The Terrible Commandment
I was recently privileged to participate in a conversation, where one person was experiencing the illness of a loved one. Considering the suffering of the loved one, they were asked, “Since God is a spiritual being, who exists in a spiritual realm, why would He create this physical world?” Without hesitating, this person responded, “Because this world gives us opportunity to love.”
43 You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Matthew 43-45
Loving others is God’s terrible commandment. Love my enemies; even those who persecute me? Of all things Jesus could ask, I wish he wouldn’t ask that. Why should we love people who don’t love us and, in fact, have hurt us? Even if we understand the why, how can we do that?
Loving others requires starting with yourself. “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” Matthew 7:3. We are all sinners; you, me, everyone. We find so much more commonality in our heartbreaks and failures than we ever do our successes. On some level, we are all bumbling and stumbling through life; we are all living country music songs. Loving others, even those who don’t deserve our love, is inextricably bound in the concept of our own sinfulness; our own failures, and our capacity to be petty, spiteful and recalcitrant. Even the Apostle Paul said, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” Romans 7:19. How can I deny love to someone because they don’t deserve it, when so many times I don’t deserve it?
The importance of love can be seen in the results of its absence. Responding to awful people with my own awfulness only creates a downward spiral of ever-increasing dysfunctionality. Someone has to show some sense; someone has to be the strong one. Hate deforms the hater. When your heart can’t find love, it will fill with resentment, spilling over into a form of derangement: The noble will become revolting as the revolting becomes noble; the innocent will become guilty as the guilty become innocent; and truth will become lies as lies become truth. A person with a heart devoid of love, where resentment and malevolence reign, is bound in a form of Hell, grasping their own chains.
Love carries redemptive power because it transforms both you and the other. Love for the other is your armor against resentment, while also opening the possibility of transforming your enemy. Reaching outside of yourself to understand the perspective of another, regardless of how deplorable it may be, is the first step to awakening love within them. Fortunately, Jesus never said I have to like that person; and there are plenty of people I don’t like. But love is more. Love carries the power of understanding, reconciliation and redemption. I can love the person who commits an odious act, while abhorring the act itself.
Finally, regardless, God loves them. As God loves us, even as undeserving sinners, He loves them, too. This person who is my enemy, who has hurt me, was created in God’s image, just like me. Many times, I have felt God’s love and the love of others, knowing I didn’t deserve it. I have asked for love because I needed it, even when I didn’t deserve it. How can we ask for something we are unwilling to offer ourselves? As God offers us love and as we seek His love, as undeserved as we are, so do others, even our enemies.
This is a sublimely terrible commandment that agonizingly asks so much. It is so painfully unnatural to consider the perspective of someone who has hurt us and, instead of responding with what they deserve, offering them love. We do it because we are called to emulate the One who did it for us.
In Christ,
Mort Taylor