“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” (Matthew 5:43-46 ESV)
The love which we are to have for all people, including for our enemies, is the love which comes from God and which prefers what God prefers. For the Christian, it means to prefer to live through Christ, doing his will, in his power and strength, and for his purposes. It means to prefer all that is holy, righteous, godly, morally pure, honest, faithful, and obedient to the Lord, and to love like God loves us. And Jesus Christ loved us enough to give his life up for us so that we can be free from slavery to sin and obey God.
This love is not human love, which is based in our emotions, in how we feel, or in how we feel about a particular person. This love is based in God and in who he is, for he is love, and in all that he stands for and how he models his love for us so that we know how we are to love others. So this is not a kind of worldly or fleshly love. This kind of love is willing to sacrifice our own lives and reputations to show others the kind of love Jesus showed us. And he spoke the truth in love we needed to hear for our salvation from sin.
So, this isn’t just about being “good deed doers,” and showing kindness and generosity and thoughtfulness to those we know hate us, and who treat us as though we are the enemy. This isn’t just about forgiving those who do us wrong, although it is that, too, or just praying for them. It isn’t just about turning the other cheek, with the potential of them harming us more, in order to show them love and forgiveness. For we can do all those things, but we need to be sharing with them the truth of the gospel of our salvation.
For Jesus sets the example for us in how we are to love our enemies. Not only did he feed the people and heal their diseases and raise the dead and cast out demons, but he told them the truth about their sins, and he told them that he was their answer for what ailed them. He told them that he was the Christ (the Messiah) who was to come, and who had come, and he told them that only through him could they be delivered from their sins and have eternal life with God, but they had to yield their lives to him.
So, just saying here that if we are going to love all people, including our enemies, with the love which comes from God, and which prefers what God prefers, then this needs to include us sharing Jesus with them, but not the “made for TV” kind of Jesus, but biblical Jesus. We need to pray for “divine appointments” and open doors to share the love of Jesus with them, but biblical love which not only does kind things for people but which is also willing to tell them the truth of the gospel for the salvation of their souls.
And this may involve speaking to people who, in the past, have treated us spitefully and with hate and with rejection and persecution, and as though we are just trash for them to discard and to throw away. If the Lord says to “go back in there,” we have to do that. If he says to share the gospel with someone who fought against us and mocked us and criticized us in the past, then we have to do that. For God sets up divine appointments for us, and we have to be willing to receive them, not knowing how we will be received.
And that is part of what it means to love our enemies. And our enemies are not necessarily people who we are against, but who are opposed to us and to who we are and to what we do. But some of them could be very “hard to love” kind of people because of how they treat us. But then look at Jesus’ example. In that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. He did not die on that cross because of our goodness but because he is good, and he is love. So we love whether or not we are loved in return. That’s how it works.
[Matthew 5:43-46; Luke 6:27-28; Luke 10:27; John 13:34-35; John 15:12]
O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go
George Matheson / Albert L. Peace
O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.
O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to Thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in Thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.
O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to Thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.
O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from Thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.
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Love Your Enemies
An Original Work / February 8, 2025
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love
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