How Do You Love Your Enemies?

I've talked about this subject before, but it's been a long time. It's a subject near and dear to my heart, since I've been through a lot of cyberbullying, and have also seen people in real life who have been super unkind to my parents. It hurts, and nobody ever wants to be hurt. The Bible says to love your enemies, but when you're walking through a dark situation with hurtful people, that could seem impossible to do. The Bible says not to steal, not to murder, etc., but that's pretty easy for most people. We've got that down, but loving your enemies just seems to stump us.

Love is a crazy thing. Some people say they love you, when really they don't. Some people actually do love you, but never have the time to express that. But some people really really love you. Those are the people we always love back, right? We love those who love us. Rarely do we love those who hate us. How do we exactly get into that mindset of loving those who hate us? Well let's take a look at Matthew 5:43-48.

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43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

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There's a few things we get from this passage, that we'll break down. First being verse 45, that talks about how God's sun rises on the evil and the good. Which to me seems to mean that God causes good things and bad things to happen to both the evil and the good. We always want revenge on evil, and want the worst to happen to them. Sometimes that happens, God repays them for the evil they've done. But other times, there isn't any revenge. The evil get showered with good, and we get showered with bad. It seems so crazy that this would happen, but what if I told you that could be to our advantage? God uses every situation for our good, and His glory. There's a reason for everything, even when we can't exactly explain why what's happening is happening. But we can rest knowing there's something good that will come out of it.

Secondly, I want to talk about verse 46, which we already briefly talked about. It's so easy to love those who already love us. But there's no reward in that. There's no good that comes out of that. Of course, we can love those who love us, but if that's the only group of people that we love, we have this all twisted. We need to also love those who hate us, because those who hate us will see that there's something different about us. Why would we do good to them, when they've been so horrible to us? It's because we have Christ in us. They might see that, and that could just open a big door to something incredible.

Verse 47 is what seems to me loving in action. We want to only greet "our people". The people who love us. You know how when you go out somewhere, maybe to the store, and you run into a friend? You always greet them. You say hi to them, and catch up. But when you see someone that isn't in your group, someone that's actually an enemy to you, you probably dash the other way. Nobody wants to be put into that situation, when you're face-to-face with the person who hurt you. But gosh, how amazing would it be if we didn't dash away, and we actually accepted our enemies? What if we greeted them instead of rejecting them? Sounds like the absolute opposite of what this world wants to do. What we want to do for that matter. But it's exactly what we need to do. It's what we need to do to heal. It's what we need to do so they can see Jesus through us. Love is action.

Lastly, verse 48. I could see how this verse could easily confuse someone, because we know we'll never be perfect. And I don't think that's what this verse is referring to. To me, what I get from this verse is that we need to be more like Jesus. We need to love how Jesus loves, and we need to be imitators of Him. He loves perfectly, and we need to strive to love like He does. We will never live up to being perfect, but we can try to be more like Jesus. We won't be Jesus, because nobody except Jesus can be Jesus. But we can try to be more like Him, and He will be pleased with that.

So here's how we can love our enemies,

1. Pray for them. Could be as simple as praying for their well-being, or praying for them to see Jesus through you.

2. Be willing to accept their highs, even when you're down low. Be happy wherever they are, and wherever you are.

3. Know that loving them reflects Jesus in you.

4. Greet them, even if that just means saying hi to them on social media, or passing them by and saying hello at the grocery store.

5. Imitate God, and try to be more like him.

Maybe loving your enemies is easier than you think. It might not be easy at first, but once you try to be more like Jesus, it'll get easier and easier. Getting into God's Word will help you with that.

Let's go love our enemies, and love those who hate us!

~Graciepopstar91

P.S. Since Housemom418 is on vacation, tomorrow I'll be posting again!