Do you have difficulties loving your enemies? Well, all of us do. Enemies are hard to love. If you have an honest-to-goodness enemy, if you have someone who doesn’t like you, if you have so-called friends who talk about you behind your back, and wish ill for you, if you know people who have hurt your loved ones, it is hard to love them. It is difficult to love those persons who seek to defeat you, those persons who say evil things about you. It is painfully hard, pressingly hard to love them.
There are a lot of other things we would like to do to our enemies, instead, like getting even or making them suffer like we have suffered. But Matthew 5:43-45 says something different. It says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”
Jesus wasn’t playing when he said those words. He was serious. Therefore, we have the christian and moral responsibility to seek to discover the meaning of those words, and to discover how we can live out that command, and why we should live by this command.
However, for us to love our enemies, we must begin by analyzing ourselves. We must begin with a look at self. This is the first and foremost way to come to an adequate discovery to the HOW of this situation. As outlined in Matthew 22:36-40 Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.
You see, to love your enemies requires you to love yourself FIRST. The fact that some people will not like you, may not because of something you have done to them. Some people are not going to like the way you walk; some people are not going to like the way you talk. Some people are not going to like you because you can do your job better than they can do theirs. Some will not like you for your achievements, your house, your clothes or simply because you are handsome or beautiful – but you must love them nonetheless.
A second thing that an individual must do in seeking to love his enemy is to discover the element of good in his enemy, and every time you begin to hate that person, and think of hating that person, realize that there is some good there and look at those good points which will over-balance the bad points. We are to Love our enemies -don’t hate them. Love our enemies – don’t despise them. Love our enemies – don’t kill them.
Jesus says it, and we have to. No getting around it. ‘Love your enemies’ is so easy to say, but so hard to do. When Jesus spoke about enemies, he was not only talking about enemies outside your household. He was talking about personal enemies who tend to be much closer to home. In your own house. Jesus said, “A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household” (Matthew 10:36). He mentions three close relationships that can go sour: A father and his son, A mother and her daughter, A mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law. Our enemies and our friends tend to come from the same group.
Many of our enemies are found in our immediate sphere of influence. If this teaching of Jesus about loving our enemies is going to work, it must work first in the relationships closest to us. You must learn to deal with the people closest to you before you can impact the world around you. Nothing seems more natural than to hate those who have hurt us deeply. Yet Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” How can we do this? Here are some suggestions that will move us in the right direction.
1) Greet Them: We often overlook this simple step. One part of loving our enemies is greeting them graciously when we see them. Say hello. Don’t pretend we did not see them.
2) Disarm Them: That is what you do when you turn the other cheek or go the second mile. You disarm them by doing the very thing they least expect. You do it by speaking well of them when no one expects it.
3) Do Good to Them: Doing good to your enemies means seeing beyond your pain and their meanness. It means seeing them as people made in the image of God, and understanding there is something twisted inside that causes them to do what they do. Doing good means doing what will promote their healing despite the way they have treated you. You make the first move. You send the e-mail. You pick up the phone. You make the contact. You bridge the gap. You set up the appointment.
4) Refuse to Speak Evil of Them: That is what Jesus meant when he said, “Bless those who curse you” in Luke 6:28. It means you choose not to think evil thoughts, and you refuse to speak evil words against those who have wronged you.
5) Thank God for Them: If you believe in the sovereignty of God, you must believe your enemies are sent to you by God’s design and with God’s approval. Behind your enemy stands the hand of God. God would never permit it if he did not intend to bring something good out of it. Joseph’s story demonstrated that. His enemies were his own brothers. Enemies push us in the direction God wants us to go.
6) Pray for Them: Say, “Lord, you know I hate this person. I ask you to love this person through me because I can’t do it in my own power. I ask you for a love I don’t have and can’t begin to produce.” Go to God with an honest heart, admitting you need his love to flow through you.
7) Finally, Ask God to Bless Them: Ask God to do for them what you want God to do for you. Seek the blessing for them that you want God to do for you.
Remember: Love your enemies because they bring out the best in you. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.
About the Author: Mrs. Marilyn Hodge owns and operates the Wellness Centre in the Farrington, Anguilla. The Centre offers Counselling Services by Appointment Only and has now published Positive Living Volume 2. Contact information: 476-3517 or email:marilynb@anguillanet.com. www.facebook.com/axawellnesscentre
