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Love Your Enemies
Luke 6:27 - 36
Last week we began to look at what Paul calls the greatest internal
force in all creation; love. This week we need to make a rather specific
and probably painful application of what we've been learning; we're
going to talk about loving our enemies.
We have a lot of ground to cover, so let's get right to it. Listen with
me to the words of Jesus from Luke 6:27 – 36
We should probably begin with a definition; what do we mean by enemy.
Jesus gets us started, In vs. 27 when He defined an enemy as someone who
hates you. Regardless of how you feel about them, if they hate you, you
have an enemy.
In vs. 28 He expanded the word enemy to include those who curse you and
mistreat you. People who use their words to hurt you or their actions to
harm you are your enemies.
In vs. 29 He said an enemy is someone who uses violence against you or
steals from you. They respect neither your property nor your body.
In Matthew's account we find two more ways to think about enemies.
Matthew 5:41 mentions those who force you to what you do not want to do,
Vs. 44 mentions those who persecute you.
If we stopped right there, we'd have a pretty expansive list. But if we
think a little deeper, we can expand the definition even more.
An enemy is anyone who hates you, but he is also anyone you hate. That
can be someone you share a house with. Or used to. She could be a
stranger in traffic; a rude customer in your store or an unfriendly
clerk where you shop.
A neighbor who is hard to live nearby. Your ex-spouse's new mate. Your
ex-spouse. Even you current spouse.
Parents, children or siblings in families with a long history of
relational warfare. A boss who treated you unfairly. An employee who
accused you.
A teacher who seemed to have it in for you. A student who made your
classroom difficult. A colleague who undermines you or takes advantage
of you. The other woman. Or man. The person who stole your childhood
through abuse or neglect.
An enemy is anyone who has hurt you physically, emotionally, or
spiritually.
Ali Ibn - Abu Talib, the son-in-law of Mohammed the prophet, wrote a
book titled A Hundred Sayings. One of his sayings was, "He who has a
thousand friends has not one to spare. And he who has one enemy will
meet him everywhere."
So when Jesus talks to us about how to love our enemies, we should
listen. But once you hear what Jesus has to say, I wonder if your first
reaction is anything like mine? Which was pretty much, "Jesus, have you
lost your mind? Love your enemies? Do good to them? Speak well of them?
Show kindness? Give to them?" I'd much rather return evil for evil,
cursing for cursing, and meanness for meanness. And that's just for the
guy with 21 items in the express lane in the grocery store.
I grew up in a loving Christian home. We had our share of quirks and
dysfunctions, but never once did we fear our parents. Except maybe that
one time when we took a cattail and put it under my Dad’s pillow to see
if he was really allergic to them or not, which he is.
And there was the time I was practicing throwing my Chinese throwing
stars into my bedroom wall not noticing all of the little holes that
they left behind. That didn't go over very well.
And there was the time Trae and I skipped the sermon after we served on
the table to go to the store and get some candy and a coke, lost all
tract of time and showed up 45 minutes after church was over. Other than
those moments we never feared our parents.
Maybe you did, though. Or still do. The people who were supposed to
guard your innocence, took it. The people who were supposed to be your
protectors were, instead, predators. Now here's Jesus telling you to
love your enemy.
So let's be sure we understand exactly what Jesus is and isn't
commanding us. Jesus isn’t trying to legislate our emotions. He isn't
telling us how to feel. Jesus doesn't care how we feel and that’s not
because he doesn't care about our feelings -- he cares deeply. It is,
rather, that how we feel about our enemies is irrelevant to how we
behave toward our enemies. When we let our emotions determine our
actions we become slaves to a most fickle, unpredictable god. Jesus
wants to liberate us from the tyranny of our emotions. This is a
gracious liberation.
Jesus is talking verbs, not nouns. Nouns don't do anything. They just
sit there. Verbs vibrate. They move. They cover ground. They radiate.
They initiate. Love is a verb. And verbs don't feel; they do. Jesus is
telling us what to do about our enemies. We are empowered by doing. And
in the doing our feelings change.
So what does Jesus tell us to do? Rather than trying to parse the
particulars of His instruction, let's organize what he teaches us into
three categories of response.
