"Here's another old saying that deserves a second look: 'Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.' Is that going to get us anywhere? Here's what I propose: 'Don't hit back at all.' If someone strikes you, stand there and take it. If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.
"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. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He 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. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does 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.
“Grow up!”
Once again, reading this in the Message just feels different. These passages are hitting me in places that I don’t like to talk about at parties.
It’s fascinating to me that this passage, above most in the Sermon on the Mount, gets explained away whenever it’s convenient.
Here’s a secret:
I do it.
I make excuses to hate my enemy.
All. The. Time.
It’s not just a once in a while kind of thing. It’s a most of the time kind of thing. It feels so good to “get them” when they show themselves. Man, it feels like justice when I can stick it to people I’ve determined as my enemy.
Usually I explain it away in one of two ways. First, when I’m feeling super spiritual I will say something along the lines of, “I’m not hating my enemy, I am speaking truth to them. It’s for their own good.” When I’m being really honest I say, “Listen, I’m not going to be a doormat for Jesus. I’m standing up for my rights and for my family.”
Those are my “go-to” outs for loving my enemy. What are your outs?
We all have them.
More and more I am realizing that this love thing is at the center of being a follower of Jesus. If I want to grow in my Christ-likeness then I must grow in love. There is no way around it. This is the thing.
I am not good at loving, on the whole. I do well some times, especially if I know people are watching. But, in places that I don’t talk about at parties, I struggle.
As I grow older, I am becoming more desperate to learn how to love well.
Sometimes people ask what does it look like? What does it practically look like to love like Jesus. That kind of love is laid out for us in 1 Corinthians 13. Have you ever noticed it before? I mean, I know it’s read at weddings. But, have you ever realized that this is the way to live the Christ oriented life?
Consider it today…
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing.
If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
Dan, I will agree with you on this point - The Message does feel very different and I would say the problem is it is an interpretation and can stray to far from the real "message" which is the gospel. We have to be careful not to make Christ out to be a pacifist. Taking all of scripture into purview is important. Christ made a whip out of chords and drove the money changers out of the temple. That does not seem very "kind" or "pacifist" to me. However, when I take the full breadth of scripture and use it to interpret and inform each piece I can come up with a cohesive understanding. The part in this message I most am concerned with is the part where you stated "First, when I’m feeling super spiritual I will say something along the lines of, “I’m not hating my enemy, I am speaking truth to them. It’s for their own good.”" Certainly I can see this happening and not being an action out of "our understanding" of love. But there are instances where "speaking truth to them. It's for their own good" could actually be the most loving and correct thing to do. In fact, I would argue that "speaking truth" is always the loving thing to do no matter the delivery. It is also the most loving thing to do for your enemy and if you really love them you will do it. Christ said many things we could think were unkind like "you brood of vipers" but he was revealing a truth about the state of some of the leaders hearts. We need to understand this passage in a wider context and yeah we can implement what Christ is talking about here in a 1-on-1 situation and in some wider audiences and we should strive to do that. But we must always be thinking about our wider audience as well if there is one. Certainly we should be humbled when it is revealed to us when we did not act out of love. I would suggest though that based on Christ's life itself and some of the actions He took and the words that He used and said weren't always pretty. With this understanding can we at least agree that "Love" doesn't always look like the world's definition of what love looks like or should be? Love may sometimes look "ugly" to those outside the kingdom.