The Conundrum of “Persons of Good Will”

If you have been a Christian for any length of time you have likely met people who clearly are not believers but who act better then many Christians you have known. These are the family, friends and co-workers who seem more naturally loving, generous and good-natured than some of the people with whom you attend church. It is not difficult to become puzzled by such individuals. Aren’t the true children of God supposed to be the nicest people around?

I once heard a pastor refer to these unbelieving, but lovable human beings, as “persons of good will.” The phrase clicked with me and I’ve often used it since. Yet the question still remains in my mind as to how those who are still trapped in darkness can seem to radiate so much light, sometimes even more apparent light than I. It seems to be a theological conundrum. But is it?

When C.S. Lewis was faced with such acquaintances in his own day, he concluded that the important question to ask would be: What would Christians be like as people if they remained unconverted, and what would the unconverted be like if they were to become Christians? He concluded that some difficult Christians might have turned out to be far more difficult if they stayed in their natural state and some kind pagans, once brought to saving faith, would become far kinder.

This is an intriguing thought, and a valid point, but it still does not address the theological ramifications behind the Agnostic you work with who is one of the most pleasant people you have ever known. Just what accounts for that “pleasant-ness”?

I believe the answer lies in the realm of “common grace”, a term describing God’s proclivity to bless both the just and the unjust (or, perhaps better stated, the justified and the unjustified.) We know from Scripture that our Lord sends his rain to equally water the fields of the good and the wicked. His love is such that it is shed upon the entire race of creatures made in His image. Perhaps this “love shed abroad” also manifests itself in the imputation of a certain, varying degree of goodness in unbelieving people.

It is sound biblical doctrine that all that is good within us, apart from saving grace, is not in any way meritorious towards our salvation. Still, I believe that through common grace there is some good imputed to most if not all human beings. That good, however, must be recognized as an unearned gift from God and one that also is completely unrelated to saving faith in His Son. Further, it must be considered that such “natural goodness” most likely departs forever from the soul who never receives the infinitely greater goodness that comes only from the redemption offered to all human beings in Jesus Christ.

This has important implications for we who have known that redemption and who have persons of good will in our lives. It is vital for their eternal welfare that we not equate their apparent virtue with any less of an absolute need for salvation than that of our nasty boss or our malicious relative. As nice as some non-believers may be they are still either actively or passively rejecting the claim of God on their lives and thus are just as much in need of the witness of the Gospel as any other lost person who crosses our path. We dare not mistake this manifested “good will” in them for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the saved because one is only emblematic of the temporary and, in a sense, the self deceiving. The other is eternal life itself.