Another thunderbolt is Paul’s statement that the righteousness of God is manifested and avails ‘unto all and upon all them that believe’ in Christ, and that ‘there is no difference.’ Here again in the plainest words he divides the whole human race into two. To believers he gives the righteousness of God; to unbelievers he denies it. Now, nobody is fool enough to doubt that the power and endeavour of ‘free-will’ is something distinct from faith in Jesus Christ! But Paul denies that anything apart from this faith is righteous before God. And if it is not righteous before God, it must be sin; for with God there remains nothing intermediate between righteousness and sin that is, as it were, neutral, being neither righteousness nor sin. Otherwise, Paul’s entire argument would be wholly ineffective, for its starting-point is just this dichotomy—all that is wrought and done among men is either righteousness or sin in God’s sight; righteousness, if faith is with it; sin, if faith is lacking. With men, indeed, it is the case that actions in which men who owe nothing to each other confer nothing on each other are called ‘intermediate’ and ‘neutral.’ But the ungodly man sins against God, whether he eats, or drinks, or whatever he does, because he abases God’s creation by his ungodliness and persistent ingratitude, and does not from his heart give glory to God for a single moment. (Luther, Bondage of the Will)
The whole human race divided into two, even after all else is boiled down, and we are left with the two major distinctives. Those distinctives are believers (those who love God) and unbelievers (those who are at enmity with God). 1 Corinthians 13 sets this out for us: “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” Apart from this love there is nothing a person can do that is pleasing or acceptable to God. There is no neutral territory between love for God and enmity to God. The will is not free to be anything less than enmity toward God until it is turned and has love for God.
The will is really the capacity of choice in the human soul, so we can simply say that the human soul is either at enmity to God or loves God. The inclinations and desires of the human soul are either out of love for God or love for self. Again, there is no neutral ground between the two. Being neutral toward God is the same as being against Him and being neutral is certainly not doing all one does out of love for God. Jesus told us that if one does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, “he is to be accursed” (I Cor 16:22). The will is not somewhere between love and non-love, but it is either one or the other. The soul chooses what it chooses each moment out of love for God or out of love for other things which is enmity toward God. The will that is thought to be free in order to choose to love God is not free to choose that which it is at enmity with each moment. The Gospel of Jesus Christ includes the grace of God changing the human heart that it may love God. Love is not a mere choice, but instead it is the inclination and love of the soul. Love reflects the desires and supreme choice of the soul. The will is never free from the supreme loves and choices of the soul as a whole.
Luther says that “the ungodly man sins against God, whether he eats, or drinks, or whatever he does, because he abases God’s creation by his ungodliness and persistent ingratitude, and does not from his heart give glory to God for a single moment.” In other words, the unbeliever sins each moment regardless of what he does. The unbeliever is not in some neutral state, but instead the unbeliever eats and drinks and does whatever he does out of love for self rather than love for God. The unbeliever lives in the presence of God in a constant state of enmity against God, is ungodly in all he does, and has no true gratitude to God each moment of his existence. The unbeliever, though he lives under the Greatest Commandment, violates that command each moment and lives out of love for self. The unbeliever lives under the command to glorify God in all that he does, yet he lives out of love for self and seeks the glory and honor of self. The soul is not free from its chief love and desires and so the will is not free to love God.
Indeed there are many who say that they choose God, but the Pharisees would have said that as well. Many choose God in the sense that they say they do what they do for God, but even in their religious choosing they do not love God and are at enmity with Him. Until the heart is changed religious actions are nothing more than enmity with God as well. While this sounds so negative and hopeless, it actually has true hope at its roots. When a person stops trusting in the so-called ‘free-will’ of self, then the person may look to grace alone. That is the Gospel.
God Loves... Himself 
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