Perhaps my most shared tweet answers the age old question- why do bad things happen to good people? My answer- “That only happened once, and He volunteered.” The lesson, of course, is that apart from Jesus there are no good people. That whatever “bad” things happen to us, they all, on this side of the veil, are well short of the suffering we are due by God as rebels against Him.
When we emphasize the universality and the depth of the sin within fallen men, we are being faithful to God’s Word. Not once but twice we are told, “There is none who does good, no not one” (Psalm 14:3 and Romans 3:12). Yet, we have to confess that we regularly witness even unbelievers doing things that might be considered “good.”
We see unbelieving mothers who love their children well. Unbelievers are capable of laying down their lives for others, giving generously, speaking hard truths, fighting for justice. How do we explain this? As one might expect, the answer is found in differing ways we use the word “good.”
Every act of every unbeliever, however “good” it may be, is inevitably tainted with sin. While the act itself might be good, the motives will always fall short to some degree. Such acts are never done for the sake of the glory of God. It is in that sense that they cannot be considered good.
How though can the unbeliever have any act, as it were, “tainted” with good? How can there be any good in anything they do? Because of the image of God that remains in them. The love of a mother for her child is part of the image of God. Sin can sear the conscience, diminish a mother’s love for her child. But it will not, at least prior to death, utterly obliterate the image of God.
Humans were made to be little mirrors, reflecting back to God His own image. With the fall, every human image, apart from Jesus, because a mirror cracked. A cracked mirror still has mirror qualities about it. It is both crack and mirror. Our descent into greater sinfulness is an increase of the cracks and the shrinking of the mirror into smaller and smaller pieces.
When God grants us a new heart and we come to saving faith, when the Spirit indwells us, that process of sanctification begins to turn our cracks into mirror. When we are fully sanctified, at our deaths, we have no more crack, but are all mirror.
We should not only affirm the reality of the remnants of the image of God in the lives of unbelievers, but should give thanks for it. It is why the world is not worse than it currently is. It is why sometimes believing children are loved by unbelieving parents, why both unbelievers and believers are rescued from burning buildings by unbelievers. We have our battle between our old man and new. Unbelievers have their battle between the image of God and their fallen nature. By God’s grace, we will win. In God’s just judgment, they will lose.