Matthew 5:44 – LOVE YOUR ENEMIES
Matthew 5:44a But I say unto you, Love your enemies,
In this passage, Christ is commanding us to do something that is completely contrary to the sin nature of man. Deep inside each of us, if we have someone who has done us wrong, then we desire to hate them. We love having an enemy, someone who is a bad guy. When we are thinking about this individual, we conjure all sorts of evil that we would love to do to them.
God’s ways are not our ways. Just because we love to hate our enemies, it does not mean that this is pleasing to God. Even if you do not follow through with a single idea that you meditated upon, you are still guilty in the eyes of God of hating your enemy. God has allowed this enemy to be an irritant in your life so that you can grow in your spiritual walk with him.
When someone does you evil, everyone expects you to get even. That is what they would do so when they hear about the injustice that you have faced, they understand the thoughts of evil that you have towards them. Nonetheless, God has a purpose for the trials that you are facing and vengeance is not one of them.
After Elijah prayed and fire came down from heaven and the clouds brought forth their rain once again, Jezebel decided that she was going to kill Elijah. Jezebel was an enemy in the life of Elijah but as a result of her trying to kill Elijah, we see that God used this to take Elijah on a long trip where Elijah received direction in where he was to go and whom he was supposed to train up to be the prophet of Israel after his death.
Imagine what would have happened if Elijah had decided to stand up for his rights? Elijah could have called fire down from heaven and destroyed Jezebel; he could have prayed and God would have sent a couple of she bears who tore Jezebel from limb to limb; he could have prayed and God would have paralyzed Jezebel or made her mute. Elijah served a mighty God so Elijah did not need to have any fear of Queen Jezebel. Instead, Elijah took a long journey with God and did not allow his enemies to get the best of him.
Your natural reaction will always be to get even or to come up with a way that you can show the other side who is boss. However God desires us to love our enemies. This means that you are going to have to add temperance to your life so that you can control your mind, will, and emotions. It takes great self-control to not allow yourself to dwell upon the revenge that you desire to administer to another individual.
God desires that you learn to control your mind so that you think thoughts of love rather than thoughts of hate. David demonstrated great love towards Saul but Saul naturally was jealous of David. Saul knew that David was going to be king after him so he constantly was trying to kill David. For thirteen years David had a yo-yo relationship with Saul in that one day he was permitted to faithfully serve the king and the next he was running for his life. Nonetheless, regardless of what Saul did to David, David was quick to demonstrate his love towards Saul and refused to take the life of Saul even though he had ample chances.
We need to be like Saul and we need to understand that God has put our enemy into our life. We are not God and we do not have the right to conform the circumstances into our life as we desire. We must put God first in our lives and we must learn to love those whom we desire to hate so that the love of God can brightly reflect through our lives.