First, Jesus instructs us to respond to our enemies with practical
assistance.
Stephen Olford tells of a Baptist Minister during the American
Revolution named Peter Miller, who lived in Pennsylvania and was friends
with George Washington. But Miller had a bitter enemy named Michael
Whitman, who did all that he could to frustrate and humiliate the good
reverend. One day Mr. Whitman was arrested for treason and sentenced to
die Peter Miller walked seventy miles from Philadelphia to plead for the
life of the traitor.
General Washington said to Miller, that he was sorry but their
friendship was not enough to pardon the life of his friend Michael
Whitman.
“My friend!” the old preacher said, “He is the bitterest enemy that I
have.” And when Washington realized that Miller had walked 70 miles to
offer practical assistance to an enemy, he granted the pardon. Miller
and Whitman didn’t become bosom buddies after that. But they were no
longer enemies.
Jesus gets specific when he talks about offering practical assistance to
your enemy. In VS. 30 he says to give. In VS. 35 he says to lend. He
isn’t talking about wishing good things on our enemies or feeling happy
if something wonderful happens to them. He sets his teaching in the
concrete of life experience.
You don't have to feel good about someone to do good for them. But doing
good has a strange effect on how you feel. About them. And about
yourself. Offer practical assistance to your enemy .
Second, Jesus insists on verbal affirmation. “Bless those who curse
you.”
Let's be honest. There's nothing quite as satisfying as a good insult.
John Jacob Astor's wife once said to Winston Churchill, "Winston, if you
were my husband I should flavor your coffee with poison."
Churchill replied, "Madam, if I were your husband, I should drink it."
Congressman John Randolph and Henry Clay met on a sidewalk in
Washington. Clay said, "I, sir, do not step aside for a scoundrel." To
which Randolph replied, "On the other hand, I always do." And stepped
aside.
An envious actress congratulated another actress on a book she had
recently written. "I enjoyed it," she said, "who wrote it for you?" The
author answered, "Well, I did and I'm so glad you liked it. Who read it
to you?"
If you can be ready with the right quip at the right time you feel very
fulfilled but all to often we spend the next 4 hours thinking, boy if I
had the opportunity again I would look them straight in the eye and say…
You see that’s the kind of response we usually love to give when someone
insults us, but it isn't how Jesus responded to his enemies.
Peter says, "When they hurled their insults at him, he did not
retaliate." 1 Peter 2:23
Instead of verbal retaliation, Jesus commands us to engage verbal
affirmation.
He uses the word “bless." I think: we hear the word “complement”. It's
not quite enough to respond to an insult with, "Hey, nice tie."
Besides sounding like a smart-alek comeback, it doesn't even approach
the significance of the word "bless.”
In their wonderful book, The Blessing, Gary Smalley and John Trent
define a blessing as “ a spoken message of high value, a message that
pictures a special future, and an active commitment to see the blessing
come to pass.” (p. 27).
When you bless someone you communicate to them that you recognize their
value as a human made in the image of God. You not only wish for them a
positive future, but you actually picture it. And in doing so, you
affirm that you will do all in your power to see that special future
come true for them.
It's tough to respond to an enemy with verbal affirmation. It requires
me to do the hard work of looking for something good in a person I've
determined to be the very incarnation of evil. But there is enormous
power and dignity in replying to an insult with a blessing.
We’re not dragged down to our enemy's level. We take the emotional heat
out of the moment and create an atmosphere where tempers can cool. And
we emulate Jesus who prayed for the forgiveness of his enemies even as
they danced around his cross cheering his death.
This would probably be a great time to insert some discussion about a
specific verse in Luke 6:29. "If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn
to him the other also”
Few verses have been more misunderstood than this one. Jesus is not
commanding us to stand there and let someone pummel us with fist after
fist to the face. In fact, this verse isn't even about physical
violence. It's about an insult.
Matthew 5:39 reports Jesus words here more specifically "If someone
strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
Okay, follow me here. Most people are right handed. So a right handed
punch is going to land on the left cheek Jesus isn't envisioning an
Evander Holyfield jab here. For a right handed person to strike you on
your left cheek, he has to back hand you. A back handed slap isn't
intended to do physical damage. It is intended to insult. Jesus is
talking about how to handle insults. If someone insults you, don't
insult them back.
