DAY 296 - How to Love Those We Hate

Luke 6:27-36 (NIV) ²⁷ “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸ bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. ²⁹ If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. ³⁰ Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. ³¹ Do to others as you would have them do to you. ³² “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. ³³ And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. ³⁴ And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. ³⁵ But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. ³⁶ Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

How are we going to love those we hate, those who are our enemies? That is a difficult question. We may make it easier by saying that we don’t have to like them, just love them. But, we are to love our enemies the way Jesus loves them. That is our ultimate standard and guide. For right now it is as if Jesus is saying to start out by simply loving our enemies the way we love ourselves, and treating them the way we want to be treated. We know this as the Golden Rule, but the Golden Rule is not simply the way we treat other people. The Golden Rule is something that begins within. If we simply try to be respectful of other people, our real spirit often come through and that real spirit is not usually very loving.

Sometimes we are told to have positive thoughts about other people. Don’t think of their irritating habits. Focus on the good things about them. If that helps, we need to do it. But, loving our enemies does not mean that we can mask our real feeling and pretend. Loving our enemies must come from genuineness within, whatever we do. The loving of our enemies begins on the inside so we can DO GOOD … BLESS … PRAY FOR … AND GIVE to them the real love God wills and desires. When we love our enemies, we get an inside feel for what it is like for God to love you and me. And that does something to us. It does something good, like gratitude, like truth, like wow. We not only get a feel for what it feels like for God to love us, we also get to know our real true selves. As we love our enemies we discover that we are sons and daughters of the Most High. When we love an enemy, we are contributing to God’s plan and purpose for human life, to build a Heaven in Hell’s despair. When we are able to love an enemy, we also discover the marvelous paradox that love is a gift as much as a command, a power as much as it is a responsibility.

But here is the catch to the reward. We do not get the reward because we talk about loving our enemies and how we really ought to do that, or because we are trying so hard to love an enemy. The reward comes when we do it. It is an inward signal to us that this is what Jesus meant. We love the enemy not to conquer them, not even to conquer them by love. We love them to conquer ourselves.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope February 19, 1995

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)