GodSprings - 17, March, 2017

Love your Enemies. Is that for Me?

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 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.

Matthew 5:43-45

Roger Carswell, author, evangelist and radio preacher in his book, How Small a Whisper, relates an amazing story of a Christian family's response to tragedy:

“In May 1987, 39 American seamen were killed in the Persian Gulf when an Iraqi pilot hit their ship, the USS Stark, with a missile. Newspapers carried a picture of the son of one of these seamen, a shy five-year-old boy, John Kiser. He was standing with his hand on his heart as his father's coffin was loaded onto a plane to take him back to the U.S.A.

His mother said, "I don't have to mourn or wear black, because I know my husband is in heaven. I am happy, because I know he is better off." Later on, she and young John sent a letter and an Arabic New Testament to the pilot of the Iraqi plane, addressed to: "The man who attacked the Stark, Dad's ship, in the hope that it will show that even the son and the wife do not hold any grudge and are at the same time praying for the one who took the life of our father."

The Jews were dead wrong in Jesus’ day. And Jesus is presenting to them a new teaching. He presents them the truth about love.

What Jesus was telling to the Pharisees is very much applicable to us today. Jesus was saying something that they didn’t do. All those who have injured us physically or emotionally or mentally we hang a token of that injury around us wearing it around our neck so that we will remember every time we have been wronged, and none is ever removed until full retaliation is gained. That was the Pharisees way. And that sure is our way. But that’s not God’s way.  

Jesus tells us that the test of Christian character is not how we treat our friends but on the contrary how we treat our enemies. Today we don’t even love our neighbours. Just like the Pharisees we too don’t know who our neighbours are.

Jesus turned the tables. Through the story of the Good Samaritan Jesus asked the Pharisees and is asking us, “Are you a neighbor?” Because if you are a neighbor, then anybody in your path is going to get your neighbourly love.

What Jesus is saying is that love is an act of service to one in need and not necessarily an emotion. And so he says, love your enemies. Bless them that curse you and do good to them that hate you. That’s the practical outworking of it. It is not so much the feeling.

You may have an enemy and in your heart, you know there is no great human affection. You know there will be never a great friendship and you will never accept him as a person in your family. To such a person Jesus says with your mouth you will have to bless him with what you say and with your life, bless him in what you do. This is love of action and not love of emotion. Paul too when he tells about love in 1 Corinthians 13 he says that love has only qualities of action. Love is not emotions as it is seen today but love is action.

This Lenten season can we through prayer and forgiveness in our hearts repay injury with blessing and hate with love?