other Christian people remain largely under our own control, and therefore they become fitting subjects for commandment.

Christ places Himself as absolute Lawgiver with authoritative control over men's affections and hearts. Yet this obligation runs deeper still: it flows from the very union of the branches. If one life-sap circulates through all parts of the mighty whole—if all Christian people share common relation to the Vine—then how anomalous and contradictory that these parts should not be harmoniously concordant among themselves! However unlike two Christian people may be in character, culture, or circumstance, the bond through their mutual relation to Jesus Christ demands that they love. The commandment is not tyranny; it is the logical expression of organic unity. Love, then, becomes obligation because it is the only fitting manifestation of our shared inheritance in Elohim's grace.