The Problem with an Unsaved Person's Love

I love questions. I love them for their ability to unlock things. They nudge people to do or try or chase. They are keys, bridges, and light. They unravel mysteries. They torment, strike, break, illuminate, pacify, heal, and rewire us when we finally uncover the answer: the truth. That’s how questions work--the right question can change the way you think, view the world, or live.

But sometimes, chasing down an answer to a question turns my mind into a maze. I don’t like mazes. They seem like a waste of time--the longest way to get where you’re going. A stupid game, if you ask me. To compound that, I’ve always been directionally challenged (just ask my dad). When I’m lost, I get frustrated and tired of trying to find my way out.

But there are three things that are so helpful to me when I’m trying to get out of a question maze: God’s Word, prayer, and counsel from wise people.

Recently I got stuck on these questions:

If love is from God, and love is the fruit of the Spirit, how can unsaved people love, since they don’t know God and don’t have the Holy Spirit? What IS their love? And why are some unsaved people some of the most kind, gracious, forgiving people (the most ‘loving’ people) I’ve ever met?

So I mulled that idea over for a couple months and ended up asking Dan, my Sunday morning class teacher at my church. He told me he wanted to think about it and sent me an email a few days later. And wow. I wanted to share with you guys what he said.

Here’s Dan:

The Problem with an Unsaved Person's Love

Can unsaved people truly love? Yes (...ish). Instead of thinking about all the different kinds and definitions of love (love for pizza, romantic infatuation, friendship, etc.) let’s go right to the big ones. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Have unbelievers throughout history shown this ultimate self sacrifice for others for various noble reasons? Resoundingly, yes. Have there been David and Jonathan type bonds of self-denying loyalty among unbelievers? Of course. And have there been non-Christian monogamous faithful long-term, covenant-fulfilling marriages around the world? Thankfully, yes.

So how do humans who have never been born again possess/demonstrate this love?

Love in humans is a natural part of being created in God’s image. Even though the fall has greatly distorted and polluted man’s reflection of God’s true and holy love, the attribute still resides in our person in some basic form. Christ says, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” (Matthew 7:11) Isaiah says, “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.” Heaven and earth are filled with broken, dim reflections of the “and it was good” declaration of God’s creation.

Sinful man may apply God’s principles to his everyday life and find great temporal benefits for himself and others. The unsaved rich young ruler was no doubt a blessing to others as he “kept all the commandments.” The self-loving, others-serving Pharisee who prayed his accomplishments to God would obviously be a much better member of society than a self-loving, others-killing genocidal dictator. Adherence to basic Judeo-Christian ethics is extremely beneficial to one’s self and community, even if that adherence is not empowered by the Holy Spirit.

So what then is the problem with the love possessed by unbelievers?

If it is “real” and has great benefit, what’s the big deal? The answer lies in the first and greatest commandment. Mark 12:29-30 “And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.”

This is the problem. Apart from God, I cannot love God. And we are apart from God until we are reconciled to God by Jesus Christ - salvation. So unless one is born again, he cannot keep the first and greatest commandment.

The Problem with the Golden Rule

What we see instead is sinful man trying desperately to keep the second commandment. Jesus went on to say (Mark 12:31), “And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.” This command is often referred to as the “Golden Rule.” The phrase “golden rule” is devilishly misleading. The golden rule should be the first commandment, the second should be silver. This is not a trite argument over nomenclature. Our society for decades has elevated love for mankind to gold status. Imagine if “love your neighbor as yourself” were called the “Silver Rule” instead? Would that not elicit the response, “well then, what’s the golden rule...?” whereby putting the love of God not only back on the scene, but in its proper position of preeminence.

If we make the silver rule the golden rule, we break the actual first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

That is the heart of the problem. That is the microscopic minute difference which in reality is vastly and infinitely damnable. Any love not from God, empowered by God, submitted to God in obedience, and directed back to God is idolatry. We love mankind because man is our idol. We die for others because freedom is our idol. We stay faithful to our spouse because he or she is our idol. We spend countless hours and dollars on our children because they are our idol. We face public scorn because our cause is our idol. We love, yes. We love, and that love does many great things. But in the end, orphan-caring, justice-producing, freedom-preserving idolatrous love results in, “Depart from Me, I never knew you.”

“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”

(1 John 4:7-11)

True, biblical, God glorifying, obedient love comes to us from God, through Christ, at salvation. This Divine love then increases in believers as we live it back to God and out to others, denying ourselves, the world, and all idolatry.

Dan

- Redeemed Scumbag