Loving the Unlovely

by Mathew Block

Throughout the New Testament, we are repeatedly instructed to “love one another.” In one of these instances—when St. Paul tells us to “love one another with brotherly affection”—we are further instructed to “let love be genuine” (Romans 12:9-10). Which begs the question: what does genuine love look like anyway? 

G.K. Chesterton gives us one good definition in his classic book Orthodoxy. There he writes that “charity”—which is to say, abiding, intentional love—“means… loving unlovable people.”  

Such love does not come naturally to sinful humanity. In fact, much of the world today teaches the exact opposite about love. We are told to identify “toxic people”—even family members—and cut them out of our lives. “Don’t waste your love on those who don’t deserve it!” the world says. “Love is for those who have proven themselves lovely and loveable!” 

What blessed good news it is that God does not follow the same rules! For you see, we are all, as sinners, by nature unlovely. St. Augustine, in his homilies on 1 St. John, puts it this way: “Our soul, my brethren, is unlovely by reason of iniquity,” he writes. We are polluted by sin, deserving nothing but God’s contempt. Why should He waste His love on such unlovable creatures? 

But while love for the unlovely might not come naturally to us, it does to God—for He is love itself (1 John 4:8). “God is always lovely, never unlovely, never changeable,” St. Augustine writes. And yet, this great God of love loves us in spite of our unloveliness! For “what were we when He loved us,” Augustine contemplates, “but foul and unlovely?” 

God’s love, then, preempts our own; we love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19)—a love demonstrated through His own Son’s death and resurrection while we were yet sinners and unlovely (Romans 5:8). And that love transforms us. It makes us beautiful. It restores to us the image of God (Romans 8:29), and clothes us with His own loveliness.

On our own, we are not lovely. The beautiful image of God which was imprinted on humanity in Eden has been marred beyond recognition by sin. But God does not leave us in our disfigurement. He loves us anyway—and His love transforms us. God’s love finds what is unlovely, and by loving it makes it lovely. As C.S. Lewis says in The Four Loves: “For the Church has no beauty but what the Bridegroom gives her; He does not find, but makes her, lovely.” 

God’s love, then, preempts our own; we love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19)—a love demonstrated through His own Son’s death and resurrection while we were yet sinners and unlovely (Romans 5:8). And that love transforms us. It makes us beautiful. It restores to us the image of God (Romans 8:29), and clothes us with His own loveliness.

What is more, God’s love takes us—who are, by nature, not only unlovable but also unloving—and begins to make us able to love like Him (1 John 4:19). The Holy Spirit kindles in us the flames of His own love, enabling us to begin to requite—if only in part—the great love He has shown to us. He loves us, and we love Him in return. 

So it is that Scripture depicts the relationship between God and His people in terms of romantic love. “Behold, you are beautiful, my love,” God says to us, “behold, you are beautiful” (Song of Solomon 1:15). And we in love reply: “Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved, truly delightful” (1:16). God woos us—“Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away” (2:10)—and we do rise to follow Him. “I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets, and in the squares,” our soul replies. “I will seek Him whom my soul loves” (3:2). 

Not that our love is the important thing. “In this is love: not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). It is always His perfect love which awakens in us our own weaker love. It is always the love of God which makes possible our own love for Him and for our neighbour. 

In this issue, we reflect more deeply on the love of God and love for our neighbours. Rev. M. L. Smith meditates on God’s love and how it moves us to love others. Rev. Adam Chandler, meanwhile, reflects on one group of neighbours too often considered “unlovely” by the world’s standards—the homeless—and explores what the Church’s response of love for these brothers ought to look like. Finally, Rev. Kurt E. Reinhardt, invites us to remember the lost—the unlovely—every time we come to church, bearing them to God in our hearts and entrusting them to His mercy. 

Heavenly Father, on our own we know we are loveless and unlovely. Yet You in Christ have shown us love beyond measure, unsought and unearned. Kindle in us the flames of Your love, that we might learn to love You and to love one another as we ought. Through Christ, our Lord, Amen. 

My song is love unknown, My Saviour’s love to me, Love to the loveless shown That they might lovely be. Oh, who am I That for my sake My Lord should take Frail flesh and die? – LSB 430:1

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Mathew Block is editor of The Canadian Lutheran and the Communications Manager of the International Lutheran Council (ILC).

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