Loving Your Enemies

August 6, 2008.  Today is Wednesday, the middle of my work week.  This is the day I normally use to send out emails to the Singular Devotion group, and contemplate projects, activities, and topics for the class.

Today, I’d like to reflect on what it means to love your enemy.  I think before we can go there, we have to first love ourselves the way God loves us, then love our friends, and this has to happen before we can understand how to properly love our enemies.

First, seeing yourself as God sees you.  Wow.  How does that happen?  It happens when you recognize that God loves you so much that He sacrificed his Son as a penalty for your sin.  It happens when you recognize that God will never leave you or forsake you, and that nothing can separate you from the love of God.  It happens when you recognize that all things work for the good of those who love God, and are called by Him according to His purpose.  It happens when you recognize that He knew you before you were born, has numbered each hair on your head, and has plans to prosper you and not harm you, spiritually speaking.  It happens when you recognize that the God of our universe, the same God who made millions of galaxies and innumerable stars in our sky, is the same God who created us in His image for fellowship with Him and relationships with others.  Wow!  Again.

Once you accept these things as truth, and you realize you can’t measure the love of God, it begins to dawn on you how much He really cares about you and what that means to you on a personal level.  It means that He loves us so much that He weeps when we weep; He rejoices when we rejoices; and He feels every pain, every insult, and every rejection we feel.  He is always with us.  Until the end of the age.  Wow.  (I know, I’m repeating myself!) How incredible that He knows us so well!  How much more incredible is it that He forgives us EVERYTHING?  How incredible is it that once He has forgiven us, He places that sin as far away as the East is from the West?  How incredible is it that there is NOTHING we can do that He won’t forgive?

If you think about from the perspective of the cross, for those of us living today, every sin we would ever commit was in the future.  And yet Christ, knowing every sin we would ever commit, died in our place so that we would not suffer the penalty of sin.  He died in our place.  But the glorious news is that he rose from the dead and is living today!

So, now that you know about the magnitude of God’s love and forgiveness, let’s move on to loving your friends.  At first glance, it’s easy.  After all, how hard is it to love someone who probably already loves you?  Hmmm.  Let’s think about it for a moment.  Ever been betrayed by a friend?  You know, the one who swore to secrecy about something, and that person told everyone anyway?  Or maybe you have a friend who says or does thoughtless things to you, never realizing you were hurt by the actions or words?  Still feeling loving now?  Well, you should.  That is, if you understand the love of God.  Love covers all things.   It doesn’t mean you don’t confront the person about the behavior; it means you confront them in love because the relationship is so important to you that you would risk losing it to set it right.  And it’s all about being in right relationship, whether it’s with God or with a friend.  God loves us even when we are thoughtless towards our commitment to Him, or when we fudge a little about the truth because it suits our own purpose.  Of course, He confronts us about our behavior, but He does not abandon us because of it.  Are you guilty of abandoning your friends when their behavior is not perfect?  If so, are you perfect?  Would you appreciate being abandoned when you aren’t?  Neither do your friends.  Love them as God sees them and loves them.  Just do it.  It will happen naturally once you have practiced for a while.  : )

Now, the whole “loving your enemies” thing.  Far more difficult.  Normally, “enemies” would refer to “enemies of God.”  But, this blog is more focused on those we view as our enemies, the ones who mistreat us or disagree with us or don’t like us.

In these cases, our fleshly nature wants payback when we are wronged.  We want that person to suffer the way we did, and we certainly don’t want good things to happen to them.  After all, they owe us, right?  Hmmm.  I would agree we have a “right” to expect some kind of retribution when we are mistreated, but that doesn’t mean we have to act on it.  We can forgive, and in doing so, set aside our “right” to seek retaliation or revenge.  We can choose not just to forgive, but to then place that sin against us in a place that is as far away as the East is from the West.  We can choose to cover it with love, and move on.  On the other hand, we can choose to stew over it, replaying it in our heads over and over again, endlessly sharing with everyone how much we dislike that person and what they did to us, and then think of all kinds of ways we can punish that person for their behavior.  But, most of the time when we act like that, the other person is completely unaware of what we are feeling!  So, we then try our best to make that person feel humiliated and rejected, torturing them with the silent treatment or with what we think is witty-but-cutting sarcasm.  Unfortunately, that only reveals the state of your heart, and it’s not a heart for God!  It is a true judge of your character.  Wow.  And that’s not a happy “wow.” 

Okay.  Now, if you want to love your enemies, how do you go about doing this?  Easier said than done.  Remember the love of God?  That’s how.  Look at them with new eyes.  Look at them with the eyes of God.  How does He see them?  Does He see them as a lost person in need of a Savior.  Okay, so don’t hold them to the standard you hold a fellow believer.  Cut them some slack and get over it.  Move forward with some grace towards them.  Be kind.  Don’t return evil for evil.  Take what was evil (the sin done to you) and turn it into something good (try a kind deed towards that person).  It’s hard to hold a grudge when you are doing loving things for someone who has wronged you.  Remember that Jesus said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”  Be a friend to your enemy.  Hah!  I hear you blowing me off now, but wait and read a little further.  Jesus said to love your enemies, not me.  Let me share a small story with you.  I have worked with nearly impossible bosses.  They screamed, yelled, found fault with everything, and pretty much convinced me that I was useless at my job.  I wanted another job, any job.  I wanted to run.  But I didn’t.  I prayed, sometimes for months, that God would help me become the kind of person I needed to be in order to befriend them.  I began seeking out what was in their best interest – how I could help them shine in their own job.  I began to notice every time they did the slightest thing right, and let them know I noticed.  Soon, they (as as aside, I say “they” because I’ve had two bosses that were like this) relaxed and were less critical of me.  Then, the day came.  They were NICE to me.  Then another day came.  They were REALLY NICE to me.  We became friends.  For life.  Even though we had nothing much in common until they were saved.  Both of these two women have said it was my befriending them that caused them to look at me in a new light, trying to figure out what I was doing.  I was just doing what Jesus said to do:  love your enemies.  So it can be done.  The question is:  are you willing to put in the work such a change takes? 

Another way to love your enemies is to be kind and not respond in anger or seek retribution.  Ever.  Just let it go.  Forgive them the way you want to be forgiven.  It doesn’t mean you have to be friends with them, but it does mean you can’t seek to harm them because they first harmed you.  Just LET IT GO.  Get back to having peace and joy in your life.  No one can take that from you, except for your own sin, and if you fail to love your enemy, you are sinning.  And that’s not coming from me.  Talk to Jesus.  If He said to love your enemy, and His word is truth, then isn’t failing to love your enemy going against His word, which would make your actions sin?  Simple logic, right? 

Okay.  So a believer who wrongs you is a horse of a different color.  (Is that the right metaphor?  I can’t remember. . .) Does God see those believers as He sees you, a child of God who committed yet another sin?  Of course He does.  Then love them as a brother or sister in Christ.  Confront the behavior lovingly and with the intent to be reconciled to them.  Forgive them the way Christ forgave you.  I think it was John who said, “He who loves, loves God.  He who does not love, does not love God.”  And remove that plank from your eye before you address that mote in a fellow believer’s eye.  In God’s eyes, all sin is the same.  Sin is just sin.  No sin is greater than another one.  Different, maybe.  But not greater.  Your sin in failing to love a fellow believer because you now see them as an “enemy” is as wrong as whatever that believer did which made you see them as an “enemy.”

This is way longer than I thought it would be.  Sorry about that.  I’ll try to keep the future ones shorter.

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