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| “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” |
| —Matthew 5:44a |
A friend of mine in the ministry recently wrote these words:
“If it is not of love, it is not of God. If it doesn’t exhibit or embody or extend love, it doesn't exhibit or embody or extend God.”
I believe Jesus would agree. Notice what our Lord says, as recorded in Matthew 5:43-48:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 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.
“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.”
God-breathed love is an enabling force. And, of course, it absolutely must be “God-breathed love” because left to our own devices we cannot conjure up the kind of love that Jesus is talking about in the passage above from the Gospel of Matthew.
Love my enemies? Not without the enablement of the Holy Spirit. In my flesh I not only do not want to love those who have chosen to make themselves my enemy, I want to see them suffer and be destroyed. But that is not of God. God’s way is an enabling love—a love that heals and restores and binds up wounds and blesses. Only the Holy Spirit can give us this enabling love.
Let us seek this enabling love as we begin another day. Let us open our minds and hearts to God’s gift to us of the very enabling love that He breathes into our beings.
Based on a blog originally posted on Friday, January 8, 2016
