Love Your Enemies
I recently had a conversation with a dear sister in Christ who was discouraged by some of the evil things going on in her state and community. The plots of man against the word of God should grieve us all. If you love God, you hate what tramples His perfect truth underfoot. Most of what we see and hear these days is connected to these evil plots. All the suffering and chaos we see is born of one problem. Sin.
We can be assured that these schemes do nothing to prevent God’s will from being carried out. (Psalm 33:11) Our hearts, however, are still grieved for those who have decided to contribute to these efforts and do Satan’s bidding. “If they only realized what blessings they are missing out on,” we often think. As instinctual as it may be, we should not allow the anger we feel to develop into hatred toward our enemies. They have a soul that God longs for just as much as he longed for ours. Their evil deeds, not their person, should be the subject of our hatred.
That’s why Jesus taught to “love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father 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 5:44-45 NKJV)
Although we are commanded to abhor what is evil and cling to what is good (Romans 12:9), let us never hate the wandering soul. Our hearts should be burdened for precious souls who face eternal separation from God and the redeemed. Sometimes we’re tempted to totally isolate ourselves from our enemies and build a wall around us. There’s no question that we should protect our minds from being influenced by evil, but if we only make an effort to love those who agree with us and have no interaction with those who hate us, are we doing what Jesus expects us to do? The simple and scriptural answer is no. It’s easy to love those who love us, but the real test of faith is loving those who hate us and hate the truth.
Jesus taught “if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:46-48 NKJV)
We cannot allow our zeal for good to fill our hearts with hate toward those we are commanded to love, or ignore them. We fight our enemies with truth and love. We overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21) Jesus requires that we do good to those who hate us. What a challenge! Obeying this command doesn’t come naturally and doesn’t make sense to the human mind. Fighting with truth and love rather than carnal weaponry and hatred takes a lot of training in the word, but there is a grand, eternal purpose behind it.
In carnal warfare, the goal is to physically conquer the enemy. Not so in Christian warfare. Soldiers of Christ are ordered to convert their enemy (Mark 16:15-16) so they are an enemy no longer! We’re fighting to gain brothers and sisters. Every lost soul is an enemy of God whether they intend to be or not. Why? Because the lost are in their condition because of sin. God wants to have a relationship with everyone, but sin prevents that from happening. “God is Light and in Him there is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5)
Fighting with truth and love to win the souls of our enemies will expand the borders of Christ’s kingdom. We must work earnestly so that King Jesus may release one more soul from the chains of deception, pain, and suffering. That’s why Jesus commands us to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, do good to those who hate us, and pray for those who spitefully use and persecute us. If we don’t show people the love of God, they won’t know what they’re missing until it’s too late. What a dreadful thought it is to consider that the way we treated someone, or the fact we ignored them, kept them from seeking their Creator.
- Eric Bullock, Evangelist
