“But the greatest of these is [love]”  (! Corinthians 13)

“…love your enemies…”  (Matthew 5)

“Let love be without dissimulation…”  (Romans 12)

 

What is it to love one’s enemies?  How can one love one’s enemies? Is it even possible to love one’s enemies?  What kind of person loves their enemies?  Wouldn’t loving an enemy betray weakness or foolishness?

In this world the thought of loving an enemy is foolish, weak, and one would wonder why bother loving someone who hates you or opposes you or shows no love to you. The truth is these questions makes sense…to a lost person and they make sense to the Christ-ian because we were once lost.

Before we go deeper into this study, let me preface this article by saying one cannot use loving as an excuse for not being kind to others. Let me explain my point by telling you something that happened to me and something I learned.

We have preached and taught for years that one need not like a person in order to love them or show them Christ-like love.  I taught this once in a school’s chapel time. We told them that they need not like a fellow student in order to love them. After this a teacher at this school started saying that the doctrine of loving someone and not liking them is wrong and foolish.  This teacher said this often and repeatedly to the point that my daughters felt like the teacher was attacking them because of what I had taught in chapel some time back.

My daughters NEVER want me to interceed on their behalf when something is amiss. However, one time they did. They actually wanted me to confront the teacher that continued to speak against my teaching. I contacted the school’s principle and then pastor to let them know my plans of contacting this teacher.  They both told me to do what I needed to do.

The book of Proverbs tells us that it is a folly to answer a matter before hearing it out.  Reader I was about to fall into folly. I scheduled a meeting with the teacher and we set down and I spoke to him in a very direct tone and asked him to explain himself and why he has targeted my daughters for something I said.  It was tense.

This teacher that I saw as a bully, betrayed himself as a tenderhearted servant of Christ that has been misunderstood.  I betrayed myself as a man of folly that had answered a matter, in my mind, before hearing all the evidence. Instead of questioned this man in a spirit of brotherly love, I contfronted him in the spirit of accusation.

The man, the tenderhearted and good mansat back in his seath and put his hands on his head and said, ” I never meant to make your daughters feel that, I never thought about your message in chapel when I said what I said.  He continued to explain and I cut him off and said, “that’s find, you’ve explained and everything is done. I’m sorry for charging you as I did without more information,” and we hugged and all was fine.

This teacher’s reason for saying what he said about loving and not liking made perfect sense and I learned much. When this man was in school, kids would be nasty to him and others and would tell him they had to love him but not like them and this was their justification for nastiness. There is never a justification for nastiness or abusing one’s popularity to hurt and scar someone else. “Mean girls,”  “Popular kids,”  “Jocks,” and teachers and coaches that turn their head to bullying, etc., that abuse their status to exploit the unpopularity of others are the cause, are the reason that others kids go to gun shops, buy guns, and shoot their oppressors and innocent kids in school. However, that is not politically correct so strike that from the record….or not.

One cannot excuse meanness, nastiness, physical giftedness, or abuse of their popularity to hurt others and then say, “Well, maybe I’m not the nicest to X but I would give X a glass of water in Christ’s Name.”  This does not pass any Christ-ian character test  or excuse any means of evil or cruelty and kids can certainly be evil and cruel.

Onto our definition of Christ-ian love or loving one’s enemies….the what, the how and the why of it.

The What of loving an enemy:
First of all, we are enemies to no man. If there is any enmity between us and others it is on their part and not ours. This is the first thing we must understand. The next thing we must understand is,  we are not required to hate those that hate us.  The Christ-ian is not the person that returns evil with evil. The Christ-ian is the person that over comes evil with good.  To be clear, we do not reward evil with good, we overcome evil with good. Christ tells us to love our enemies and how to do it. Christ-ian love is defined as doing right, doing good, and being kind to all…all…all others regardless of their person or personality or their ways or their attitude or actions torward you. This is the what of Christ-ian or Christ-like love.

The How of loving enemies:
Christ explains the how of loving the enemy in His sermon from the mount.
* “And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.”
* “Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.”
* “[B]less them that curse you…”
* “[D]o good to them that hate you…”
* “[P]ray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you…”

The Why of loving enemies”
“[So] that ye may be the children of your Father which is in [H]eaven…”
* “For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye?”
* “And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others?”
* “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is [H]eaven is perfect.”

 

In Summary:
This may sound cold, but it is right and proper.  To love one’s enemy, one must know the enemy is merely a unit, A piece of the puzzle of life, the person is not the issue or the important aspect of loving one’s enemies, but the precept itself is important. We are not saying the person is not important because persons are always important for they bear God’s Image. I’m talking more of perspective and reason behind loving enemies. and the answer of how to love an enemy when loving an enemy does not make sense to us or we find it hard to fulfill the law of Christ, the new commandment of Christ, the Royal law, fulfilling the second table of the law.

The Christ-ian must look past the person and l;ook to the precept and here is the paradox, at some point you will learn to look past the precept and look at the person. An analogy from tv.  There was a show called “House MD.” The titular character was a genius of medicine annd human behaviour. He was able to help persons that others could not. One reason this character was so successful in his calling was he looked not at the patient, but the problem or the puzzle of the mysterious malady. This speaks to the success of Sherlock Holmes as well.

The Christ-ian that finds it difficult to love an enemy can be successful by following this pattern.  When we look at the Lord Jesus and His love what do we see?  How did He demonstrate His love?  Christ would demonstrate God’s love and power by showing kindness and healing others. However, it is rare that Christ ever had any further relations with those He healed.  There are a few cases, but generally speaking, Christ helped, healed…loved and moved on.  Christ did not stick around and become involved in every life of those He helped. He would say, “Go, and sin no more.” and they were gone.  He would say, “Go, and shew thyself to the priest” and they were gone. He would say, “Thy faith hath made thee whole” and then they were gone.

Do you see what love is, how love can work and why we are commanded to love all others?  There is one more reason we are to love our enemies, “But God commendeth [H]is love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  This another why we are to love an enemy. Another how is to die to self wants, and self wills, and self pride and promotion, and position.

Godspeed.