Love Your Enemies?
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. ––Matthew 7:12
We heard it all the time growing up. From our grandmas to our moms, and regularly in church: Treat others as you would like to be treated. Otherwise known as the Golden Rule. The exact wording is from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (above). Luke 6 provides another version of this part of the same sermon:
Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? … But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. ––Luke 6:30-31, 35
This is the part we don’t talk about a lot. Did Jesus truly mean we should love our enemies?
Yes. But why? Because when invite God to expand our ability to love others—even those who are very different from us—it also expands our ability to be used more by God. When we come against opposition in the opposite spirit—the Spirit of God—it does more than just change people’s minds. It changes their hearts—supernaturally.
Jesus said even the demons believe; it’s nothing special to believe in God as even the kingdom of darkness does. What we are called to do is something that can only be born in God’s Kingdom of light: not only acknowledge our enemies, but love them. And THAT can only happen through a surrendering of our minds and wills and an acceptance of His supernatural ability to change our natural inclination.
How do we do that—extend mercy to those who oppose us? Jesus tells us, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). When we pray for our “enemies,” it forces us to consider our own faults—and it softens our bitter, hard hearts. Does this mean we allow ourselves to be victimized? Definitely not. But it means that when we can surrender our enemies to God in prayer, it suffocates our bitterness and mutes our resentment. Those toxic emotions are the REAL enemy—the operators used by Satan to keep us bound up in hatred and animosity.
As God’s men in Christ, nothing in this life is fatal or final. Is that “frenemy” or estranged relative our real enemy, then? No. Anything that keeps us from fulfilling God’s will and destiny is the enemy. Bitterness, resentment, hatred. Kill those enemies and we suddenly have the capacity to “love” (pray for, surrender, release) our human enemies. It’s crazy, but true.
Father, give me the wisdom to discern between the real and the false, the temporary and the eternal, and fulfill Your purposes for me.
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James 2:19