Generosity
Week 05: Loving your enemy
"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven." — Matthew 5:43-45
Jesus refuses to let us limit who we love. He also refuses to let us limit how we love (Lk. 14:12-14). We often limit our love to those like us — those at a similar stage of life, in a similar social class, those who are our race, and those with a similar political outlook. Its easy to love those who look like, dress like, live like, and vote like us. But Jesus will not let us limit who we love to those like us. He calls us to love our enemies.
Tim Keller says that “God personally identifies very closely with the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant, the most powerless and vulnerable members of society. “ Jesus came into our world and chose to be born in a feeding trough. He chose to be born into a poor family — to become one of the poor and marginalized. Later in life he even said that he “had no place to lay his head” (Lk. 9:58). In other words, he was a homeless wanderer — couch surfing from house to house. In the end, Jesus was horribly and unjustly executed by the Romans and religious conservatives.
Tim Keller comments on this and says that “Jesus…knows what it's like to be the victim of injustice, to stand up to power, to face a corrupt system and be killed for it. He knows what it is like to be lynched.” Our God personally identifies with the weak, the poor, and the oppressed. Jesus went out of his way to identify with those we overlook. He identified with those who are the victims of injustice.
He goes so far as to identify with the poor and vulnerable that he says, “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matt. 25:35-36, 40). In a mysterious way, loving the hungry, thirsty, the naked, and the imprisoned in inseparable from loving Jesus (1 Jn. 4:20). To love one is to love the other.
01 – Love passionately. Ask God to give you a passion for people. Ask him to give you a heart for people. Ask God to fill your heart with compassion and love for those you would normally overlook.
02 – Love personally. Love for a crowd or group is great. But love, if it is to be real, must move to the individual. Who can you love this week on a personal level?
03 – Love practically. 1 John 3:16-17 tells us that love that is true loves practically. It’s not enough to think warm thoughts about someone. That love must be driven to action. It must be love that loves practically. Choose a way to love someone practically this week. Who would you normally overlook? Who is out of your social circle, class, race, etc.? How can you practically love them?
Recommended reading: Generous Justice by Tim Keller