Love your enemy ...

Thursday, May 8, 2014. The New Testament tries to take us into the community of Jesus, into the community of the holy God. The fact is, that we usually do not know HOW great he is, how good it is to be with him. We have our patterns of behaviour, but he is different.

Your enemy …

Jesus tells his disciples to love their enemies and do good those who puruse them. He asks them to act in a way which is completely different from what we are used to. We might try to talk to our enemy once, but then usually it is pretty clear to us that we fight our enemy. We try to use our might or our possibilities to contain our enemy or even destroy our enemy.

Who is your enemy? What person or group or state comes to your mind when you hear the word, when you hear the command to love your enemy? Do you think about some religious fanatics? Do you think about some other state, or perhaps some group of people in your own environment?

In general we can say that everyone who tries to either harm us or work against us or ignore us or block us or hurt us is our enemy. Even if it is someone from our own family. Even if it is someone close. The facts speak for themselves, and somewhere deep in our soul we know: if he or she is not supporting us, not helping us, not wishing us very well, he is our enemy.

Sometimes I ask myself: do we, deep inside, know that the world in general is not our friend, but that life is dangerous and that there are others who do not wish us well? It seems to be a deep and long lasting cultural experience. It might even be a part of our biological heritage.

Love your enemy …

Jesus gives us the command to love our enemy. That is against all our experiences, all our social and cultural and biological patterns and impulses. Love your enemy? Why should we love someone who is against us, who tries to get rid of us or just ignores us and does not wish us to be really happy and well? Is it just a rhetorical figure? Is it just fishing for public interest? What is Jesus telling us?

We do not know the Lord! He is good. He is truly good. He is love, and love does not fail. The command of Jesus can only be understood in the light of the Lord, in the light of the character of God. It can only be understood when we start to realize that he prepares salvation for each and every human. He wants trust and faith and support for all of us, for every single individual on the planet.

Love your enemy is what God himself did with us. We were his enemies, since we ignored him, we worked against him, we hurt him and we still hurt his children, day by day. When he loves us, he does exactly what he tells us to do: love your enemy. He loves us and does good things in our life - his love is very practical. And he wants us to learn his trust and his love … what better could be there for us? So he asks us to love our enemy - and we will probably need our whole lifetime and beyond to lean what that means and how to carry it out! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts