Walking With Christ

(Part 1 of 8)

Matthew 5:44  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,(ESV)

Thursday, we ended The Places We Pause.

We spent seven messages looking at passages that naturally make us stop, then placing beside them passages we often read far too quickly.

One of those pairs deserves another look.

We paused at Jesus on the cross:  “Father, forgive them.”

We should have.

A bleeding Christ praying for the people killing Him is difficult to read casually.

Then we turned to this:  “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

And suddenly the problem changed.

The first passage showed us something extraordinary.  The second asked us to actually do it.

That difference is where this new series begins.

The Places We Pass.

There are verses we know so well that our eyes move across them without our minds ever really stopping.

Sometimes familiarity is the problem.  Sometimes the words seem too simple to require thought.  Sometimes we think we already understand them.

And sometimes, maybe, we understand them just well enough that we would rather keep moving.

“Love your enemies.”

There’s nothing particularly difficult about the sentence.

We know what love means.  We know what an enemy is.  We know what Jesus said.

The difficulty begins when the enemy becomes a person.

Not an abstract enemy.  Not some villain from history.  The person who actually hurt you.

The one who lied to or about you, betrayed you, embarrassed you, damaged your reputation, took advantage of you, or hurt your family.

The one whose name changes your mood when someone says it.

Now read the verse again.  “Love your enemies.”  That’s different.

We’re remarkably good at agreeing with commands while quietly excluding the people who make those commands difficult.

Of course we should love our enemies.  Just not that enemy.

Of course Christians should forgive.  But you don’t know what they did.

Of course we should pray for people.  But this person deserves what’s coming to them.

The command remains.

Jesus doesn’t qualify it by saying:  “Love your enemies unless they really deserve to be enemies.”

Enemies already qualify by definition.

If they were easy to love, the command wouldn’t need to be given.

That doesn’t mean wisdom disappears.

Love doesn’t require allowing abuse.  It doesn’t require restored trust without repentance.  It  doesn’t require staying in danger.  It doesn’t prevent justice, or pretend evil never happened.

But none of those truths give hatred permission to remain.

That’s where we often pass too quickly.  We move immediately toward the exceptions.

We begin defining boundaries.  We discuss justice.  We explain forgiveness.  We distinguish reconciliation from trust.

Those are important conversations.  But sometimes we reach them so quickly that the command never gets close enough to hurt.

Love your enemies.

Before explaining what Jesus doesn’t mean, let Him say what He does mean.

Love them.  Read it again.  Pause.  Let it sink in.  Love them.

Then Jesus makes the command even harder.  “Pray for those who persecute you.”

Prayer forces the enemy into the presence of God.

That can be uncomfortable because we may discover what we actually want.

Do we want repentance?  Or punishment?

Do we want restoration?  Or humiliation?

Do we want God to correct them?  Or destroy them?

Do we want justice?  Or revenge wearing the clothes of justice?

Those aren’t always easy distinctions.  Prayer exposes them.  It can be pretty uncomfortable.

It’s difficult to sincerely pray for someone while continually feeding hatred toward them.

You may begin angry.  You may begin hurt.  You may begin with nothing more spiritual than:  “God, I don’t know how to love this person.”

That’s still prayer.

You may pray:

“Bring them to repentance.”

“Stop them from hurting anyone else.”

“Expose what needs to be exposed.”

“Give wisdom to those responsible for justice.”

“Keep bitterness from ruling me.”

“Help me see them as a person You created, even while I refuse to call what they did good.”

That’s very different from pretending the offense doesn’t matter.

It’s refusing to let the offender become lord over your heart.

Hatred gives the enemy continued authority.

They hurt you once.  Then resentment keeps bringing them back.

Again.  And again.  And again.

The person may not even be in the room anymore.  But the wound keeps speaking.

Jesus doesn’t command enemy-love because enemies deserve control over our emotions.

He commands something that refuses to let hatred become our master.

That’s different and more difficult.

Which may explain why we read the verse quickly.

We can admire Jesus forgiving from the cross.  We can preach about grace.  We can sing about mercy.  We can thank God for forgiving us.

Then one particular name appears in our mind.  And suddenly theology becomes personal.

That’s the moment this series is interested in.

The moment when we usually move on.  The place where our eyes keep reading because stopping would require something from us.

We don’t always skim because Scripture is boring.  Sometimes we skim because Scripture is getting too close.

The words are no longer about someone else.  They’re about us.  It’s no longer some distant morality tale.  The Holy Spirit is whispering our name.

Nathan told David a story about a rich man taking a poor man’s lamb.  David became furious.  He knew exactly what justice required.

Then Nathan said:  “You are the man.”

The story became uncomfortable when David could no longer stand outside it.

Matthew 5:44 does the same thing.

We can admire enemy-love from a distance.  Then Jesus turns toward us and stares us in the face.  Your enemy.  Love them.  The person persecuting you.  Pray for them.

Now the verse is no longer a principle.  It’s a question.

Who did you think of?

Don’t rush past the name.

Don’t immediately explain why your situation is different.  It isn’t.

Don’t pretend the hurt is smaller than it is.

Tell the truth about what happened.  Tell the truth about what it did to you.

Then tell the truth about what’s growing in you because of it.

Is it wisdom or caution?

Is it grief or righteous anger?

Or is it hatred, revenge, or contempt?

Is it the quiet hope that something terrible happens to them so you can finally feel vindicated?

Jesus already told us what to do with the enemy.

Love.  Pray.

That doesn’t answer every question about what happens next.  It answers the first one.

And perhaps the reason we’ve learned to pass this verse so quickly is that we already know what it says.

The problem isn’t comprehension.  The problem is proximity.

The command came home.

So this time, don’t pass it.

Stop.  Read it again.

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Who is your enemy?

Start there.