Loving our Enemies
Introduction: This week during the Republican National Convention a lot was made of the fact that Senator Ted Cruz from Texas did not endorse the Republican nominee Donald Trump, even after promising to do so earlier in the primary. During his speech at the convention he simply told the crowd to vote their conscious, and He was promptly booed off the stage. Later in his home state he said to the Texas delegates that his pledge to endorse Trump was abrogated, saying: “The day that was abrogated was the day this became personal. I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father. And that pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go and slander and attack Heidi, that I'm gonna nonetheless come like a servile puppy dog and say, "Thank you very much for maligning my wife and maligning my father."
I know first hand what it is like to be slandered, maligned, impugned, lied about, and hated. When we took our first church, there was an ambitious young man who had a history of causing problems in the church. In fact, one of my relatives who is a pastor had difficulties with him in his church. But what made the situation worse is that this young man had developed quite a following within the church before we had arrived and was led to believe by the aging pastor that he would take over the church and become the new pastor once he retired.
The presbyter sent us to this church to fill in until a new pastor was appointed. We applied for the position and was elected in. But shortly afterward, this young man began to cause all kinds of problems, saying things that were inappropriate, doing things that were inappropriate, and headed up a coup of sorts, to slander me and my family. Eventually he left with a third of the church with him. Far from being dismayed, I was relieved. But him leaving gracefully and peacefully wasn’t in the cards because we soon found out that an effort was being made to recruit those who remained in the church to leave it. Not only that, but we were hearing that lies were being pushed throughout the community. I felt betrayed not only by this man who should have been a friend and an ally but I felt betrayed by those who would believe such blatantly false things about someone they didn’t even know.
The problem was beyond me, so I did the only thing I knew to do and took it to God. By the grace of God things got better. But feelings of anger, resentment, hatred, and bitterness didn’t leave so easily.
Transition: It’s a hard thing to forgive those who hurt you. Simply letting it go is easier said than done, and yet, Jesus doesn’t flinch in telling us to love our enemies, bless our enemies, and pray for our enemies in the sixth chapter of Luke.
Love your enemies
“But I tell you who hear me; Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,” v. 27
Is there anything more difficult than to love our enemies? I don’t think so. The truth is that it is impossible to love your enemies, in the flesh. Just like the rich young ruler who was faced with a decision to choose between his fleshly desires and his God, he desired to serve both and was sad that he had to choose, but if one had to be given up, then it would be his God. But shortly showing his disciples how impossible it is for the flesh to carry us to heaven. Jesus said what is impossible with men, that is what is impossible to achieve by the flesh, is not impossible to God. Just as he can change the heart of the rich, he can change the heart of bitterness, if we desire it to be changed.
But when we find satisfaction in hating our enemies and we grow to enjoy that hatred, the less likely we are to desire our heart to love our enemies. Just like it is impossible for light and darkness to exist together, it is impossible to love those we hate. What can we do then?
The only way to love our enemies is to forgive them. Once we forgive, we can love anyone.
Ill. In his book. Lee: The Last Years, Charles Bracelen Flood reports that after the Civil War, Robert E. Lee visited a Kentucky lady who took him to the remains of a grand old tree in front of her house. There she bitterly cried that its limbs and trunk had been destroyed by Federal artillery fire. She looked to Lee for a word condemning the North or at least sympathizing with her loss. After a brief silence, Lee said, "Cut it down, my dear Madam, and forget it." It is better to forgive the injustices of the past than to allow them to remain, let bitterness take root and poison the rest of our life.
In verse 32 - 35 Jesus says
“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what good is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies...”
Notice he asks the same question several times. ‘what credit is it to you that you do the same thing sinners do?’ Sinners only love those who love them. They only do good to those who do good to them. They only respect those who respect them. They only help those who help them. They only give to those who give to them. They only share with those who share with them. They say “Why should I do good to them, when they did wrong to me?” And Jesus is saying how are you any different than a hate-infested, unforgiving, selfish society if your condition for love is that someone else must love you first.
Ill. Not long before she died in 1988, in a moment of surprising candor in television, Marghanita Laski, one of our best-known secular humanists and novelists, said, "What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness; I have nobody to forgive me."
That is what separates us from this world, and even the unbelievers will take notice and some by the grace of God they might come to Christ because of it. You can’t truly love your enemy if you can not forgive them. Which is not only dangerous but deadly, because Jesus says in Matthew 6:15 “But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
It is important that we define who our enemies are. Jesus is not talking about Satan or the flesh, I mean our desires for pleasure; and he isn’t merely talking about those who hate us for one reason or another, but he speaks about unbelievers in general,- they are natural enemies of ours, because they are natural enemies to God, just as you and I were enemies to God before we were redeemed by his son, so are they who haven't come to Christ for the same redemption.
“For if, while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” Romans 5:10
Transition: Not only does Jesus tell us to love our enemies, he commands us to bless them.
Bless your enemies
“Bless those who curse you,...” Luke 6:28
Solomon wrote in Proverbs 25: 21,22 - “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; For you will heap burning coals on his head, and he LORD will reward you.”
We see here that we bless our enemies firstly, by giving to them. Jesus says in the same passage in Luke to: “Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.” (v. 30)
Solomons point about giving food and drink to their hunger and thirst would heap burning coals upon your enemies head. Men would melt the hardest metals by heaping burning coals on it and you will melt your enemy into repentance, and inflame him with love and kindness, because it would be so unexpected and such and undeserved favor; that he will be so grieved and tormented with thoughts of his own wicked actions toward you, that he will be like a man would be that had burning coals of fire thrown on top of his head. But if these coals of fire do not convict him to treat you well, they will harden his heart against you, and that fire will consume him both now and in eternity.
