Love Your Enemy

“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. . . [God] gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. . . 

“In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.” Matthew 5:43-48 (The Message)

As a part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells those present to love their enemies because God gives his best to everyone, whether they are “nice” or “nasty.”  Anyone can love the loveable, but what about the unlovable?

In Appreciate These Things by Jill Duffield, the author asks us to consider the words in Philippians 4, including one which means “lovely, friendly, amiable, acceptable, pleasing.” She tells of her daughter’s experience in attending college in another country and discovering a difference between the people in that country, who were “nice,” and the people in her home state, who were “friendly.” The difference arises in part from what she calls “outward social graces” and “genuine connections.” Those social graces may be pleasant, but they don’t indicate that we are pleasing others or God. Shuffield states that when we see with the eyes of Christ, we must look attentively, even if what we are looking at doesn’t appear lovely or acceptable.

As Jesus directs in the Sermon on the Mount, we can live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward us. Duffield asks us to imagine looking at everything we encounter in the same way in which God gazes at it. If we use our eyes to look in this way, we allow the lovely to be more visible.

Prayer: Dear God, help us to learn to look at our world in the same way you look at it. Help us to remember to love our enemies and to love the unlovable. Amen.

Robin Hadfield