Matthew 5:43-45
THE SCENARIO AggappH practices something that does not come naturally. They do justly, they love mercy, they walk humbly before their God Jehovah—yes, all of that, and more: they love their enemy. Such is the disposition of AggappH’s heart, to love even their enemy. And from that disposition follows the justice, the mercy, and the humility mentioned. A love like unto God’s love, His way of loving, unconditionally, is centrally seated in AGGAPPH’s heart. How did that kind of love get into AggappH’s heart? Jehovah placed it there (1John 4:7-8) and helped a willing AggappH understand it and cultivate it.
.
In the outworking of this scenario please consider the following:
Sensitivity Points Under Consideration
2. Who is your enemy dear reader, why are they your enemy? Do you hate them?
3. The bounds of necessary, practical self-protection.
4. Understanding AGAPH love (=the way God loves), cultivating it.
5. Whence AGAPH love in a human being?
1. Spiritually, Satan embodies the term “enemy,” he is the self-proclaimed enemy of God and humankind. Clearly, we do not love this wretched enemy, and that means no prayer, no sympathy, nothing along those lines. God’s decrees regarding His enemy Satan and his future are perfect, and they shall stand, and Satan shall forever burn (Matthew 25:41). He was knocked off his perch at Calvary by our Champion and Savior Jesus—he lost his gamble—and it is just a matter of time before this arrogant, killer-enemy is forever banished and punished for his defiant, determined antagonism and penetrating hurt aimed at God and humankind. Please notice that Satan is a liar and a murderer (John 8:44); evil enemies do those sorts of things: ‘…ye will know them by their fruit…’. Generally, it is not true that an enemy is necessarily evil, it is a matter of perspective and certainly fallout. Satan is the exception, he is our enemy, and he is evil; this unclean thing means to do us serious spiritual and otherwise harm all the while mocking and testing our God Jehovah. A sinner, by definition, is the enemy of God (Romans 8:7, Colossians 1:21), and hence a sinner does Satan’s bidding and is to varying degrees in league with him.
Oxford Languages defines “enemy” so: “Actively opposed or hostile to someone or something.” Opposition may be good; hence an enemy may serve a good purpose, but hostility is never good.
2. Let us take inventory of our human enemies, is there more than one? Do you hate them? Let’s trim the list down to one enemy. Please explain why you think this person is your enemy. Have they been hostile toward you and done you harm, you or a loved one for that matter? Do they stand in the way of your goals? What single, specific reason makes them your enemy? What would it take either coming from you, or from them, for them not to be your enemy any longer? Can you picture yourself loving them at some point; what would it take for that to happen?
3. When enemies are hostile and threaten physical harm, some means of protection must be pursued, and there are God-instituted legal channels available for us to do that—this is God’s design (Romans 13, “Romans Chapter Thirteen Commentary”). Or perhaps blatant and costly wrongs must be addressed via litigation. But what about physically non-threatening situations like, say, mockery and slander, which are different sorts of hostility that our enemies might assault us with—what to do in the context of loving our enemy? Here is where animosities can escalate and get out of hand but for a biblical response, which is essentially a non-response following the pattern of Jesus. Jesus did not revile in kind when reviled (1Pe 2:23). Praying for such enemies is hands-down loving them, and the first order of prayer oftentimes involves asking God to just simply help us get into the frame of mind and spirit to pray for these enemies—that is a big first step. And then patience, and not least perseverance in prayer must follow whilst waiting for God to do His work with us and the enemy. This is much easier to write about than to put into practice, granted, but God can get the job done with all parties and let us not doubt that whilst we persevere in prayer for a given enemy and wait patiently for Him to work things out. It may take longer than one wishes, oftentimes it does, but we must wait for God to work things out and—let Him teach us something pertinent in the meantime. Praying for a given enemy pleases God because one can hardly love an enemy better than lifting him or her before God in well-meaning, sincere prayer. One might say, ‘…Lord, why are they doing thus and so to me, am I understanding it correctly…’? ‘…Lord, I would like to fire back, but guide and cool my temperament so that I may begin to love them even as you love me a sinner…’. ’…Lord, please guide my brain and my heart and my lips; lead me to your Word and counsel me there…’, and so forth. God knows that our emotions are strong motivators—He knows that full well—and He takes all things into consideration because after all He is God; and He will love us throughout our conflicts with our enemies—whom He loves by the way—and when we are beseeching Him to do it His way, the loving way, we can mark it down it will get done His way. And all shall be well, for that is how Jehovah God operates—we know that to be true looking at the written record of His work in the lives of people, and by looking at the living record of His work in our own lives day to day. Hard as it is to swallow sometimes, our enemies are in our lives for a reason, it is not by accident that they are there.
In another sense, what about war, those kinds of enemies; are we to love them too? Yes. But consider—suppose one kills an enemy on the battlefield, that hardly sounds like loving them. Nevertheless, one must kill on the battlefield or else be killed and/or put one’s comrades at risk of being killed. War is a different context, and it is certainly not God-instituted. Yes, one may kill an enemy on the battlefield, and still love them—it is the height of irony, bordering on the absurd almost; it is the absurd height to which Sin has “lifted” humankind.
Finally, does not God kill the unrepentant sinner and unbeliever. i.e., His enemy, in hell, yet He loves the sinner, to the extent that He laid down His life for said enemy such that said enemy need not perish (John 3:16, “A Letter of Invitation”)?
