Does the Bible make a distinction between Christian and secular love? John makes this startling claim in his first epistle.


  1 John 4:7-8 (NIV)
  7&nbsp; Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8&nbsp; Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.


If I am to take the obvious interpretation of this verse, then I must make one of two conclusions:


The act of loving causes us to be born of God, and thus saves us.
The act of loving is impossible unless we have been born of God.


The problem with the first, of course, is that it sets up an alternate, works-based mode of salvation.  This contradicts so much of the Bible, that I think we can immediately rule it out.  

The second is problematic (albeit, less so), because it claims that non-Christians are incapable of love, or at least makes some distinction between the character of Christian and non-Christian love.  This seems to contradict observation, because (in my view, at least) many non-Christians live just as lovingly and compassionately as many Christians.  I would find it hard to swallow that their love is somehow less authentic than my own.

So, how do we explain this?  What is John getting at exactly, and how do we reconcile it with reality?

I'm interested in answers consistent with the protestant tradition, and particularly answers that are consistent with Arminianism.
Taking a simple definition of love as 'desiring actual good for someone because you care for their actual happiness', we can see that love arising from faith, is different in nature to secular love.    Here are some of the differences:


Faith brings light and knowledge upon what is actual good, therefore it produces the desire of true good for others. Secular love may seek evil for others, through ignorance, although accompanied by human affection. For example, a wife might not want her husband to go to church and worship God (which is for his actual good) because in her ignorance she denies the value of it. She loves him and would rather that he stay home to his personal harm.
Faith produces love for God by believing in his love for us. Therefore the love that springs from faith, seeks to enjoy the highest good (God) and out of that spring, seeks good for men. Human love has self as it's goal, or at least just a few humans under the title friends and family, which is in many ways just an extension of our self-identity.  Although human affection can make someone care deeply for another and be attended with many sacrifices, like a Mother over her infant, there is no higher spiritual motive and spring lifting those emotions onto a higher ground, having a higher object that arouses them, namely the glory and goodness of God.
The love produced by faith endures and can't be defeated.  Human love often fails. Two people deeply in love hate one another a few years later.  Christian love continues and endures as it is accompanied with holiness and so can't be smothered forever in anger, jealousy, ambition, greed, etc. Rather in suffering and loss it often flutters with more peace, patience and inhuman endurance, growing more and more gracious as it lives under the awe of God's glory.
Love arising from faith is a fruit of a spiritual life by the direct working of the Holy Spirit in those whose hearts are filled with him.  Therefore there is a spiritual loving influence that animates human affections within a Christian so that the fragrance of Christ is an accompanying aroma into the love of a Christian.  The spiritual element is a communion with God whereby his divine loving nature brings the heat of his light into our emotions, so that our deepest yearnings become loving desires that are inexpressible even as our own sinful nature opposes that inward yearning of love.  Human love has no additional sense of a spiritual holy realm diffusing it's life into ours.  Human love is often mixed with the unholiest of passions and appetites within hearts driven about by their lusts like wild animals. 
Christian love causes actions not just sentiments. And this from faith, not mere self righteousness and a desire for the respect and love of others.


On each of the points I have raised I could add many biblical quotes but I did not want to create a thesis paper here, I had a feeling you are just looking for some overall concepts to divide the two.  But to leave a couple verses that illuminate principles above a bit let me just leave a few:

Even as a believer human love is not that great:


  If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (NIV, Matthew 7:11)


Human affection can go quite far, but still be secretly selfish based love:


  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (NIV, 1 Corinthians 13:3)


The Spirit produces Christian love:


  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, etc. (NIV, Galatians 5:22)


Before we were Christian we actually all hated one another because we did not desire eternal salvation for anyone, nor did we desire the only great and good life in God:


  At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. (NIV, Titus 3:3)


One could go on on on separating love produced by the Spirit and mere human affection, but I am sure we can start to see the diference.