Matthew 5:43-48
Love for Your Enemies
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children 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. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Jesus died on the cross tortured by His enemies, but at the same time LOVING them...Before they took Him to the cross the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around Him...They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on Him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on His head...They put a staff in His right hand...Then they knelt in front of him and mocked Him. “Hail, king of the Jews!” they said...They spit on Him, and took the staff and struck Him on the head again and again...After they had mocked Him, they took off the robe and put His own clothes on Him...Then they took Him away to be tortured on the cross...And during this time of despair and anguish, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing...
Jesus teaches us to have love for our enemies...He tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us...Let us learn to love those who mock us, threatens us, and inflicts us with pain...Let us remember we all are children of our 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 own people, what are you doing more than others?...Do not even pagans do that?...Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect...
Author and theologian Frederick Buechner wrote this about the Gospel of Jesus...“It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight...It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too...It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive...Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name...That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still.”...
Buechner adds this about his thoughts on love: “The love for equals is a human thing--of friend for friend, brother for brother...It is to love what is loving and lovely...The world smiles...The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing--the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely...This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world...The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing--to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man...The world is always bewildered by its saints...And then there is the love for the enemy--love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain...The tortured's love for the torturer...This is God's LOVE...It conquers the world.”...