I don’t know about you… but i find the hardest thing about the christian life is to love your enemies. The height of our sanctification is to be full of love, to be like Christ, to be like God… and God is love. Jesus gives us a very unwelcoming definition of love… one of those passages you just wish were not in the bible… one of those you’d rather just skim over…
‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven… For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?… You therefore must be perfect as you heavenly Father is perfect” -Jesus (mt 5:44-48)
I’ll be honest… I hate that passage. Well, it’s a love hate relationship. I hate it because i find myself unable to do it, and so all it does is reveal my depravity and sin. But I love it for the fact that i am then drawn to find grace from Jesus, both for my own salvation as well as the grace needed to love others.
Sometimes we just like our comfortable christian life… we aren’t all that concerned with growing… with our character, we just like the title, we like going to our bible studies and prayer meetings… but oh Lord, don’t mess with my character… God forbid the gospel make me grow up.
“God is more interested in our character than our comfort.”
The gospel is not a growth in facts, in knowledge, in bible trivia or social work… it is a growth in love. When we love, and love freely and deeply, we are most like Christ.
If you are like me, I like to ask for growth… but I don’t like God to bring circumstances in my life that actually “make” me grow.
Well i had a small opportunity the other day… let me share about this brief, but teachable encounter i had. It had been a long day, and now it was late, and I was heading home on Ukraine’s public transportation… these things called “mashootkas”…
A measure of grace filled my heart as I headed home, my eyes glazed over a bit as I was watching out the window at the passing city… It was a nice moment of reflection and communing with God… then i felt it just natural to start singing a bit. Not that loud, honestly, quite softly, i began to sing “Jesus Paid It All.”
“I hear the Savior say
Thy strength indeed is small
Child of weakness watch and pray
Find in me thine all in all
Jesus paid it all
All to him I owe
Sin had left a crimson stain
He washed it white as snow”
I was in the middle of some much needed worship when I then receive a nice little shove in the shoulder from the man next to me. It startled me… I was like, “What the heck?”
Safe to say my heart was no longer in a place of worship…
Then he starts raising his voice to me in Russian… it didn’t take much knowledge of the language, if any, cause i have none, to figure out this guy was telling me to shut up.
i was a little perturbed, for sure. Then I heard God say, pray for Him. “uh, no thanks God.”
But i couldn’t get it off my conscience, “Alright God, sure.”
I could just hear those scriptures circulating in my mind… “pray for those who persecute you.”
And so i began to pray… and i mean this guy was no happy camper, i thought he was going to punch me in my face. but i got my pray on…
then, in almost comical fashion, as soon as i started to be earnest in prayer for this man he started coughing and was having a bit of trouble breathing…. I thought, “uhh, God… is this You pouring down your wrath upon this man!” … maybe i should stop praying.
but i had a strange sense that God was moving in his heart…
The next thing i know he now taps me on the shoulder and begins through the use of russian and hand motions, to tell ask me if he could take me out for a beer, that he wanted to buy me a drink!!
I had to turn down the offer, but i was just a little stunned by the heart change of this man… i never said one word to him, but prayed for him, and he goes from wanting to slam my head into the window to having some sense of conviction and then asking politely if he can buy me a drink…
It was a small thing, but I believe God was trying to teach me about love, true love… the type of love He has for me, and the type of love He wants me to have for others.
Sure i can pray for the guy on the bus that gets upset i’m singing… but what about when those closest to me hurt me. Our greatest enemies are rarely the muslim extremists half way around the world, most often they are in our own house, our close community, our workplace.
God pointed this out to be a while back. I read this passage in matthew and I said, “God, I don’t have any enemies!”
Then He replies, “Who is the last person in the world that you want to pray for?”
“Ouch!” That will reveal the heart pretty quickly if we are honest with ourselves…
One thing i can’t stand is when people tell me to do something that they themselves don’t do. That just gets on my nerves. Not so here with Jesus. He is our constant example of love. He can tell us to love our enemies, because He lived an entire life of loving His enemies. Not five minutes here and five mintues there, and maybe a tough day or so here and there… He lived His life loving His enemies.
Every human being ever to live has been 100% in complete, violent opposition to Jesus. Ephesians chapter two declares us all to be “objects of wrath.” And Jesus, the God man, the One Who has ALWAYS existed, decided to put on a human suit and die for the very people that tortured and killed Him.
His most memorable, heart telling, love displaying words, as His flesh was ripped off, His appearance mangled beyond recognition, and nails were driven into His hands and feet, He cries with a depth of love we’ll never understand, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Does any other verse in the bible give us such a glimpse of the raw passion and love of our beloved Jesus? There is a universe of meaning packed into those words… the Great Divine, becoming nothing, becoming the refuse of the world… the Perfect One dying as a condemned, cursed, criminal… crying out, not at His killers, but to God… in prayer. Jesus turns to His father and prays for them… in the apex of His agony, in the greatest pain any human being has ever suffered, He prays to God. In that moment… He blesses!!
That…. is CRAZY LOVE!!!
That… is what I want!!
Can I ask us all, myself included, “Who is the last person you want to pray for?”
How are we acting or reacting towards those who have hurt us?? Is it your spouse, your father or mother, a friend, boss, coworker??
Let’s let the healing love of Jesus in by letting go of bitterness, and blessing those that persecute us. Let’s be like Christ… perfect in love.