4. Quintessential love, the same is the love of God, and it is unconditional (AGAPH love in shoe leather). Consider please: while we God’s creatures were yet His enemy (=sinners), He loved us (Romans 5:8, 1John 4:10). God hates the sin directed squarely at Him but loves His enemy the sinner. It is a tall, tall order, but we God’s people must do the same—we must love unconditionally—and so doing we shall by default love our enemies. Unconditional love means no agendas, no bias, no prejudices. The same is certainly ideal here precisely because it is AGAPH love. One cannot attain to that ideal unless God Himself indwells one and moment by moment, day by day, births one unto said ideal. It follows that attaining said ideal is only possible for a believer in and a follower of Jesus Christ, for such a one has living within them the Holy Spirit of God (John 14:16, 26, 16:7-13, Acts 13:52, Romans 5:5, 8:26-27, note Galatians 5:22 ). It means that the believer is held to a higher standard and is taxed with a greater responsibility in the exercise of God’s AGAPH love ideal, for the believer is informed—he/she knows the enemy-love mandate—and has within them the means to attain to it.
5. In keeping with the previous point 4, AGAPH love, the way that God loves, comes by way of the Holy Spirit of God—it is not natural for a human being to love like that, we are inclined to hate, and not love, our enemies.
Practice makes perfect as the saying goes, and by His providential teaching Jehovah God might bring more enemies before us than we care to have precisely to cultivate His manner of love in us through a tough regimen of training played out in the fiery furnace face-up with our enemies. But we get something back from God, as is always the case with Him, in that while we may be perplexed and vexed by our enemies, if we utilize their presence in our lives to become more and more like Jesus, we will in fact become more and more like Him—perfect (Matthew 5:48), perfect like unto very God, even the God of love, indeed, loving like He loves. One can hardly attain to anything greater than that, it is unequivocally the Ultimate. Imagine, heaven, our destination, our future home for eternity, is populated by such blessed spirits; no more evil and hurtful enemies going forward into eternity future in heaven for the saints of God. Surely, with God by our side and in our heart, we can weather our enemies’ storms for a little while longer down here in the land of the living, loving them as best as humanly possible, led by the Spirit of God, in this way following in the footsteps of Jesus, until we are called home to that blessed heaven where we are assured by the faithfulness of Jehovah God to His Word that love and joy and peace dominate and rule. It is hard to imagine a sublime existence such as that but that is what Scripture promises the saints of God (Revelation 21:4-5).
6. Forgiveness suggests having incurred wrongs. That is the rub—the wrongs. And depending on the depth and severity of the wrongs, forgiveness may be some very difficult grace to extend to the perpetrator, to the enemy. Clearly, one cannot love an enemy without first forgiving them. It follows that the first step in the way of loving an enemy is forgiveness. That is essential. That is the pattern that God lays down for us to follow. He tells us repeatedly in Scripture that He loves us, but we are His enemies—sinners, every one of us. And so on the Cross is found His forgiveness for our sins and…His attendant exceeding love for us. One cannot aspire to the necessarily lofty love-of-enemy mountaintop without first clearing the no less lofty forgiveness-of-enemy foothills; the ascent to the mountaintop begins in those rugged foothills.
7. Dear Christian friend, how goes the struggle with your enemies? Are you being bashed, beaten, and bruised and yea, maybe even worse than all that? If you wish, take a moment bloodied friend in Christ and fix on a Cross in your vicinity or simply in your mind, and shift your focus to Jesus’ enemies, which include you and me, and see Him there dying for His enemies (Figure 1). No greater love has one for another than to lay down their life for them, but what shall we say of that love if it is an enemy for which one dies as Jesus did for us? How great His love for us is indeed. We have been forgiven and are exceedingly loved by Him, and as His people we must forgive our enemies and love them even as Jesus forgave us in keeping with His love for us. It is difficult for us to do that because God built certain defense mechanisms into our person designed to protect us from hurtful enemies, and so it is natural to want to resist an enemy, to fight back and whatnot—loving an enemy does not come naturally to say the least. But we are in the process of transformation unto the Spirit of Christ by that very Spirit. We are going places that the natural man ever resident inside us is not familiar with and balks at. We are not quite there yet; the retooling, educational process of learning how to manage what comes natural over against what is required by God continues down here in the land of the living as we in our spirit are being carried along by the Spirit of God unto Christlikeness. While the process continues, it is understandably challenging for us to always love our enemies and others per se perfectly, in the mold of Jesus—we do, and we shall, stumble here. Nevertheless, let us be carried along by the Spirit of God toward ever greater love for our enemies, let us not resist God toward that end. And with each enemy that God allows into our lives He brings another opportunity for us to grow and be like Jesus, another opportunity to bear our personal cross unto forgiveness of that enemy, unto loving our enemies, thus glorifying God in solidarity with Jesus our great savior God and the Lover of our Souls.
Praised be your Name great savior God, lover of my soul even whilst beforetime I was your decided enemy. Thank you for bearing long with me and loving me throughout; thank you for redeeming and saving my impoverished soul my Lord. Amen.
ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES
Figure 1. Vicarious Judgment. Jesus dying for His enemies, sinners, whom He loves.
WORKS CITED AND REFERENCES
“A Letter of Invitation.”
Jesus, Amen.
< http://jesusamen.org/aletterofinvitation.html >
Figure 1.
Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/falco-81448/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=535155">falco</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=535155">Pixabay</a>
“Romans Chapter Thirteen Commentary.”
Jesus, Amen.
< https://jesusamen.org/commentaryrom13.html >