Secondly, we bless our enemies, By doing good to them. Jesus says to “do good to those who hate you.” He says if someone slaps your cheek, turn and let him slap the other and if someone takes your cloak, don’t stop him from taking your tunic. His point is that their ill-will toward you won’t cause you to have ill-will toward them. They could do a thousand wrongs and you will continue to do a thousand rights to them. Because one you realize that Jesus’ own love has covered a multitude of your sins, it is easy to allow your love to cover a multitude of sins in others.
When someone has wronged me I sometimes think “I remember when I was like that.” And then there is great pity and compassion that comes over me for them. And just as I was wronged early in my ministry I think now of the possibility of doing the same thing to someone else and without the love, forgiveness, and grace of Christ there would be no hope for me either.
Transition: Finally Jesus commands us to Pray for our enemies
Pray for your enemies
“... pray for those who mistreat you.” Luke 6:28
We don’t kill our enemies, we pray for them. If we kill them we are hypocrites. We send them to a hell that love tells us to save them from. Paul said “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” -Romans12:9 our love for each other should be sincere, it shouldn’t be obligatory or empty or hollow. Paul told the Corinthians that love is not self-seeking. It is not unmeaning. It is not filled with deceitful compliments. We do hate the sin but love the sinner. While we detest everything that is evil, it is because we love what is good, and anything that contradicts good steals away from the good purposes and good ends that God has in store for us.
We not only pray our enemies, we pray that God would give us the ability to love them, because we can not do it. We pray that God would help us forgive them because we can not do it.
We are to pray for those who mistreat us. Other versions read “pray for those who despitefully use you.” The Greek implies the coarsest insults. Pray for them. Don’t hold bitterness in your heart toward them, pray for them. Don’t get intoxicated on delicious thoughts of getting revenge on them, in stead pray for them! As Jesus was being murdered in the cruelest of ways for doing nothing more than telling the truth and carrying out his Father’s will. He prayed “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Ill. Richard Wurmbrand, who spent fourteen years suffering in a Communist prison, reminds all believers with less than ideal circumstances that “if the heart is cleansed by the love of Jesus Christ, and if the heart loves Him, you can resist all tortures.” He says, “God will not judge us according to how much we endured, but how much we could love.” The love of God demonstrated in the lives of his people is potent. Wurmbrand gives an example:
“A Christian was sentenced to death. Before being executed, he was allowed to see his wife. His last words to his wife were, ‘You must know that I die loving those who kill me. They don’t know what they do and my last request of you is to love them, too. Don’t have bitterness in your heart because they kill your beloved one. We will meet in heaven.’ These words impressed the officer of the secret police who attended the discussion between the two. After he told me the story in prison, where he had been put for becoming a Christian.” (Sermoncentral.com)
Ill. Chris Carrier has one of the best testimonies of Christian forgiveness I have ever seen. Chris grew up in Coral Gables, Florida. He was abducted when he was just 10 years old. Chris’ kidnapper was angry with the boy’s family. He burned him with cigarettes, stabbed him numerous times with an ice pick, then shot him in the head and left him to die in the Everglades.
Amazingly, Chris survived, though he lost sight in one eye. No one was ever arrested, but in the late 90’s a man confessed to the crime. Chris had become a student minister and went to see him. He found David McAllister, a 77-year-old ex-convict, frail and blind, living in a North Miami Beach nursing home.
Chris began visiting often, reading to McAllister from the Bible and praying with him. His ministry opened the door for McAllister to receive Jesus as Savior and Lord. No arrest was ever made. After 22 years, the statute of limitations was long past.
Chris later talked about forgiving the man who tortured and almost killed him. Chris said, "While many people can’t understand how I could forgive David McAllister. -- From my point of view I couldn’t NOT forgive him. If I’d chosen to hate him all these years, or spent my life looking for revenge, then I wouldn’t be the man I am today, the man my wife and children love, the man God has helped me to be." (Sermoncentral.com)
Conclusion: What we miss is not only what good forgiveness and love brings to our enemies but what good it brings to ourselves. We can let our enemies fill our heart with bitterness or we can let the grace of Christ fill it with love. Lewis Smedes said it best when he said “To forgive is to set a prisoner free . . . . and only to finally discover that prisoner was YOU!”
Not only will you set yourself free from hatred, bitterness, and the false hope that an unsatisfying revenge might bring. Butthere will be a reward for you in heaven, when all Christians stand before the Bema seat to have their works tested through the fire of God’s judgment. In Luke 6:35 Jesus says “But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the most high, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
Yes, it may be true that their gross sins and evil and mean works demand their damnation, but so did yours and Christ forgave you and asks you to do the same for others. If Christ is kind to the ungrateful and wicked, shouldn’t we be also? It doesn’t mean that we condone their wickedness or approve of their sin, or make them our closest confidants, (2 Cor. 6:14) it simply means that we share the love of Christ without discrimination, even when we are on the losing end of their schemes and deceptions. Christ forgave us of our many faults, manipulations, and deceptions and we show Christ best by showing the same forgiveness to others of theirs. And Praise God, some day there will be a heavenly reward for it!
