To you who hear I say, love your enemies
Jesus calls us to act well toward others even when they do not act well toward us, when they cannot reciprocate, or even when they choose not to do so. This does not mean enabling them, pouring gasoline on the fire of their worldly passions. But it does mean treating them the way we ourselves would want to be treated, helping them to thrive in a way consistent with their identity as the beloved of God. It does mean, above all, loving them toward heaven. Yet it is not merely spiritual. It must also be concrete and practical.
Give to everyone who asks of you,
and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back.
Does this teaching of Jesus create door mats to be trampled and abused? After all, we are all too familiar with people who take without repaying, who asks for favors without reciprocating, and even with those who are abusive outright. Are we in training to be the perfect victims?
But rather, love your enemies and do good to them,
and lend expecting nothing back;
then your reward will be great
and you will be children of the Most High
Being children of the most high means being free to give ourselves away. Yet it does not mean that we become mere pushovers or well practiced victims. Rather, just as God was free to give himself away to the ungrateful and the wicked we too can learn to offer ourselves from a place of abundance and freedom. Our identities won't be defined as victims, but as children of the most high. Our actions won't feel compelled and we won't feel trapped as we offer what we have to others.
This passage from the Gospel might seem to indicate that we should let others take whatever they want from us. But this is not quite the point. Jesus himself allowed his life to be taken, but on his terms, only at the point when he finally chose to lay it down. His plan was ordered, not toward helping his accusers become murders, but rather toward perfectly revealing himself as a sacrificial offering for the sins of the world.
We too are called to give ourselves in any way that genuinely contributes to flourishing of others without holding anything back. But when they try to take what would only be to their destruction we can, like Jesus, hide ourselves since, in cases like these, our hour has not yet come.
There is no way to love our enemies as God intends unless we heed Saint Paul's command to "let the peace of Christ control your hearts". Without peace in our hearts that comes from the knowledge of who we are in Christ we will not experience the freedom that gives value to our self-offering and makes it efficacious for others. Holding on to unforgiveness or refusing to be kind, gentle, and patient will drain us of the freedom we are meant to have as God's children and distort our attempts to love others. This love to which we are called is precisely an exercise of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, and without his help it is impossible.
Let Christ's word dwell richly in us then, that we may help and encourage one another to live from a place of thanksgiving, doing everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, for his Kingdom, for his glory. His word in us is the seed, the condition that makes peace possible within us, and enables us to love others. If we lack this peace, if we do not see the fruit manifesting in our lives, let us open ourselves to Christ's word afresh. We can do little better than what Paul recommends, "singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God". Bearing his fruit, we truly can come, more and more, to do all things in his name.
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