More Tozer

The true Christian has a passion and love for truth, and feels not at all uncomfortable with the imperialistic, exclusive nature of truth. And yet if that passion for truth is not regulated by warm love for our neighbor, we are to the lost but frowning, bitter advocates of something the world finds to be foolish. Truth riding on the crest of love is appealing, but mired in the muck of pride it can be disgusting. In the nature of God these two great forces are never in tension: "Lovingkindness and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other" (Ps. 85:10). Not so in man. If we are not trained by humility, we will attempt to wield truth as a battering ram with which we try to bludgeon our neighbors, our children, and our spouse into submission.

As Tozer focuses on the Holy Spirit in the last third of his book, The Pursuit of Man, he speaks about love and truth:

The blight of the Pharisee's heart in olden times was doctrine without love. With the teachings of the Pharisees Christ had little quarrel, but with the pharisaic spirit He carried on unceasing warfare to the end. It was religion that put Christ on the cross, religion without the indwelling Spirit. It is no use to deny that Christ was crucified by persons who today would be called fundamentalists. This should prove most disquieting if not downright distressing to us who pride ourselves on our orthodoxy. An unblessed soul filled with the letter of truth may actually be worse off than a pagan kneeling before a fetish. We are safe only when the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, only when our intellects are indwelt by the loving Fire that came at Pentecost. For the Holy Spirit is not a luxury, not something added now and again to produce a deluxe type of Christian once in a generation. No, He is for every child of God a vital necessity, and that He fill and indwell His people is more than a languid hope. It is rather an inescapable imperative [A. W. Tozer, 106].

Nowhere is this human, fallen, and wholly unnecessary contradiction between love and truth seen so clearly as in our communications on the Internet. Our flame wars do little more than demonstrate how little the truth has changed us, and I am as guilty as the next. We are like the sons of thunder, who in the face of rejection asked Jesus, "Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" (Luke 9:54). Jesus' response to James and John is one we still need to heed today: "But He turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them" (Luke 9:55-56, while there is a textual issue with His precise words, there is none with the fact of His rebuke).

May God invade us with His Holy Spirit, that our stand for truth would be unyielding but bathed in warm-hearted love and respect for those who do not yet know the Truth, Whom to know aright is life eternal.