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Robin said:
The study of theology flows from the love of God. It is the law of God that tells us how to love Him. The law of God is an elucidation of the demands of love. The one who loves Him is the one who keeps His commandments (John 14:21), not the one who loudly proclaims his feelings of fondness while ignoring the Lord's written will. One cannot love God without learning of Him, becoming His disciple, studying to show himself approved, and learning the Lord's will in order to do it.

To the question, "Can't you just love the Lord" we must answer, "it is my love for Him that drives me to learn of Him - I must know what pleases Him, what attributes to praise, what deeds to extol, what to thank Him for, what He desires from me, etc. I cannot truly love my Lord without doctrine!"
Robin,

Methinks that the necessity of studying theology (the application of the Bible to all of life) precedes knowing the correct, acceptable way of loving God in that one must first know who is the one true God. And only in the study of Scripture which results in "doctrine" can one come to know, at least intellectually, who God is and what He requires of us in order to love him in the "obedience of faith". When someone like your former pastor exclaims we should "just love God", it begs the question, "What God?". The same can be said for the similarly errant statement, "No creed but Christ. No doctrine but life." One needs to first ask, "Jesus, who?". You cannot love someone who you do not know. Rarely would someone entrust to a stranger all their earthly goods. And how much less would someone entrust their eternal destiny to something or someone they had no knowledge about?

It is ONLY in the inspired written Word of God that we learn about God. And it is the Author of that written Word, the Holy Spirit, Who opens one's mind and heart to apprehend its teachings (doctrine) and then applies them so that one comes to know and then love God with all their "mind, heart, soul, and strength". For me, this is beautifully summarized in Paul's prayer to the Colossians:

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Colossians 1:9-10 (ASV) "For this cause we also, since the day we heard [it], do not cease to pray and make request for you, that ye may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, to walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;"
And to the Corinthians, Paul wrote:

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2 Corinthians 10:3-5 (ASV) "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh (for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds), casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ;"
EVERYONE adheres to a creed.... whether its source is the Bible, some other book, the teachings of other men or their own imagination. As soon as it is said, "I believe . . ." what follows is an exclamation of one's personal "doctrine".

In His grace,

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simul iustus et peccator

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