Love Your Enemies
October 2, 2007
Dear Friends,
Jesus said to his disciples, “Love your enemies.” (Matt. 5:44) If there is ever a Bible teaching that separates those who are merely giving lip service to discipleship from those true believers, this is it. Loving your enemies is not natural. We could even say that to truly live this way is supernatural for it can only happen as God transforms our hearts. Loving your enemies makes a declaration that no statement of faith or creed can make – that the doer thereof has been transformed into a something new and unique by the power of God. The person who loves their enemies has truly been transformed by the sacrifice of Christ who while he was hanging on the cross prayed for the very men who were in the process of taking his life.
We may want to dismiss this passage. We might say something like “well, this is an ideal that no believer can really attain in this life. This is hyperbole.” If we say that, we are wrong. Jesus continues “bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.” To follow this example of doing good to them and praying for them is a prerequisite to being a child of God. When we hate those who hate us, we can hear the echo of what Jesus told the Pharisees in another passage and apply it to ourselves – “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.” (John 8:44)
God is not asking us to do anything that He is not already doing. God loved the world enough to give His son for it. He loves the world enough to give blessing to both the righteous and the wicked. Jesus reminds his disciples of that point by saying “for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”
Loving some people is not the answer. Loving most people is still not the answer. Jesus dismisses this selective love when he says “if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?” Even the lowly tax collectors who were about as bad as you could get in Jewish society loved their friends and family. How does this declare God working in your life to simply love those who love you? It doesn’t. True discipleship is loving everyone; even those who hate you and despise you. It is seeking their greater good while at the very same moment they seek your destruction. It is desiring their salvation while they look forward to your condemnation.
Jesus started off this topic by repeating a proverb that was quoted among the Jews: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.” This mimics so much of what the world still teaches today. Wars between nations are operated on this principle. Businesses often operate on this principle with competition. Sports teams all too frequently operate on this principle. Even ecclesial disputes too often imitate this axiom. Let us not forget that is was the “religious” Jews who created this self-justifying saying to begin with.
Friends, this is the way of man, but it is not the way of God. Loving your enemies is the hallmark of discipleship. It is a way to measure ourselves on how far we have come and how far we need to go.
Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. (1 John 4:7,8)
Have a great week,
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