Biblical Love (Part 4): Loving the Unlovely

Loving the Unlovely

“If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?” (Matt. 5:43-47).

There is nothing particularly Christian about loving lovely people. To explain this, Jesus chose a class of people despised by the Jews¾tax collectors¾and said, “Even they love like that.” God created everyone, including the worst criminals, with this kind of friendship love.

Only Christians can love the unlovely. This is how you show your Christianity. If you have only loved lovely people, you are being disobedient. Although this kind of love is central to Christian behavior, it only comes through obedience. Scriptural love is always volitional. You have to choose to do it. Do not wait to fall in love with your enemy. It will never happen.

I became a Christian during my second year at the Naval Academy. Suddenly, I loved my roommate, and he was not lovely. After three weeks, he asked, “OK, Wilson, what happened? The last three weeks you have been unbearably pleasant.”

I saw my love expand to more and more people. Jesus Christ filled me with His love, and now I could pour it out. It had nothing to do with what the people were like.

Then a few years later, I ran into a type of person I could not love. In June 1950, I graduated from the Naval Academy and shipped out to the Korean War. Our ship stopped at Sasebo, Japan, for refueling. There were about three thousand prostitutes in the first three blocks. You could not walk down the street without being grabbed. It was the same when we docked in Yokosuka. I was witnessing on the ship and leading men to Christ; then those same men would go ashore and come back with gonorrhea. I hated these women for years, and I knew it.

One day, I was on an aircraft carrier in Hong Kong. I had invited a missionary couple to dinner on the ship, and I told them about this lack of love. The wife said, “You have it all wrong. You are commanded to love those people. It is not something that happens naturally. It is something you choose to do in obedience to God.”

I knew she was right. I went to my room that night in a turmoil of rebellion. How do I do it? Do I crank up the love by sheer willpower? Do I go out and say, “OK, I choose to obey. I will love them if it kills me!” I knew that was not right, because the Scripture requires genuine love. No one would be fooled by me faking it. I wanted to say, “Lord, if You want them loved, You will have to love them through someone else. I don’t have it.”

But as I prayed, I realized several things. If loving is a command, then not loving is disobedience. If it is disobedience, then it is sin. If it is sin, then it is forgivable.

The Bible says that the man who says he loves God and does not love his brother is a liar (1 John 4:20). I had never considered that this business of not loving my enemies was in the same category as lying. When I do not love others, I do not love God. If the greatest commandment is to love God, and I am disobeying it, how great a sin is that? It is huge. If loving my neighbor is the second commandment, and I am not doing it, I am guilty of another great sin. Does that mean I have to live in guilt? No—it means I need forgiveness. But I have to recognize my sin first.

“Love your enemies” is a hard command. If we love God, we must not cut the command down to our size. How can we obey it as He wants us to?

Start with this proposition: “I do not love my enemies.” Since that statement is contrary to God’s command, what I am saying is that I am in sin. Am I saying that as an acceptable fact, or in repentance? If I am just saying that as a fact, I will not be able to go beyond it. If I try, the love will not be real, and everyone will know it. So, not willing to be hypocritical, I say, “At least I am honest. I do not love my enemies.” However, that still does not change the situation. Honesty about sin is not the same as confession of sin.

So what do I do? I can say the same thing to God in confession and be forgiven for it. Then I can choose to love my enemies, and it will not be on top of anything but cleanness. When I make the choice, God provides the love. There will be no hypocrisy.

That night, I confessed all my unlove, and God forgave me. Wonderful! That did not make me loving, but it did make me clean. It brought me to a position from which I could choose to love. If I had decided to love those prostitutes in the presence of my sin, I could not have done it. But I was forgiven. From a clean position, I chose to love them. I said, “God, You had better meet me before I meet them, or it is going to come out phony.”

When I confessed my sin and chose to obey the commandment, God gave me a great love for these people¾His love. God’s love does not condone sin, so I did not condone their sin. But now I could see them as those for whom Christ died.

How does this apply to loving your wife? Let’s start with this question: When does a woman need loving the most—when she’s lovely, or when she’s unlovely? When she’s unlovely. When is she likely to get love the most? When she’s lovely. Women know that. That’s why they deck themselves out to be attractive, especially if they can’t get beauty on the inside. Peter told women not to do it that way. “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight” (1 Peter 3:3-4). The hidden beauty of the heart shows on the outside.

A wife wants to be beautiful for her husband, but the husband should recognize that loving her will make her beautiful. The more she is loved, the lovelier she becomes. The less she is loved, the less lovely she becomes. Men marry a woman because of how lovely she is. “Wonderful! Look what I’m getting!” They tell her how beautiful she is, how lovely. A few years later, they wake up in the morning and look at her, and she doesn’t look lovely, act lovely, or talk lovely. If you only loved her because she was lovely, and now she is not lovely, you might be tempted to say, “I don’t love her anymore, so we’ll have to break up.”

Love your wife because she is your wife. Loving her will make her lovely. It is your responsibility to love her into increasing loveliness. You are responsible for how lovely your wife is; and that loveliness is, in part, a function of your love for her. If you say, “No, she is not lovely anymore, so I love her less than I did when she was lovely,” that will make her less lovely. Now she’s less lovely, so you love her even less, which will make her even less lovely… That is how people get divorced.

Respect works the same way. When you don’t respect your husband, he becomes less respectable. So, you respect him even less, which makes him even less respectable… Respect your husband, not because he is respectable, but because he is your husband. The respect is owed to him because of his office as husband. A husband does not have to be respectable to be respected. In fact, a wife’s respect will make him more respectable. It is amazing how a man can measure up when his wife starts pouring on the respect; it is food to him.

Love has to do with the lover, not the person to be loved. Respect has to do with the respecter, not with the person to be respected. We have it turned around. We say, “You’re not lovely; I don’t love you. You’re not respectable; I don’t respect you.”

Our love comes from the love of God. He provides an unlimited supply that we can plug into. As we receive and give by grace, by choosing to obey God, God gives us the love and respect we need to give our spouse. This great love of God through us for our wives makes our wives lovely. When a wife respects her husband, he becomes more respectable. When a husband loves his wife, she becomes lovelier.

God made us to be loved, and He made us to be respected. Women want to respect their husbands, men want to love their wives, but if you say they have to earn it first, that’s works righteousness. This should all be grace. You are representing the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, no woman wants to have a guy say, “I love you for ‘real’ reasons. You are the ugliest, homeliest, mouthiest woman I know, and I love you!” She’d tell him to get lost (and rightly so). Nevertheless, that is the kind of love you are going to want when you are homely and mouthy. You don’t want to hear that in the courtship (you don’t want to ever hear it), but you do want your husband to love you that way. You want him to love you to make you lovely. Jesus Christ loved the Church to cleanse her with the washing of water by the Word so He could present her to Himself as a spotless bride. When you love your wife as Christ loved the Church, she becomes lovelier, and you get to present her to yourself.

God made a great, big emptiness in man that needs to be filled with respect, and a great, big emptiness in woman that needs to be filled with love. The husband might begin to think the hole in this woman is a bottomless pit. How do you ever get it filled? It’s like pouring water down a rat hole—you run out of water before you run out of rat hole! Men will run out of love before they get it adequately provided. What do you do when you run out? Get more love from your unlimited source of love—God. You are not giving this love from a fixed quantity.