Learning to Love when it's Hard To

I’d like to tell you a true story about a pastor named Peter. He lived about 200 years ago in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, and his name was Peter Miller. Now Pastor Miller was a fine pastor. Everyone in the community loved him and respected him. Everybody, that is, except one man. That man, for some unknown reason, hated Pastor Miller, and all that he stood for. He took every opportunity to heap insults and abuse on the pastor and the church.

Now this was just after the Revolutionary War had ended. It just so happened that that unpleasant man was not only a hater of the church, it was discovered that he had also been a traitor to his country. He was arrested for having given information to the British during the war. He was convicted of treason, and he was sentenced to death.

The trial was conducted in Philadelphia. No sooner did Pastor Miller receive word of it than he set out on foot to visit General Washington to intercede for the man’s life. Pastor Miller arrived in Philadelphia a couple of days later, having walked the sixty miles from Ephrata. When he asked General Washington to spare the man’s life, the General told him “I’m sorry, but I simply cannot grant your request for your friend.”

“Friend!” Miller cried. “This man is not my friend! Sir, he’s the worst enemy I have in the world.”

The General was amazed. “You have walked sixty miles to see me in order to spare the life of your enemy? That, in my judgment, puts the matter in a different light. I will grant him a pardon for your sake.” The General then sat down at his desk, and signed a decree of pardon and gave it to Pastor Miller.

The Pastor then practically ran the fifteen miles to a place outside Philadelphia where the man was being held. The man’s execution had been scheduled to take place that afternoon, and the Pastor wasn’t sure he’d make it in time. He arrived just as the man was being led to the scaffold. When the man saw Pastor Miller hurrying toward him, he remarked sarcastically, “Look! Here comes old Peter Miller. He has run all the way from Ephrata to gratify his revenge by seeing me hung today.”

But scarcely had he said these words when Pastor Miller pushed his way to the front of the crowd and handed the officer in charge the pardon that saved the man’s life.

Peter Miller was a living example of the kind of love we want to talk about today. He was a man who loved not only his friends, but his enemies too. Because of that, his life had a tremendous impact which lives on today.

If you had to single out one thing which marks off a true Christian as different from everyone else in the world, it would have to be this. A true Christian is someone who loves his enemy.

In the basement of this building, we have a boiler. It gives heat to the building by means of hot water. Now if you want to know what the level of the water is in the boiler, you can’t actually look into the boiler. There’s a little glass tube on the side of the boiler. By looking at the level of the water in that little glass tube, you can tell what’s going on with the water in the boiler.

The amount of love you have for the people in your life who are hard to love is like a glass tube which indicates what’s going on in your relationship with God. It’s an indicator of how much you love God.

Jesus dealt with this issue in the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, this is the sixth time he draws a contrast between the false righteousness taught by the Pharisees, and the true righteousness of the child of God. Let’s look at those verses again…

Matthew 5:43 “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 sons 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. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

In this passage, Jesus tells us three things about loving your enemy:

1. Loving your enemy proclaims that your righteousness is of God

2. Loving your enemy proves that you are related to God

3. Loving your enemy produces rewards from God

1. Loving your enemy proclaims that your righteousness is of God

Jesus begins by saying, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ Now it does say in the OT that we should love our neighbor, but it doesn’t say “Hate your enemy” anywhere in the OT. Where did that concept come from? What’s Jesus referring to here?

Well, like everything else, this came from the popular teaching of the rabbis and the Pharisees. They didn’t come out and boldly say “Hate your enemy” to be sure, but they certainly left that impression!

You see, they did all sorts of interpretive gymnastics over the question of “Who is your neighbor?” They tried to define neighbor so precisely that they left everyone with the impression that if someone didn’t quite fit the legalistic definition of neighbor, then you didn’t have to love him!

This is precisely the issue in Luke 10…

Luke 10:25-29 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Here is an expert in the Jewish law, and he’s trying to split hairs over the question of “who is my neighbor.” You see where his focus is? He’s trying to see how he can get out of loving certain people. He’s trying to see how many people he can relegate to the category of “non-neighbor” so that he doesn’t have to love them!

