One of the most confusing commandments that God has put in the Bible is to love our enemies. This goes totally against our nature, which tells us not only to hate them, but to get them before they can get us. Yet God must have a reason for this commandment, just as He does for all the others.
While loving our enemies may seem impossible, we must realize that God hasn’t asked us to do anything that He himself hasn’t done. There was a time, before receiving Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, where we were all enemies of God. Perhaps there are people reading this article who still are. Yet God’s response to that wasn’t to treat us like enemies; but rather, to send His Son to die on the cross for us, so that we could be restored into the right relationship with Him.
But God demonstrates His own love towards us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5:8
That sacrifice on the cross wasn’t just about forgiving us from our sins, it was about reconciling us to God. Forgiving our sins wasn’t enough reason for Jesus to die, if it didn’t bring about reconciliation. God’s ultimate plan was to turn His biggest enemies into His own children. God wanted that so much, that He was willing to make that sacrifice.
For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. – Romans 5:10
When God asks us to love our enemies, God is not asking us to do anything unreasonable, even though it may sound that way to us. He is merely expecting us to show His character, rather than our flesh nature. While that may be difficult to do, our measure of success demonstrates just how much we have allowed God to work in our lives, transforming us into the image of Christ.
God is Love
To start with, “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). This is not the same as saying God has love or God loves. Love is the defining characteristic of God. It is His essence. It’s what caused Him to create us in the first place. He wanted us for His children, so that He could pour out His love on us.
When we say God is love, we’re really saying that everything about God and everything that God does is love or at least based on love. That even includes such things as creating Satan and Hell, as strange as that might sound.
God admits to having created Satan in Isaiah 54:16, calling him “the destroyer.” The following verse is well known, telling us that “no weapon formed against you shall prosper” (Isaiah 54:17) The two together raise the question of why God created Satan and how it can possibly be to our benefit. Yet it is. Having Satan as an enemy, causes us to grow in ways that we would not, if we didn’t have an enemy. If we are ever going to mature as believers, then we need Satan or someone like him causing problems in our life, allowing us the opportunity to learn how to overcome those problems. Just remember, God has promised that we will overcome Satan; his weapons against us will not prosper. We are “More than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).
In a similar way, God’s creation of Hell is a demonstration of His love, even though it may not seem like it. As much as God wants us all to love Him, God won’t force anyone to be in relationship with Him, who doesn’t want to be there. Hell is merely a place without any presence of God. The “punishment” meted out there is the remorse of realizing that the Bible and all those who preach it, is truth. Yet Hell allows those who don’t want God an option, which they choose of their own volition, rather than God forcing them to go to His heaven, which they would not appreciate anyway.
But the real bounty of God’s love isn’t shown through these things; but rather, through the myriad of ways He shows His love towards us; those of us who are considered to be His adopted children.
The very world around us demonstrates God’s love, as He created it with everything we need to have, in order to have a blessed life. Unfortunately, we have not treated this amazing gift well, introducing sin into it and reaping the consequences of that sin. Yet the world is amazingly resilient to the attack of sin; and while sin has brought about sickness and death, most of us still survive, having all our needs provided for us.
There is no greater expression of God’s love towards us, than the death of His Son, Jesus Christ. The Bible makes this extremely clear, saying:
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5:8
Notice that God didn’t wait for us to get our act together and stop sinning, before sending Jesus to die on the cross. Good thing, as we never would have made it. He had His Son die for us, as an act of faith, believing that we would accept Him. He loved us so much that He reached down into the grave, to pull us out in our sin.
We must realize that every sin we commit is an affront to God. It is as if we intentionally tried to offend Him, each and every time we sin. Yet God is more than willing to forgive us for that, to the point of sending His own Son to the cross for us. He knew we could never make it on our own, so He took it upon Himself to do what was necessary, even if that meant Jesus dying the most painful and horribly tortuous death that evil men could devise. That’s God’s love in action.
Having paid that price, so that He could forgive us of our sins, washing them away forever, He is quick to forgive and in that process, casts our sins as far as the east is from the west (Psalms 103:12), washing us in the Blood of the Lamb, to cleanse us forever (Revelations 1:5).
Do Ye Likewise Also
The foundation of our loving our enemies is found in God first loving us, even while we were still His enemies. God is merely telling us to follow His example and act towards others, as He has acted towards us. That may not be easy for us to do, but it is not an unreasonable request on His part.
There are many things that we can include in this idea of loving our enemies; but forgiveness is central to them all. Regardless of what they have done, we need to forgive, just as we have been forgiven. It is impossible to truly love them, while we still maintain bitterness towards them in our hearts.
This does not mean that we need to go to that person and forgive them. Our forgiveness is a private thing, between us and God. It is quite possible that they don’t even realize what they have done to offend us and make them our enemies. That’s actually much more common than we think. If that is the case, then going to them, explaining what they have done against us, so that we can “forgive them,” is likely to cause more hard feelings, rather than overcoming those hard feelings.
We must realize that forgiveness is often a process, rather than a singular event. There’s a tendency to think that we can forgive and it’s all over. It seemed that way at the time. But five minutes later, our minds start playing the tape all over again, showing us every time and every way that they offended us. What do we do then?
