IS love an act of volition?

[setarcos]

Greetings, I’m so sorry I’ve taken so long to reply. I don’t know if you’ll see this or have moved on but I do appreciate your willingness to help.

I see that you are “Inconceivably constantly confused”
about all that you post, and that is reassuring, may I
be of help?

I’m not sure why you think my confusion is reassuring but so be it, maybe you can help.

“Love” is a tricky topic to broach on a number of levels,
the Greeks have three or four words which are translated
into the English for Love.

I am aware of several words the Greeks used for different kinds of Love. Up to eight at least I believe. I’d would venture to guess many more in uncommon usage. It could be argued that any form of passionate desire is a form Love and any form of Love can be a perverse form deviating from Gods intentions.

However, for MY views on Love, I think that, to TRULY
Love as God Loves(agape), one has to have some super-
natural help, the Holy Spirit who indwells EVERY Believer.
“We love b/c He first Loved us” 1 Jn 4:19 To Love as God
Loves, we have to die to SELF, which is the enemy of the
HOLY SPIRIT Rom. 8:5-8, 12–13, satan was PROUD, he
cannot see the need to love anyone but HIMSELF, even
to love God, so you see where that got him!! We who
reject or deny God’s Love, shown to us by the Passion
and death of Christ for our sins(so that we can Love
God whole-heartedly), will suffer the same fate!!

Yes, I have stated that we were created with a capacity to Love which is filled through God’s grace. I think you misunderstand “dying to the self”. Romans is not saying that flesh is evil, it could not be saying this since we were created in flesh and God called it good. You partake of the flesh of Christ and it leads to life does it not? Romans 8 is using flesh in the sense of denying God who is spirit and dwelling on the things of this world which have become perverted. We cannot “die” to the self strictly speaking. If the self is us, who we are, and we die to this person what is left? It couldn’t be the self that is us which desires salvation it would be some other self which is to say another person and not us. We don’t “die” to the self, we’re asked to “awaken” the self we were created to be by God with the help of Gods graces. Satan was proud tis true and his pride caused his fall but his fall was not because he loved his self it was because his pride perverted his love of self. Remember, the second of Gods greatest commandments which Jesus said was like the first, that is to “love thy neighbor as thy SELF”. Love of self is not evil and is even necessary to the fullness of Love, though it can be perverted as in the case of Satan.

So, to wrap things up, to Love genuinely, we need to
DETACH from this world, flesh and the devil and
ACCEPT God’s Covenanting, Eternal and Infinite
LOVE in the Person of Jesus Christ and Love God
and Love our Siblings in Christ(an oft repeated law
of Love) and our neighbor and even our enemies!!

Yes, I would only qualify your statements by saying that we’re not being asked to “detach” ourselves from the world nor flesh but the perversions that they have become. God called creation good in the beginning and his creation included the world and creatures of flesh which inhabited it. The goal of redemption is to return to what was once called good by God. Scripture says there shall be a NEW heaven and earth, that is, a return to what was once good.
May God’s blessings be upon you.