Jesus said, “…love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.”
This has to be one of the most difficult passages in the Scripture. I, for one, have struggled with it on many occasions and feel, deep down that it is not in my nature or ability to fulfill.
How are we to understand the reasoning behind it? Why was it such a blatant teaching of Jesus? What is the deeper meaning?
Here are some suggestions.
The outward and obvious is that we are to love as God loved and as Jesus served, even those who rejected Him. But still, that does not answer for me the deeper question. Is
God trying to test us? Is He seeking to hurt us and harm us and use us as a doormat for the ungodly? Are we really to be able to live above the common nature of man in this unreasonable realm?
I think there could be something deeper. Yes, the next two verses tell us that we are to be examples like the Heavenly Father, but it also says something else we often overlook – it has to do with the single word, “reward” found in the very next verse. In other words, here is an insight into how to receive a “reward.”
To me it is like a sacrifice. God watches to see what and how we sacrifice and responds accordingly.
We can offer thanks in an unthankful situation and it registers. We can begin giving before we have plenty and the reward is promised. We can offer the sacrifice of praise to God when something else is demanding our focus and it is a sacrifice accepted. We can turn the other cheek when we actually want to club someone and it registers. We can love our enemies when we really want to hate them and it gets noticed in Heaven. We can pray for those who spitefully use us and persecute us and it registers. Do you get the point? It is almost like God is giving us a template for sacrifice that can get reward.
I was prompted to think along these lines as I was reading in the last chapter of Job. It said,
“And the Lord restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before” (Job42:10).
The trigger for unleashing the bounties of Heaven for Job was when he prayed for his persecutors! Could this also be what Jesus is getting at for us? Is it the sacrifice trigger that moves God to act? Is Jesus really setting up for us a method of being blessed and rewarded?
I think there is something here to consider.
