Love Your Enemy

First Series – Sermon Eleven

Original by George MacDonald

Paraphrase by Dale R. Howie

 

At the close of Love Your Neighbor, George gently nudges us toward what may be the hardest command Jesus ever gave:

"But we may have only begun to love our neighbor, with the hope of loving him more in the future. When, as if starting over, we receive another word from the Lord. One that seems harder than the first, although it is not, for only with obeying the former, loving our neighbor, can it be attained. If we have not learned to love our neighbor as ourselves, our hearts will sink within us at the words, 'I say to you, love your enemies.'"

"Love your neighbor as you love yourself." (Matthew 22:39)

Hidden within this command is another truth. We cannot truly love our neighbor until we have received the Father's love for ourselves. Freedom to love others begins with freedom from the prison of self.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love even Their enemies because They lack nothing, need nothing from us. They love because other-centered love is Their very nature. We do not fill some emptiness in God. Rather, we are invited to participate in the Life and Love They freely share.

 

Outline

Sermon Question: What is the central message of this sermon?

P1 - God Loves His Enemies - The Father calls us to love our enemies because He Himself loves His.

      P2 - We Share One Humanity - Every person shares a common humanity, making each one worthy of love.

            P3 - Love the Real Man - Love looks beyond the false self to the true person God created.

                     T - No Justice without Love - True justice is love restoring what sin has broken.

            R3 - I am the Enemy – Seeing ourselves as another's enemy awakens humility and mercy.

      R2 - Everyone must Repent – Repentance begins when we see ourselves and others through the Father's forgiving love.

R1 - Perfect in Love – Perfection is love expressed through the freedom of the children of God.

 

   Matthew 5:43-48 GNT

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your friends, hate your enemies.' But now I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may become the children of your Father in heaven. For he makes his sun to shine on bad and good people alike and gives rain to those who do good and to those who do evil. Why should God reward you if you love only the people who love you? Even the tax collectors do that! And if you speak only to your friends, have you done anything out of the ordinary? Even the pagans do that! You must be perfect—just as your Father in heaven is perfect."

   John 17:21 NASB

"That they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us,"

 
God Loves His Enemies

Question: Why does Jesus command us to love our enemies?

Is this too much to expect? Is loving our enemies even possible? We might, on a good day, be kind to them, but could we ever pray for those who oppose us or use us? Will we one day become children of our Father by becoming like Him? With God's help, we will. We will learn to love our neighbor as ourselves, even when that neighbor is our enemy.

In the passage from Leviticus we read,

"Do not take revenge on others or continue to hate them, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord."

Here we discover an uncomfortable truth. Our neighbor and our enemy are often the same person, and both are worthy of love.

Jesus' interpretation of these words in Matthew is beautiful:

"…You must be perfect—just as your Father in heaven is perfect."

God is love, all love, nothing other than love. Perfection, then, is love expressed—not moral achievement or legal righteousness, but the freedom to love. Is God asking something unreasonable when He commands us to love our enemies? He does. He is asking nothing less than that we become like Himself. He is both the perfect example and the source of such love.

Can we truly love like this? Yes—not because such love originates in us, but because His own life is present within us, empowering us to become what we were created to be: lovers like God. This indwelling presence is what Jesus prayed for when He said,

"That they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us."

Nothing seems less imaginable than being one with God and with our neighbor. Yet this has always been the Father's desire. It is toward this oneness that His love is patiently drawing us.

Answer: Because the Father Himself loves His enemies and is making us like Himself.

 

We Share One Humanity

Question: What makes every person worthy of love?

Why, then, should we love our enemies?

The answer is found in the very nature of our being. We are one with them, sharing the same humanity and, through Christ, called into the same divine life. Now, we see very little into this mystery, yet even that little reveals something wonderful. Beneath all that separates us lies a common humanity, shared by every man and woman, rooted in our single origin in God.

It is this humanity that we are called to love—not the anger, fear, or hatred that so often hides it. The claim of our neighbor does not arise from our feelings toward him, but from who he truly is. Whether good or evil, friend or enemy, every person shares this common humanity. If that were not so, there would be nothing left for love to recognize or restore.

Here, in this shared humanity, lies the root of all our relationships. Therefore, we ought to cherish every brother and sister, no matter what has come between us. Love begins, not with what another has become, but with what God created them to be.

Answer: Beneath every division lies a common humanity rooted in God.

 

Loving the Real Man

Question: Who are we really called to love?

So how can we love someone who is unjust and cruel toward us? The one who burns with disrespect and cuts off every attempt we make to embrace? The one who is unlovely, mean, and critical; self-righteous, self-seeking, and self-centered? The one who mockingly smiles while looking down on us in hatred? Such treatment is more painful than murder.

