July 6, 2020 – Click here to listen
How are we supposed to love despicable people who reject and ridicule everything that we hold dear and stand for? The Bible tells us to love our enemies and turn the other cheek when persecuted.
Huh?
This goes against the nature and anger of our flesh. How can we love a neighbor if they are intent upon destroying this great nation and putting us in the same boat as Cuba and Venezuela? There are all kinds of people in the world who murder, rape, rob, and create mayhem and we are told to love them?
C.S. Lewis had an interesting slant on it:
There are two kinds of love: we love wise and kind and beautiful people because we need them, but we love (or try to love) stupid and disagreeable people because they need us. This second kind is the more divine because that is how God loves us: not because we are lovable but because He is love, not because He needs to receive but He delights to give.
I spent decades going to prisons and visiting prisoners in an effort to lead them to the Lord. I remember a time when we were visiting a prison in Huntsville Texas. It was a “special” unit and anyone who’d committed a sex crime along with snitches and bad cops were locked up in there. I have a deep aversion to pedophiles and didn’t want to be assigned to this place. Men were incarcerated there that had raped children as young as one year old. To be honest I would have preferred to put the needle in their arm at their execution.
I was with a team of men who felt similarly, and we discussed it. We decided that in spite of what we might think that God loved these men and told us to love them and be a witness to them. We gathered in a circle and held hands and earnestly prayed for the Holy Spirit to take away those bad thoughts prior to going in. It turned out that many of the inmates accepted the Lord as their Savior that day, and I shall never forget it.
There are people all over this country and the world who need to receive God’s word. If not us, then who will take the word to them? In God’s sight we are as filthy rags, all of us, not just the dregs of humanity. Though we have all sinned, He still loves us with a mysterious deep incomprehensible love and doesn’t want anyone to be separated from Him for all of eternity.
I read some commentary on this and the anonymous author said:
The Bible tells us that God’s will is for us to love other people with a godly love. We are called to “love your neighbor as yourself” and even to “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” Jesus told His disciples the night before His crucifixion, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” In each of these examples, the Greek word for love is agapao which has self-sacrifice as its primary characteristic. This is not a love of brotherly affection or emotional connection, as is often thought. Rather, agapao or agape love seeks the best for its object. Sacrificial love is not based on a feeling, but a determined act of the will, a joyful resolve to put the welfare of others above our own. Clearly, this type of love is impossible in our own strength. It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that we are able to obey God’s commands, including the commandment to love.
The bottom line is God wants His children to love each other regardless of their current standing in the world. God can transform anyone’s life, (I’m living proof of that.) Not all will surrender to God, but those who have accepted God’s free gift of salvation and redemption are then commanded to witness to the nations. We are told to love and offer a hand to those mired in the quicksand of sin, not admonish them for getting trapped in it. Think about it.
Romans 5:8
“But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us”