Unfortunately, the Jewish people had done this with everyone who were not Jews. They had become so preoccupied with their religious laws about cleanness and uncleanness, that they turned their back on the whole Gentile world. If you were a Gentile, a Jew didn’t have to love you.

We have uncovered texts from the community of Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea. Qumran was, in effect, a Jewish monastery, occupied by a sect of Jews called the Essenes. The Essenes regarded themselves to be holier than any other Jews. They were the pure ones, they were the spiritual ones. And one of their texts actually reads: “Love the brothers; hate the outsider.”

This was the attitude of the Pharisees. They would cross the street to avoid even the shadow of a Gentile, or a tax collector, or a sinner from falling on them. That was how they practiced their righteousness. But Jesus comes along and says “Far from hating, or avoiding, or even simply ignoring those people whom you don’t like (and who don’t like you) - I want you to love them.

When you love your enemy, that is the expression of God’s righteousness. God’s righteousness doesn’t place anyone in the category of people you don’t have to love. Not even the people who do you wrong. You can’t be right in the sight of God if you’re not loving those people. Why not? Because…

2. Loving your enemy proves that you are related to God

Jesus makes two statements to that effect… Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

What is the character of God like? Well, we know that God is love. How do we know that? Because he loved us. Why did he love us? Did he love us because we loved him? No. Did he love us because we were loveable? No. He loved us while we were yet sinners. He loved us even though we were unloveable. And he sent His only Son here to die for us while we were still His enemies. Jesus laid down his life to turn his enemies into his friends. That’s the quality of his love for us. It’s a costly love, a self-sacrificing love. You’ll never be able to love your enemy if you’re not willing for it to cost you something.

And it’s when we exhibit that love in our lives that we prove that we’re related to him. Like Father, like son. Like Father, like daughter.

Anyone can love his friends. Let’s not get excited about that. Jesus said “Even the tax collectors do that.” I want you to know that the tax collectors were even more hated in those days than the IRS is today! Because tax collectors were not only pests, they were traitors. And they were corrupt, as well. But even they could love their friends.

Someone has said “In loving his friends, a man may in a certain sense be loving only himself - a kind of expanded selfishness.” So let’s not be impressed with ourselves when we come to church and have wonderful fellowship with other believers in the body of Christ. Let’s not congratulate ourselves on how spiritual we are. That is not the kind of love that proves that we belong to God.

It’s what we do with our enemies - the people outside of Christ who get under our skin, and on our nerves. The people who laugh at us, and make fun of us. The people who try to damage our reputation. The people who don’t have a good thing to say about us.

When Jesus told us to love our enemies, he was saying in effect that our treatment of others cannot be based on the way they treat us. That’s not love. Love is an act of the will. Love isn’t rooted in the way we feel, it’s rooted in our will. Love is self-starting. If we’re going to love our enemies, it’s going to have to be because we’ve decided to. We have to decide that we’re simply going to obey God in this matter.

I have a great deal of respect for Abraham Lincoln. I believe that he was a man who knew the Lord. There’s a story about something that happened to Lincoln just at the end of the Civil War, and just shortly before he was assassinated. He met with a group of hot-headed Southerners who wanted to protest the unfair treatment they were getting at the hands of their Northern conquerors. These rebels came to the White House with the intent of really letting the fur fly. But the President’s gentle and friendly manner soon disarmed them. The Southerners left with a new respect for their old foe.

The next day, a northern congressman approached the Mr. Lincoln and chided him for being so cordial to the enemy. The congressman suggested that instead of befriending them, the President should have had them shot for being the traitors they were. Lincoln just smiled and replied “I am in the process of destroying my enemies by making them my friends?”

The love of God is the only thing that will turn an enemy into a friend. It may be that the only way He can reach such a person with the message of the Gospel is through you. But you have to make up your mind to obey Christ’s command.

Jesus says “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”. He knew that these two things - love and prayer - feed on each other. The more you pray for someone, the more you’ll want to love that person. And the more you love him, the more you’ll want to pray for him.

