“But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, 28. Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.”
Jesus warned His disciples that the world would hate them because the world hated Him. This meant that they would have enemies. Jesus’ promise to His disciples applies to us too, as we can see today. This means that we will have enemies. I think that some of the things that are being said against Christians who take a stand today proves this. But Jesus did not make it easy. He guaranteed that we would have enemies, but that we cannot claim them as enemies. Why, because in our text, Jesus told His disciples, and us, what they/we should do about our enemies. Jesus said, “But I say unto you love your enemies.” The Greek word used here is Agapate (ah-gah-patey) It is from the root word, agape, which is the same word used for love in John 3:16. This means that we are to love our enemies as God loves them. (Hey, I didn’t say it would be easy.) God loves our enemies as well as He loves us. Agape love is unconditional love. One of the conditions that we normally put on loving people is that they return our love. This is not how God loves us; therefore, that is not how we are supposed to love others. Jesus did not say that we could not disagree with our enemies. Jesus certainly had disagreements with those who chose to be His enemies. At one point Jesus called his greatest detractors, scribes and Pharisees, a bunch of snakes. That didn’t mean that He didn’t love them, and He proved it by dying on the cross for their sins as well as for all others. Jesus said, “But I say unto you….do good to them that hate you.” Wait a minute, does Jesus mean that we are not only to love our enemies but to actually do good for them? You read it right. That is exactly what Jesus said and what He did. What we naturally do when someone expresses hatred for us is to return the hatred to them. For example, if we take Jesus at His word, if someone tells us that they hate us, and act on that hate, we will go home, bake them a cake and take it to them. Would this be difficult to do? In a word - yes. As I write this, I am thinking about how I would react if someone told me today that they hate me. Well, since I just read this, and made a suggestion of what to do, I might bake them a cake – or get Mary to do it. But on an ordinary day when I had not read this text, and written about it, I would struggle as to how to react to this avowed hatred. I imagine that you would too. However, we need to take Jesus seriously on this point, because there is so much hatred in the world today. Churches are not exempt from this either. If we want to be the witnesses that we should be to our lost world, we will “love our enemies and do good to them that hate us.” Jesus said, “Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.” This means that we should praise those who curse us. We would need to say something good about them in return for what they said bad about us. I don’t see a lot of this, even among Christian people. If we did as Jesus commanded here, we would not have nearly as many church fusses as we do. (We might have more funerals, because a lot of people might die of surprise if this happened frequently. J) Jesus also said that we should “Pray for them which despitefully use (us).” I know the wisdom of this from personal experience. Whenever I have had people choose to be my enemies, I put them at the top of my prayer list and pray for them every day. It is very difficult to hate someone that you pray for every day. If you are having a difficult time with someone at your work, or at your church, pray for them every day. It is important that we take Jesus seriously about loving our enemies, doing good for them, blessing them and praying for them. The world needs to see God’s kind of love being practiced by us. This would be real Christ like behavior, and it would be a Christ like witness. Bro. Joe
1 Comment
chip
12/20/2014 12:10:58 am
That's a tough one .Thanks
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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