18 June 2013 - preemptive love

18 June 2013 - preemptive love

But I say to you, love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,

Jesus is calling us to have hearts like his.  He wants us to be like him so we can share in his relationship with the Father.  We must by willing to surrender our prerogatives for the genuine good of others.  When we are wronged we tend to become defensive and focus on ourselves and what justice dictates we deserve.  Revenge is clearly wrong.  But Jesus is not just calling us to tolerate our enemies.  He is calling us to proactively love them.  He isn't calling us to just love them when they are tolerable or when they aren't hurting us.  He says that loving in such circumstances is exactly how he loves us.  Loving in such circumstances is how we can share his relationship with the Father.

Paul knows that Jesus does "not regard equality with God something to be grasped" (cf Phi 2:6).  He knows it is this self-surrender that allows the love of Jesus to be so superabundantly available.

For you know the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that for your sake he became poor although he was rich,
so that by his poverty you might become rich.

Again, it isn't simply a passive action.  Jesus humbles himself and takes the form of a slave.  He does this for those who are, in a sense, his enemies (cf. Rom 5:8).  He does this out of love to enrich us in our poverty with every spiritual blessing in the heavens (cf. Eph 1:3).

He is so good.  There is no end to the blessings he pours out.

Who keeps faith forever,
secures justice for the oppressed,
gives food to the hungry.
The LORD sets captives free. 
The LORD gives sight to the blind.
The LORD raises up those who were bowed down;
the LORD loves the just.
The LORD protects strangers. 

There is nothing for him to gain by this.  He is perfectly and eternally filled with the joy and happiness of his own triune being.   There is nothing for him to gain, that is, but our love for him which he wants us to give freely. So let us love him with our whole hearts!