In his book, Engaging the Powers, Walter Wink tells the story of a South
African mother who was walking with her children down the sidewalk one
day. A white man approached them and, as he passed, spat in the woman's
face.
Without an ounce of bitterness in her voice the woman said, “Thank you.
And now for the children.”
The man was so ashamed of his behavior he apologized and hurried away.
I'll bet he never spat in a black woman's face again.
Far from being a command that makes us vulnerable targets of vicious
enemies, Jesus command to turn the other cheek, to respond to insult
with blessing, actually empowers 'us. We behave with dignity and those
who would curse us have no choice but to treat us that way.
Finally Jesus commands us to Spiritual Intercession.
Pray for your enemies. There is no more powerful response to an enemy
and his insult than to say, "I am praying for you.”
What you are really saying is, You know I could take this matter into my
own hands and respond to you in all the ways humans commonly respond. I
could lash out in a verbal attack or a physical assault. I could find a
hundred different ways to hurt you. But I choose, instead, to place it
in the hands of God. And because he is the impartial judge of all who
live and breath, He will do what is right.
Now that's not a threat. But it is a frightening thing to think that
your enemy is talking to God about you.
And it’s also a hopeful thing. God was able to build a bridge of mercy
between his holy self and sinful humanity. If He can bridge that gap, he
can span the short distance between two sinners who are at odds with one
another.
So what happens when we Follow Jesus' commands on responding to our
enemies in love? Jesus promises two things:
First, he says, "Your reward will be great." He doesn't specify what the
reward will be, but I'll bet we can trust Him that it will be better
than we can imagine.
Second, he says, “You will be children of the Most High.” When you
respond to enemies with love, you are acting like your father in heaven.
Choosing retaliation over mercy, violence over blessing, or hatred over
love is to choose to win the game of survival of the fittest over
humbling yourself to Christ.
When we strike back at our enemies, when we respond to evil with evil,
we identify ourselves as disciples of Darwin, rather than as disciples
of Jesus. Walter Wink, again, says “If we wish to correspond to the
central reality of the universe, we will behave as God behaves -- and
God embraces all, even handedly." (p. 267).
Another author who's written quite a bit about responding to violence
and enemies is Miroslav Volf. He knows what he's talking about He's from
Croatia and the greatest test of his faith has been how he responds to
Serbs.
In his book Exclusion and Embrace, he asks a stunning question: "What
if, on the last day, the question we are asked isn't, 'Have you followed
the rules,' but rather, 'Have you shown mercy?'"
We are not for sure what questions God will require us to answer about
our lives here, but we do know that we will have to give account for
every idol word spoken.
We read in Matthew 12:36 "And I say to you, that every careless word
that men shall speak, they shall render account for it in the Day of
Judgment.”
Ten years after World War II, a West German Christian met with some
Christians from Warsaw, Poland. He wanted to know if it would be
possible for a group of Christians from Germany to come to Poland to
apologize for the brutality inflicted upon the Poles during the war.
The Polish Christians, to a man, refused to even consider such a
meeting. "The wounds are still too fresh," one of the men said, with
considerable pain in his voice. "Every stone in Warsaw is stained with
Polish blood from a German bullet or bayonet.”
The German Christian accepted their answer, and asked, “Before I go,
could we say the Lord's prayer together?” and the agreed to his request.
They all began to recite the beautiful prayer found in Matthew 6, but
when they got the part that says, and forgive us our debts, as we
forgive…," there was silence.
No one could go on. Then, the Polish Christian who had been the most
vehement in his rejection said, "This is difficult, but if I cannot
begin to forgive, I cannot pray the prayer.”
A year later, the groups met. The healing had begun.
Jesus’ teaching found in Luke 6 is some of the most difficult teaching
in the Bible. It goes against everything that the world has taught us
about sticking up for ourselves, and being a man. But to harbor a hatred
toward an enemy is not only unlike Christ, it is soul killing. It's like
choosing a poison for your enemy, then drinking it yourself.
We have been called to be better than the world. We have been called to
imitate Christ.
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