LOVING OUR ENEMIES
Matthew 5:44 (ESV) But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you …
Loving our enemies here seems to be an entire relinquishing of our rights, our speech, and our stuff. How do we balance standing up for righteousness and justice, which makes enemies, with loving and deferring to our enemies, allowing them to wrong us or cheat us (1 Cor 6:7)? The most obvious thing to notice is that we actually have enemies, and these enemies are human enemies, in spite of what some preachers say; the devil is not our only enemy. We certainly are in a spiritual war with heavenly beings (Eph 6:12), but that spiritual war manifests in the natural. Therefore, our warfare does not employ carnal weaponry, but a most effective spiritual weaponry of prayer and blessing. This does not mean all will go well with our enemies and that they will be prosperous in their sinful, persecutory activities, but sometimes quite the opposite. It may mean the Lord will move against them on our behalf to frustrate their evil strategies, to devastate their godless plans, and to turn their harmful agendas on themselves, all unto the goal of them turning to the Lord. This, of course, implies that our enemies are in the wrong and that their agendas are indeed evil. There are times that we have enemies because of our own foolish, carnal behavior. If this is the case, we pray for them, and the Lord deals with us and leads us to repentance and restoration. But when our enemies come against us in ungodly ways, our prayers do not have to be nice. They do not have to be religiously correct. They do not have to be warm and affectionate, but they do have to be redemptive.
It is important to remember that the enemies of God are not only harming us; in fact, our pain is relatively small compared to the bigger picture. If our prayers are to be accurate and just, we must remember how the enemies of God are harming others. Think of the unjust, harmful activities imposed on our young children. There is a radical, sexually deviant agenda being pushed that is abusive and causing great confusion and enduring pain to young, impressionable minds, not to mention leading them into sinful behavior patterns that are extremely addictive and damning. This agenda also wants to sanitize our culture from the very message of Christian hope that can bring people out of such moral oppression. Are we to assume that those who push such agendas are not our enemies? Their ideology must be challenged by the people of God, with our own safety and security put on the line for the sake of the kingdom of God, the gospel, and true justice for others. This is what it means to lay our lives down for others. Loving our enemies and praying for them is for others’ sake, and for our enemies’, that they might hear the gospel and believe. If our enemies hear and believe, they stop their harmful behavior toward others, the word of the Lord runs more freely, and those very enemies become our friends. Is this result not worth even our very lives?