These characteristics cannot be loved. The best of us hate them; the worst of us hate them even more. But is this the real person we see? Even in this shadowed humanity there remains a participation in the divine, something still lovely and lovable. Though the beautiful seems to be disappearing beneath evil passions, or worse, beneath stone-cold selfishness, it has not been destroyed. When the divine nature awakens within them, it bears the fruit of their true self. They themselves will come to hate the unlovely figure even more than we do now. Oh, that we could see this precious life within them!

It is this shadow, this fading humanity, that awakens hatred in us—hatred against that which divides and separates. If those who offended us were merely animals and not men and women, we would not hate them; we would simply kill them. We hate the evil that keeps us from loving the person. When pushed beyond the limits of our patience, we condemn because we cannot embrace. We withdraw into a hatred that shackles us while leaving them to die. Frustrated, we hate. But to embrace is the driving force of the divine Life.

The person beneath all the offenses and lies—the true self waiting to be revealed—would draw our hearts toward love. It is not the unfriendly and unlovely person, as though that were who they truly are, that we are commanded to love. We are called to love our brothers and sisters who have become unkind and unlovely. Will we abandon them to a loveless future? Or will we say, "You at least shall be encircled by my love, because you do not yet possess your own. My love will come as close to you as it can, and when yours blossoms, we shall be one in the love of God."

Let no one say I am merely making comparisons, though I use one here. Many truths are better understood through images than by logic alone. These comparisons are not distractions; they uncover what is hidden. You may still say, "There is a real person here—an unlovable person. How can I love him?" My answer is this: free him from the evil that has covered him, and he will become more his true self. Unloveliness is not his true nature. Clouded and degraded by the wrongs that lie upon the surface, the real person has not been reached by evil, nor fatally injured by it. In the end, all that is evil will be destroyed. These passions make him less than he is, placing him in danger of losing himself. But when he comes to his right mind, he will be fully himself. We cannot go on hating him. We must begin loving him now, helping him discover the lover within.

Answer: The true person hidden beneath sin, fear, and selfishness.

 

No Justice without Love

Question: Can justice exist apart from love?

Can there be justice where there is no love? Certainly not. Justice without love is an impossible bit of fiction. It is only because God loves every person perfectly that He is perfectly just toward every person. Were He capable of even the smallest degree of injustice, He would no longer be love.

How often we cry out for justice while secretly desiring revenge. We want our enemies to receive what we believe they deserve. But divine justice is never separated from divine love. God does not seek to satisfy anger; He seeks to restore His children.

Justice exists for the sake of love, never apart from it. Love is the very life of justice, giving it both purpose and direction. Remove love, and justice becomes little more than punishment. Remove justice, and love becomes mere sentiment. In God the two are never divided.

This is why we are called to love our enemies. If we refuse to love them, we cannot judge them rightly. Our vision has already become clouded. Only love sees clearly because only love desires the good of the one being judged.

If our eye is not single, then our bodies will not be full of light. God's justice never asks, "How can I repay this evil?" It asks, "How can I remove this evil and restore the one I love?" Until our hearts begin asking the same question, we have not yet entered into His justice.

Answer: No. God's justice is love working to restore His children.

 

I Am the Enemy

Question: What changes when I see myself as another's enemy?

It is easy to think of ourselves as the injured party, the one who has been wronged. We readily identify the enemy as someone outside ourselves and conveniently take his as mine. Yet before we condemn another, we should ask a more searching question: whose enemy have I become? Let us claim no more grace for ourselves than we are willing to give to others.

There is no one among us who has not, at some time, wounded another. We have all spoken careless words, withheld kindness, or turned away when love called us to act. In someone else's story, I may well be the enemy.

When we begin to see ourselves in this light, something changes within us. Condemnation gives way to humility. We no longer stand above another as judge, but beside them as one equally in need of grace. The command to love our enemies no longer points only outward; it turns inward, exposing the places where we ourselves have failed to love. I will wait until your true self looks out of your eyes and recognizes the true self in mine. In the end, through  Divine Love’s work, my enemy is destined to be my friend. Liberation is achieved with one flash of this love. Our divisions are removed, revealing the brother or sister within each of us who was there all along.

How differently we would pray if we remembered this. Instead of asking God to deal with those who have wronged us, we would ask Him first to deal with us. We would desire for our own hearts the same mercy we hope He will extend to those who have become our enemies.

This is not to excuse evil, nor to deny the pain it causes. It is simply to confess that we all stand in need of the same redeeming love. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. There, the distinction between enemy and neighbor begins to disappear, and we discover that both alike are embraced by the love of God.

Answer: Humility replaces condemnation, and mercy begins to shape my heart.

 

Everyone Must Repent

Question: What is true repentance?

Again, what if we are the ones in the wrong? What if we are the ones doing the wrong, hating others because we ourselves have been hurt? What then? Will we cry to God from our self-made hell, asking Him to have mercy on us, the chief of sinners, lifting us from the pit and out of the miry clay? No one can free us but the Spirit sent from the Father and the Son. The very Spirit of our Father and Brother comes to reveal, cast out, and remove the hurts and offenses that have taken root within us.

