How to Love Your Enemies

Can you love your enemies? Is it even reasonable thing to ask of any human being to love his or her enemies at all? Is it possible to love your enemies? If so how?

We all have our enemies. Some enemies are public: the corrupt politicians that abuse or misuse taxpayer’s money; the greedy companies that takes advantage of their employees; the dishonest media with a hidden agenda; or the terrorists willing to fly passenger airplanes through office towers.

Some enemies are personal: an abusive adult or a bully neighbor that has mistreated you as a child; a mean boss; a stupid and arrogant person in the community that just hates you for whatever you do; or someone unpleasable that makes you feel you are walking on eggshells when he or she is around.

Who’s your enemy? Can you love them? It’s quite challenging isn’t it?

It will be helpful for us to look at the context of this teaching. This teaching is part of Jesus sermon known as the Sermon on the Plain, as opposed to the Sermon on the Mount recorded by Matthew. In the context, Jesus is teaching his own disciples, not the general public. He regards his disciples as prophets.

The prophets are those who give voice to the Truth, embody the Way of Jesus Christ, and live according to the new reality known as the kingdom of God. In other word, the prophets are those who try to transform the society by draining the swamp. Naturally, they are hated by the swamp snakes because they are draining their habitat.

Most of the prophets in the ancient time were hated, mistreated, defamed, and murdered. The modern examples of the prominent prophets are people like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. One fought for the emancipation of the slaves and the other fought for civil rights. Yet, they were both assassinated by the swamp snakes.

Jesus said, my disciples will be treated the same way. Your prophetic actions will be met by hatred. He said, “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.” (Lk 6:22–23).

We dealt with this passage last week, so in summary, Jesus wants you to rejoice in a hardship like that and even leap for joy. Simply put, Jesus wants you to maintain your sense of humor. The moment you lose your sense of humor, your enemy wins. The devil wants you to suffer and the first step to make you suffer is to kill your sense of humor.

I have mentioned to you a couple of weeks ago that the words humor, humility, and human came from the same root word “humus.” The moment you lose your sense of humor, you lose your humility, and you lose your humanity as well. If you lose your humanity you expose your animal instinct, and you are read to retaliate against your enemies. You become one of them the moment you are filled with vengeance.

So, before we talk about loving our enemies, we must first not lose our humanity, humility, and humor. That’s why Jesus said, “Leap for joy” when you go through a hardship. Don’t let the hardship kill your joy. As long as you maintain your joy and your sense of humor, you can overcome the hardship.

The next step to overcome your hardship is that you must love your enemies, but again don’t even think about loving your enemies without maintaining a sense of humor. So, the sense of humor, or joy, is your defense system, and love is your plan of attack. Your plan of attack is not to destroy your enemies but to transform them because love transforms.

This part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain gives you 3 sets of plans of attack. The first set is about spiritual attack, the second set is physical attack, and the third set is identity attack. Each set has 4 instructions.

1. Spiritual Plan of Attack

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” (v. 27b-28). There are four instructions. These instructions are things you do without confronting your enemies. You make the decision to not to hate your enemies, but to love them.

The Old Testament teachings says that you must love your neighbors, but the term neighbors is like a loophole for people to love only their inner circles. When the lawyers asked Jesus, what the greatest commitment is, Jesus said love God and love your neighbor. But, the lawyers asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” They want to justify whom to hate. If you can define your neighbor, you can say, “I love you,” and then point to those others, “Those are not my neighbors, I hate them.”

Jesus answered them by telling them the story of the Good Samaritan. The Jewish leaders in those day define their neighbor to be the pious believers among them only. Samaritans were enemies, at least religiously. So, Jesus told them the story of the Good Samaritan and asked them whose is the real neighbor of the Jew who was robbed and attacked and left wounded on the roadside.

In this passage, Jesus was very blunt, “Love your enemies.” He is implying, “You guys try to find loopholes in God’s commandments and try to define your neighbors so that you think as long as you love those people, you have fulfilled God’s commandments for love. Here I’m saying, ‘love you enemies!’ There’s no room for you to draw a circle around who you think your neighbors are.”

That’s why Jesus said that the came to fulfill the law, leaving no loophole for the sinner to take advantage of.

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” All these four things can be done without physically present in front of you enemies. It’s a spiritual battle. Your spiritual plan of attack prepares of mind for the physical attack.

2. Physical Plan of Attack

“If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.” (v. 29-30)

This set of instructions have to do with physical presence in front of the enemies. It’s asking you to go extra miles with enduring the insult. If anyone strikes on your cheek, it’s an offence, but when you turn the other cheek, they have to strike you with the back hand or the left hand. In the ancient time, it’s regarded an insult. You could face a harsher punishment at the court if you strike someone with a left hand or back hand. The point is not that you are trying to make that person face a more serious legal punishment. The point is that you can take more than an offence, you can take even an insult.

This loops back to last week’s message about joy and sense of humor. Who would turn the other cheek without maintaining the inner joy and sense of humor? The fact that you can handle an insult means you have a higher level of consciousness. An insult is nothing for you because you have won the spiritual war already. At this point, you have decided to love him, be good to him, bless him, and pray for him.

“From anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.” (v. 29-30). All these actions are transformative. It wakes up the conscience of people if they are ready. If you have watched Le Misérables, the Broadway show, you have seen an example of a thief transformed by the love of the priest.

Revenge cannot transform people. Only love can.

3. Identity Plan of Attack

This plan of attack is against your own identity that differentiate you from what Jesus called “sinners”. If we forget our identity as children of God, we want to behave like the swamp sinners. You want to love only those who love you, but Jesus said, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again.

35 But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

Jesus says that when you love your enemies, you are living out the image of God. You are the children of the Most High. Don’t forget your identity. Your identity is not your identification. Your driver license says about your identification, but your identity is who you really are. You really are a child of God.

Jesus ended by saying, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” You do it not because Jesus ask you to do. You do it because your identity. You are a child of a merciful father, so you naturally show mercy.

It’s also the mental plan of attack. This is the Christian mind game. Always remind yourself your own identity. You don’t belong to the swamp. You belong to the Most High. Since God turned us from his enemies to his children by the love of Jesus Christ on the cross, we should also transform our enemies into friends with our love.

Until we meet again, let’s keep cultivating a fruitful life. Amen!