Someone has said: To return evil for good is devilish

To return good for good is human

To return good for evil is divine.

When we love our enemies, we’re demonstrating that we belong to God. We’re proving that we have that spark of divine life - His life - living in us.

3. Loving your enemy produces rewards from God

Leonardo da Vinci was one of the most brilliant men in history. He was a great scientist, engineer, and designer. He was a great painter as well, known for the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper. Just before he painted the Last Supper, Leonardo had a terrible quarrel with a man who was also an artist. So enraged and bitter was da Vinci over this quarrel, that he decided to get back at his colleague in a very unique way. As he painted the faces of the various disciples around the table, he decided to make the face of the man with whom he had had the quarrel appear as the face of Judas Iscariot. That way, everyone who saw the painting down through the years would identify that artist with Judas the traitor and scoundrel.

So he did it. And then he went on to complete the other details of the painting, coming at last to the face of the Lord Jesus Christ sitting at the center of the painting. But at that point, Leonardo found that he could go no further. Something seemed to be baffling him, holding him back, frustrating his best efforts. For several days he tried, but somehow he could not paint the face of Christ properly.

Finally, he came to the realization that the thing which was holding him back was his grudge with this other artist. Leonardo became convicted about what he had done, painting that man’s face as the face of Judas. So he went back and painted out the face of Judas, replacing it with the face of an anonymous model. And he went to the artist and asked his forgiveness for quarreling with him. Then he went back to work on the face of Christ and he found that his brush took wings, and the painting was soon completed. It stands today as one of the greatest masterpieces of all time.

We cannot, as disciples, be trying to paint the features of Christ into our lives while at the same time we’re painting another person’s face with the colors of hatred and resentment. The quickest way to spoil you fellowship with God is to hold a grudge against another. That really throws sand in the gears of your Christian life.

Out in California, there’s a tree called the Shasta fir. It grows up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where they get lots of snow. For the first few years of its life, this little fir tree gets buried under twenty feet or more of snow pack every winter. The weight of the snow bends the young tree into weird and twisted shapes. But as it keeps growing, there comes a time when it reaches a height that puts it above the snow pack. Then, freed from the weight of the snow, it grows straight as an arrow toward the heavens. A mature Shasta fir tree at the base is twisted and warped, but up above it is straight as can be.

When we learn to love our enemies, it’s as though we’re throwing off a spiritual weight that twists and warps our lives. As long as we’re under that weight, we can never grow straight and tall for the Savior.

If you want God’s blessing on your life, you need to love your enemy. And if you want your life to really count for the Lord, you’ve got to love your enemy.

The story is told of a young fellow who joined the Army. This young man was a Christian. Every night before he turned in, this guy would kneel beside his bed and pray. When he got into the Army, he kept up this practice. Soon he became an object of ridicule and mockery in his barracks. The other soldiers laughed at him and made fun of him, but he took it all in stride.

One day, his squad came back from a long march through the rain. They were exhausted at the end of the day, and griping and cursing about the ordeal they had just faced. As the Christian knelt beside his bunk in prayer, one of the guys heaved his boots at him. Those boots were muddy and filthy from the days’ march and they hit the Christian guy right in the head as he prayed.

He didn’t say anything about it, he just continued praying. But the next morning, the soldier who threw the boots woke up to find those boots beside his bed, cleaned and polished, ready for inspection. That man was so impressed, that he asked the Christian for forgiveness and soon became a believer himself.

Loving your enemy may not only make him into your friend, but God’s friend as well. What a reward it will be to find, when we get home to heaven, that there are people there because of our testimony and faithfulness to Christ in this matter of loving our enemies.

When Jesus went to the cross, they laid him down on the ground and pounded nails into his wrists and his feet. Then they pulled that cross up until it thudded into a hole in the ground, pulling all his bones out of joint. As he hung there in agony, they mocked him and laughed at him.

What did our Lord do in response to this treatment? Did he curse them? Did he call down angels from on high to wipe them all out? No, he prayed “Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” He loved his enemies, and he prayed for them.

May we do the same for those who are against us.