It’s easy to think, “I’ve already forgiven them, so that’s not the problem.” Yes, you have forgiven them; but then the thought came back, aided by the enemy, offending you all over again. The solution to that, is the same solution to the first time you were offended; forgive them again. In fact, keep on forgiving them, over and over again, until you can think about them and what they’ve done, without feeling any offense. Only then will you know that you have finished the act of forgiving them.
Of course, forgiving isn’t the whole thing; it’s just the first step. But we have to forgive before going on to anything further. It’s pretty much impossible to act in love towards someone, as long as you are carrying offense in your heart.
Jesus made it very clear that we were to love those people who had been our enemies. We find Him talking about this in more than one gospel:
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, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of the Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and unjust. – Matthew 5:43-45
But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you. – Luke 6:27-28
There’s a lot in those verses, but “love” is the key. Not only are we told to love our enemies, but Jesus was very specific about how we are to love them. The word that is used for “love” in both of those passages is the Greek word “agape,” which is God’s unconditional love. Jesus goes on further in the Gospel of Matthew, explaining this.
For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? 48 Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. – Matthew 5:46-48
Jesus is expecting us to love as the Father loves, to show that we are different from the world. Isn’t that what He was saying, when He gave His disciples the “new commandment” in John 13:34-35? He explained that by saying, “By this all will know that you are My disciples” (John 13:35).
So, love, specifically loving our enemies, is supposed to be a defining characteristic of being a Christian. It should be so obvious, that the world not only recognizes our love but recognizes us as being followers of Christ, because of that love. If we don’t love like that, then we are acting like the world and there is nothing for the world to use, in order to see that we are different, as we look just like them.
Love requires forgiveness, which is why we started there. But we also started there because forgiving someone will help to change our feelings towards them. Many people want to wait until they feel like forgiving, before taking the step to forgive. But it works the other way around. Forgiveness is an act of the will, not the feelings. So, when we choose to forgive and take that action, it affects our feelings in general, as well as our feelings towards that person.
Our love doesn’t stop there though, according to Jesus; He told us to “bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you” (Matthew 5:43). We need to take a look at each of those three statements.
First, blessing those who curse us. Today, we tend to think of blessing someone as doing something for them, such as giving them a gift. While there is nothing wrong with that definition, in the time when Jesus told that to His disciples, He was talking about speaking a word of blessing over them; a declaration that good things would come into their lives. The Jewish people had several times in a person’s life, when they would specifically speak blessings over family members, such as at their circumcision, their bar mitzvah, and at their wedding. His listeners would have understood Him to be saying that they should extend this custom to declaring the same sorts of blessings over their enemies, even if those enemies had spoken curses over them.
Secondly, he said to do good to those who hate you. This one is at least as challenging as the first, if not more so. We can speak blessings over someone, without having to get close to them. But to do good to them, we generally have to get right in their presence, giving them the opportunity to spew hate at us with either their words or their actions.
Even so, He tells us to do good, something that had a lot of meaning to the Jews, as their life was centered around doing “mitzvahs.” Although a “mitvah” is often translated as a “commandment,” because obeying a commandment of the law is a mitvah, it is more literally translated as a “good deed.” The life of practicing Jews is built around doing those mitzvahs; although not normally towards enemies. This command from Jesus must have hit home hard, as he was telling them to do the good that they would normally do towards friends and families, towards their enemies instead.
Finally, we have the commandment to pray for those enemies. This is probably the easiest of the three to obey, as we can always find something to pray about for them; most likely a prayer that sounds something like, “Get them, God.” But in light of this being about loving them as God loves them, I don’t think that’s the type of prayer we’re supposed to pray. It is much more likely that we are to pray for God to bless them in some way; doing good for and to them, rather than “getting them” in some way.
Why, Just… Why?
God doesn’t tell us to do anything without good reason; often without several good reasons. In this case, it might seem difficult to find the reason on our own. Yet if there is one thing that people in this world are looking for, it’s love. Just as the song said, “What the world needs now, is love, sweet love.”
Of all the characteristics of God, the one that is the most attractive, especially to this world, is His love. Few outside the Body of Christ are even aware of this love, because they have never seen it in action. That doesn’t mean that God has never acted in love towards them, just that they haven’t seen it. They may have seen the results of that love; but they didn’t even recognize that it was God doing that thing for them, so they couldn’t recognize it as a result of His love.
For these people, the only manifestation of God’s love they can see is the love that flows through us. When we act in love towards them and then explain it as being something that we do because God tells us to, they can’t help but see God’s love in action. While this shows that we are different and that God has changed us, it also shows these people who our God is and what His love looks like. If there’s anything that can draw them into a relationship with Jesus Christ, that’s it.
A number of years ago, I was preaching in a church on Long Island, New York. That morning, the Lord had me preach about His love. Unbeknown to me, there was a Hindu man in the congregation that morning, who was there checking that church out. His daughter had accepted the Lord and He wanted to find out what that was all about. I preached to Him about God’s love and then demonstrated God’s love to him, embracing him when he came to the altar, even though he reeked of beer. That simple expression of love was enough to motivate that man to accept Jesus Christ. He had been needing love and when love was shown to him, by one he reckoned as an enemy, he received it with gladness.