Embracing the enemy
“You know the saying: ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ Well, I tell you to love your enemies and pray for your opponents. This proves that you’ve got God’s DNA in you. God makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous. What makes you so special if you love those who love you? Any old lowlife knows how to do that. And if you care only for your family and friends–people who are like you–don’t even ‘moral degenerates’ do that? If you want to claim God as your Father and you know that he loves his enemies, doesn’t it follow that you should love your enemies, too?”–Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Matthew 5.44-48 (paraphrase mine).
The blackbelt of Christianity is the love of enemies.
When Jesus Christ uses the word “love,” he’s not talking about prayers and well wishes from a safe distance. He’s talking about skin meeting skin. He’s talking about making the first move to make kind contact with people we despise (or who despise us).
How do I know this is what he means?
He gives an example: God himself sends rain and sunshine to those who are either indifferent or opposed to him.
So, apprentices of the Christ and children of his God love their enemies in deed. We don’t wait for someone else to make the first move; we go first, as God goes first.
This is deeply meaningful and personal for Christians who believe in the saving grace and love of God. The author of the ancient letter to the church of Christ in Rome wrote:
“We were enemies of God and he made the first move to bring us back together and to reconcile us to himself. How? By offering us the most precious thing he could give: His own son.” (Romans 5.10, my paraphrase).
For one such as God, prayers and well wishes would not do to prove his love for us (his enemies). He went all the way and gave us that which he held most dear.
For those who want to be apprentices of the Christ and children of God, this is the example to follow.
Christian apprenticeship happens here and now in the real world. It is one half a response to what we believe God does for us. And it is one half a response to the circumstances in which we live.
If we believe Matthew 5.44-48 and Romans 5.10, then we know how to respond to God. We live our lives with gratitude and joy and peace because we know beyond a shadow of doubt that the heart of the universe beats with love. We know that all life in the cosmos turns on this axis of love, sweeping us up and carrying us to a hopeful eternity. What more could God do to prove this to us than what he has already done? Is already doing?
But responding to God is only half of what the Spirit of the Christ is trying to teach us. If we believe these scriptures are true teaching from God, they require us to make a second response: A response to the people who live with us in the here and now.
That especially includes those we consider enemies.
In practice: If you’re in the blue tribe, you take proactive steps to be kind and loving to those in the red tribe. You treat the red tribe as friends.
If you’re in the red tribe, you take proactive steps to be kind and loving to those in the blue tribe. You treat the blue tribe as friends.
That’s simply put.
Because if you pledge allegiance to the blue tribe or red tribe, you need to be honest about what that pledge also requires you to renounce. I think that in our current political climate, it is increasingly likely that choosing to be blue or red demands a renunciation of the defining mark of Christianity: Active, gracious, reaching, reconciling love for enemies.
You see, an apprentice of Jesus Christ understands that loving enemies is not something we do when it is convenient; loving enemies is the very definition and essence of the Gospel we claim to believe.
When we don’t make love for enemies the priority in our lives, we no longer preach the Gospel–either with words or our lives.
As an apprentice of Jesus Christ in America in 2018, my marching orders are clear: Make peace. Work for reconciliation. Go to the greatest lengths possible to bring people together and restore relationship between them. This is the definitive proof that God’s DNA is in me (Matthew 5.9). It is the most powerful witness to the power of the Gospel.
These are also the marching orders the Christ gives his church. If alignment with one political party, politician, or preacher makes it impossible for us to do our job (make peace and reconciliation), we must break free. The Bible is full of examples of times when God’s people had to “come out from” something to restore their faithfulness and the power of their ministry and witness. This may be such a time.
Perhaps even more important: We may need to “come out from” so that our enemies know that we mean no harm, only grace and mercy. If we are standing among those who condescend, divide, judge, shout, and sneer, how can anyone tell that we have love in our hearts?
How can we tell ourselves if we still have love in our hearts?
Maybe some of us need to confess that we don’t. That we’ve gone after the wrong shepherds and lost our way. That we are infatuated with being right when God calls us (and shows us how) to love being together more.
“You know the saying: ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ Well, I tell you to love your enemies and pray for your opponents. This proves that you’ve got God’s DNA in you. God makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous. What makes you so special if you love those who love you? Any old lowlife knows how to do that. And if you care only for your family and friends–people who are like you–don’t even ‘moral degenerates’ do that? If you want to claim God as your Father and you know that he loves his enemies, doesn’t it follow that you should love your enemies, too?”–Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Matthew 5.44-48 (paraphrase mine).