Love Your Enemies?

Mat 5:43-48  "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...You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. ESV


Jesus said some awfully hard things. It was commonly accepted that loving our neighbor and hating our enemy was completely acceptable. But Jesus told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. He said that our Father in heaven makes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and unjust, therefore that is the example we are to follow.

By giving the example of how God loves us, providing sun and rain to everybody, Jesus let us know that He's not talking about feelings of affection. He is talking about what we do in regards to others, whether they are friends or foes. Just as God provides things that are needed by everybody, so we ought to give to others what they need regardless of how they treat us.

But being kind to those who are unkind to us isn't easy. It doesn't come naturally. If someone insults us we want to insult back...or maybe punch them in the nose.

We want to live by own own standards. We want to be just "good enough" to be acceptable to those people whose opinions we care about. But Jesus doesn't go along with that. The only standards that matter to Him are God's standards. He calls on us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.

Can we succeed in being perfect? No. We're sinners and even when we try our best we still fail. And often we won't even bother to try. We'd rather sin that do things the way God wants them done.

So, should we give up and just go on sinning against others and against God? God forbid that we should even think such a thing.

Jesus, who did live perfectly, was the perfect spotless sacrificial lamb to die in our place. We can be acceptable to God because Jesus paid for our sins. For that we can be eternally thankful.

If we seek to cease from sinning and sometimes fail, we can and should confess our sins and Jesus will forgive us and cleanse us (1 John 1:9). But if we intentionally sin whenever we feel like it, then we'll be declaring by our actions that we don't consider Jesus to be our Lord. Such behavior and attitude will hopefully result in chastisement by God. If it doesn't, then a person should question whether he or she has ever really been saved and adopted by God as His child (Hebrews 12:8).

Loving our enemies, being kind to those who are unkind to us, isn't what most of us want to do. But that is what Jesus did. We were His enemies. We didn't want Him to tell us what to do. But He loved us so much that He suffered and died for us, to atone for our sins.

Jesus has much to say to us that we might not appreciate hearing or obeying. But He's the boss. He knows what He's talking about. He knows what is best. And He loves us more than we can imagine. Let's thank Him for what He's done. Let's seek His help to do what He wants us to do. Let us express our gratitude by our words and deeds.