A Year-Long Exploration of the Sermon on the Mount: Week 23

Chapter 23 – Love of Enemy

 

One of the two most important commandments that God gives to us through Jesus is to love our neighbours as ourselves. It is the divine instruction that our entire lives as Christians ought to be based upon. And it really shouldn’t be that hard to do. But it is, isn’t it?

 

Loving someone you like is easy. Your parents, maybe? Or your siblings? Other members of your family? Your best friend? That neighbour you like? These can all be easy people to love. But what about that kid who teased you in school? Or your bully? Or that one person who always needs to be the center of attention? Or how about the stranger you meet in the street? Or the homeless person? Or someone of a different culture than you?

 

Both lists are endless. It is human nature to find it easier to love those who are like you than to love those who are different from you. It is easier to keep hating someone, than to start loving them. It is certainly hard to love someone who hates you.

 

Martin Luther King Jr states, “hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe…The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate.” (p. 143) The easy path is to seek revenge on another person rather than to seek reconciliation.

 

That said, reconciliation takes both parties but there’s no rule that states you can’t love the other person, allowing yourself to heal while working on everything external. King also states that, “love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals.” (p 145) Love leads to transformation; hate stalls it - whether in yourself or in others.

 

God, through Jesus, calls us to be people of love. And sometimes that means loving our enemies as much, maybe more so, than ourselves or our neighbours. Because, in the end, we are all neighbours to each other, connected to one another simply by the fact that we are all human.