Perspective: In Dealing With Our Enemies

Yes, God loved us before we were EVER good! In fact, the Bible is pretty clear, He loved us while we were His enemies. (Romans 5:8-9) However, talking about God's love and grace is one thing; trying to wrap our minds around it in a sincere effort to practice love toward our enemies, well that is a different matter.

We need perspective when dealing with the attacks of people who resort to carnal tactics. Yes sometimes people, even those professing to be our brothers or sisters in Christ (some of the apostles Paul's worst enemies came from within he called them false brethren), will seek to slander us with malicious lies, or resort to writing anonymous letters filled with false accusations and innuendos. Perspective is needed or else you will be consumed with bitterness and hatred.

Even David had perspective when Shimei, an enemy from the house of Saul was cursing him and throwing stones at him and his entourage. (I realize there is a significant back story to this account in 2 Samuel 16:5-14. However, space prevents me from going into detail. Suffice it to say, the back story is relative to God's punishment pronounced on David because of his sin with Bathsheeba, which involved Absalom's pursuit of him and attempted coup.) When David's servant Abishai, son of Zeruiah, wanted to avenge the King's honor and cut Shimei's head off, David refused! He refused because he had perspective! David said, “What have I to do with you, you sons of Zeruiah? If he is cursing because the Lord has said to him, ‘Curse David,’ who then shall say, ‘Why have you done so?’ Behold, my own son seeks my life; how much more now may this Benjaminite [Shimei]! Leave him alone, and let him curse, for the Lord has told him to. It may be that the Lord will look on the wrong done to me, and that the Lord will repay me with good for his cursing today.” David is quite aware of his own limitations and failings before God. Saul's house has fallen because of Saul's sin and now David's own house because of his sin is teetering on the brink of disaster. David's only hope is to trust in God! That's David's perspective.

What's even more amazing is that we, in the 21st Century, have greater reason than David did to put our hope and trust in God, when our enemies and unreasonable men assail us. The cross is our perspective. There is nothing like the cross, on which God's only begotten Son died, to reminds us of this world's unfairness, cruelty and complete disregard for innocence. There is nothing like THIS cross to remind us of the horror of our OWN sins, much less those of others, which put God's only begotten Son there. The cross is our perspective - where love conquered the unlovable; where pain and agony lifted us from despair and hopelessness; where Heaven reached down to lowest low and saved a wretch like ME.

We MUST love our enemies, pray for them and DO them good. Yes, it will make us vulnerable to their attacks. Yet, as Paul told Timothy, "Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound! Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory." (2 Timothy 2:8-10) We will never learn to love and be more like God, until we learn to love our enemies. Lord, help me in my weakness and struggles to gain this perspective and to see most clearly the Cross on which He died for ME!