Such deliverance does not come without pain. It comes as a tearing away, a breaking, and a humbling. It may feel like dying. Yet it is through this work that the demons of anger, fear, and hatred lose their hold, and the strongholds we have built around ourselves begin to fall.

If God commands us to love our enemies, can we imagine that He will one day cease loving His own? Some say a day will come when the Unchangeable One will stop forgiving. That God's perfection will no longer love His enemies. They imagine the redeemed calmly looking upon the eternal torment of their strong brothers and beautiful sisters. No. Those brothers are weak now, and those sisters are disfigured now. Do not believe such a lie. Love could never rejoice in their misery. Rather, the forgiven would cry, "Where are you, our strong brother, our great savior? Deliver those who are suffering and tormented! Come, Lord of Life! King of Suffering! Deliver them for us. Let us go down into hell ourselves carrying cool water to relieve their thirst."

Do not believe the lie that love can one day cease to love. Such thinking will slowly stifle love within us until we ourselves become unforgiving. Instead, let us go down to our brothers and sisters in whatever hell they have made for themselves, trusting that God is greater than the false image of Him they carry in their hearts. They remain there only until they have paid the last penny, learning in that darkness what they would not yet receive in the light. Even there, the goodness of God continues to shine, as faithfully as the sun and rain upon creation. And from the depths of every delivered soul will arise glorious visions of union and unity.

Answer: Allowing God's love to heal the bitterness and unforgiveness within us.

 

Perfect in Love

Question: What is Christian perfection?

Let us tell the stories of Him who is mighty to save because He is perfect in love! Father, You are the All in all, beyond all the expectations of Your children. We know now that we are all Yours! You will make us pure, loving, and free!

Therefore, let us become perfectly free, as our heavenly Father is free. To Love our enemies is to live as children of the Highest. For it is the very nature of the divine to forgive.

Lord Jesus, let the heart of the child rise within us, that we may be resurrected from the grave of bitterness and unforgiveness, and die no more—seeing You face-to-face, the God of the Living.

Answer: Sharing the Father's own life by becoming free to love as He loves.

Sermon Answer: The Father loves even His enemies and invites us to share in that same divine love until our enemies become our neighbors.

 

 

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Continue your Quest . . .

Next Sermon - God of the Living

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CLIFF NOTES WITH MACDONALD’S ORIGINAL QUOTES

 

 

God Loves His Enemies

 

“God is love, all love, nothing other than love.”

 

We Share One Humanity

“Why should we love our enemies? The deepest reason for this we cannot put in words, for it lies in the absolute reality of their being, where our enemies are of one nature with us, even of the divine nature.”

Love the Real Man

 

“It is the very presence of this fading humanity that makes it possible for us to hate. If it were an animal only, and not a man or a woman that did us hurt, we should not hate: we should only kill. We hate the man just because we are prevented from loving him. . . .For to embrace is the necessity of our deepest being.”

 

No Justice without Love

 

“Man is not made for justice from his fellow, but for love, which is greater than justice, and by including supersedes justice.”

 “Mere justice is an impossibility, a fiction of analysis.”

 

I am the Enemy

 

“But the question must be put to each man by himself, "Is my neighbour indeed my enemy, or am I my neighbour's enemy, and so take him to be mine?—awful thought! Or, if he be mine, am not I his? Am I not refusing to acknowledge the child of the kingdom within his bosom, so killing the child of the kingdom within my own?" Let us claim for ourselves no more indulgence than we give to him. Such honesty will end in severity at home and clemency abroad.”

 “But in the working of the Divine Love upon the race, my enemy is doomed to cease to be my enemy, and to become my friend. One flash of truth towards me would destroy my enmity at once; one hearty confession of wrong, and our enmity passes away; from each comes forth the brother who was inside the enemy all the time.”

 

Everyone must Repent

 

“But again I must ask, What if we are in the wrong and do the wrong, and hate because we have injured? What then? Why, then, let us cry to God as from the throat of hell; struggle, as under the weight of a spiritual incubus; cry, as knowing the vile disease that cleaveth fast unto us; cry, as possessed of an evil spirit; cry, as one buried alive, from the sepulchre of our evil consciousness, that He would take pity upon us the chief of sinners, the most wretched and vile of men, and send some help to lift us from the fearful pit and the miry clay.”

 

Perfect in Love

“The story of Him who was mighty to save, because he was perfect in love. O Father, thou art All-in-all, perfect beyond the longing of thy children, and we are all and altogether thine. Thou wilt make us pure and loving and free. We shall stand fearless in thy presence, because perfect in thy love. Then shall thy children be of good cheer, infinite in the love of each other, and eternal in thy love.”