Love Your Enemies?
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. . .’” Matthew 5:43-44
I was leading worship for our preschool students and reminding them that Jesus loves them every day, all the time. Each child had a beautiful smile on their face until I said that Jesus wants us to love others because He loves them. One little boy frowned and responded, “Even Jesus doesn’t love my little brother when he hides my truck so that only he can play with it.”
This is one of the hardest commands I know. Love our enemies? Love someone who has deeply hurt us, or someone we love. That kind of love stretches us beyond our limits.
Yet this truly is Jesus’ command for you and me. It gets to the heart of the good news of Jesus. It shows that God’s love in Christ undermines our natural way of thinking and feeling. Christ changes this by replacing our natural hatred with His supernatural love.
We cannot possess such love without Christ. I can’t; you can’t. On our own, we will keep on hating people who have hurt us, or those who have done despicable things. We do not have the capacity to love our enemies, but Christ does.
In Romans, Paul wrote that “while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son” (Romans 5:10). This verse is a short summary of salvation in Christ. We were once the enemies of God, but Christ reconciled us to God so that now we are beloved children.
Christ reconciled an entire world full of enemies to God. So, He can surely handle the reconciliation needed between us and our enemies. But we will have to ask Him for that supernatural love. It will take a prayer something like this:
God, in our own strength, we cannot forgive or love our enemies. Give us the love that Jesus showed by choosing the cross to reconcile us to You, that we might be reconciled with our enemies for Jesus’ sake. Amen.