2005-03-11
Good Morning Treasured Ones,
This morning I’m led to write about another difficult subject that Christ took up in His Sermon on the Mount, loving one’s enemies. We all wish that everyone we encounter would be friendly and that interactions with them would be trouble free. Perhaps that will be the way it is in heaven, but surely our experience tells us it is not that way on earth. Christ addresses this issue in MT 5: 43-48. You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your friends, hate your enemies.’ But now I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may become the sons of your Father in heaven. For He makes His sun to shine on bad and good people alike, and gives rain to those who do good and to those who do evil. Why should God reward you if you love only the people who love you? Even the tax collectors do that! And if you speak only to your friends, have you done anything out of the ordinary? Even the pagans do that! You must be perfect-just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
We must remember that Christ is Jewish, and thus, was raised in the society of His own people with their culture, practices, and attitudes. That’s why it helps to look at the OT, so we can see that God’s teaching really isn’t really being inconsistent here. LV 19:18 is the first of many places in the Bible where we are told to, “Do not take revenge on anyone or continue to hate him, but love your neighbor as you love yourself. I am the Lord.” The problem is that our Lord Jesus addresses in this “love your enemies” passage going against human fleshliness, not against the Father’s teaching in the OT. The way that many humans ran with this was to assume it also meant hate one’s enemies. God never said that at all! I remember meeting a lady many years ago who I thought might turn out to either reject me or be an enemy. She was very aloof whenever I greeted her. Then, I prayed about this, because I knew it was likely that she and I would be thrown together often in the course of what we were doing. Then, the Lord gave me the idea to invite her out to lunch. I was floored when she accepted my invitation. As our time together proceeded, it dawned on me that acting aloof at times was her way of protecting herself from people she didn’t know. I found her to be very sweet and very emotionally needy from having been raised in an emotionally dysfunctional home. From that day to this, we have remained friends. This lady has many wonderful talents, which she uses to serve the Lord. Once she gets to know you, you discover that she has a very engaging sense of humor too.
The Psalmist, in PS 139: 21-24, wrote about his attitude about God’s enemies. “O Lord, how I hate those who hate You! How I despise those who rebel against You! I hate them with a total hatred; I regard them as enemies. Examine me, O God, and know my mind; test me, and discover my thoughts. Find out if there is any evil in me and guide me in the everlasting way.” We can see from this passage the assumption that humans added on to the “love your neighbor” command in Leviticus that we should hate our enemies. In the case of PS 139, we are seeing righteous hostility toward those who are God’s enemies.
When Christ tells us to “love our enemies” He is outwardly giving mankind a mid-course correction. He is saying that the human spin on “love your neighbor” to include hate your enemies is not in keeping with the Father’s will at all. David gives us an extraordinary example of the Father’s way with his continuing attitude toward Saul, the ousted king of Israel who in the throes of what I believe to be bouts of depression bordering on psychosis, chased David, trying to kill him. 1 SAM 18: 12 tells us, “Saul was afraid of David because the Lord was with David and had departed from Saul.” Later in 1 SAM 24: 2-7, Saul decides to relieve himself in a cave in the course of his trek with 3000 soldiers to find David. David happened to be hiding in that very cave and had a prime opportunity to kill his pursuer. Instead, he secretly cut a piece of cloth from Saul’s robe, waited for Saul to leave, and convinced his own men not to kill the deposed king. David showed the same attitude toward his enemy that God wants us to show toward ours today.
Our Savior makes the point in MT 5: 46-47 that loving our enemies for the sake of getting something we want back isn’t real love at all. That’s what the unbelieving tax collectors did. There is no virtue in that kind of love. Then He goes on to say that pagans speak only to their friends, and doing that is nothing out of the ordinary. Christ is challenging believers to take a step out of the ordinary, something that goes against the natural self’s inclinations. What pleases the natural self doesn’t please the Spirit in this context. Our Lord often asks us to step out of our comfort zones, and loving one’s enemies certainly qualifies. The very last verse in this section can, if not accurately understood, cause some confusion. The word “perfect” used in MT 5: 48 doesn’t mean everything about the person obeying this teaching must be perfect. If that were so, then we would already be in heaven having been glorified. Instead, it refers to spiritual maturity. It refers to emulating God’s ability to dispense blessing to everyone without partiality.
PRAYER: O Lord, how often You direct us to do things which come hard to us! And yet, we know as we learn more about You that Your commands and motives are never anything but purely righteous. Your greatest desire is for us to return to Your side in heaven for eternity, a life of blissful fellowship with You. In Your infinite wisdom, You know the only way for us to do this is to mature in our faith in Christ and to become faithfully obedient to Your teaching. Your patience and compassion in the laborious process of our sanctification is nothing short of amazing. Your unselfishness in the sacrifice of Your Son on the cross to give those who will listen and believe the opportunity for salvation is unparalleled. We stand before Your mighty throne today as imperfect sinners pleading for Your help in going against the temptations and pressures of our natural selves. We all have people who don’t like us in our lives. Christ commands us to love them, just as we love our best friends. There are times when our efforts to show this love will be spurned, when these enemies will do evil to defeat us, and when they will cause us to suffer. And yet, we must not hold a grudge against them, take revenge against them, or hate them. You have promised us in RO 12: 19 that You will adjudicate this evil behavior. We should not usurp Your right to be the judge of it. We are brought to the place where we must put our trust in You. My own experience is that You have never broken a promise or abandoned those who love You. David knew this, which is why he placed his trust in You where Saul was concerned. David is a great example of how powerful You are at transforming one inwardly by the renewal of his mind [RO 12:2]. We offer You praise and thanks for being the righteous and awesome God that You are. In Christ’s holy name, amen.
Next week, the Holy Spirit has directed me to write about a crucial understanding that God means for us to have. He wants us to know the real relationship between the God’s laws and the Covenant of Grace. He wants us to know why we as believers with transformed hearts thirst, both inwardly and outwardly, to know how to be righteous in challenging situations. There is important comfort from the word of God that we must bear in mind when dealing with perceived enemies. PS 9: 10, 12, “Those who know You, Lord, will trust You; You do not abandon anyone who comes to You…God remembers those who suffer; He does not forget their cry, and He punishes those who wrong them.” Our God doesn’t lose interest in us, abandon us, or allow wrongdoing to go unpunished. He tells us to trust Him, because He alone knows exactly what is the right action to take and has the power to take it. His timing is perfect, even through we sometimes wrestle with His not righting wrongdoing at the time we think He should. We must understand that God’s perspective is so much broader and more accurate than ours. One other reason for loving our enemies: setting an example for others by our godly behavior. This example might actually cause someone who starts as our enemy to be brought to the place where the Holy Spirit can give him faith in our Lord. That’s not always going to happen, but the potential is there for this. We can take great comfort in knowing that the Kingdom of God is now, in the hearts of the truly faithful. LAM 3: 40 tells us, “Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord. Christ Himself leaves us with LK 7: 20-21, “Some Pharisees asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God would come. His answer was, ‘The Kingdom of God does not come in such a way as to be seen. No one will says, ‘Look, here it is!’, or ‘There it is!’ because the Kingdom of God is within you.’”
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn