Loving Our Enemies

In the book of Ephesians, Paul has a prayer that reflects his desire for the Ephesians to know the depth of the love of God. He says “and I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know his love that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 4:17b-19). For Paul, being able to know and understand the love of God is essential to being “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God”. The love of God surpasses our understanding, the love of God does not make sense to our human brains and logic, it is selfless. The bible in its entirety is really a love story of a husband (God) redeeming his wife (his people, the church). I was struck at how lavish and utterly different God’s love is from ours. As I read in the books of Kings, I kept seeing examples of the love of God and how marvelous it is in the life of Ahab. I know this is a cliché topic among Christians but it should never stop being discussed or taken for granted.

In 1 Kings, we read of the reign of Ahab, the king of the northern kingdom of Israel. He was an evil king who did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord. As the bible says, he followed in the steps of Jeroboam who led the Israelites astray. The particularity with Ahab was that he had an evil wife named Jezebel who would give him wrong advice which he often yielded to. Jezebel was a real enemy of God and she made sure God’s prophets were killed. Nevertheless, despite Ahab’s sins, God was ready to welcome him back, more than that God, who was very displeased with Ahab still showed him love on several occasions even when it did not make sense. One such occasion is when Ahab was going in battle with the king of Syria. During that battle, God, in his love and for His Name’s sake told Ahab that he was going to give him victory over the Syrians (1 Kings 20:13). Again, this is a rebellious king who does not follow the way of God, if anything, he consistently opposed God by his actions. Yet, God decided to show him His love and fight on his behalf even when He knew the recipient of His love would not appreciate it. Indeed, God does not operate like us, His love is not calculative, it is not conditional, it bears all things, it does not keep a record of wrong, etc. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7). It is hard to comprehend why His love is so lavished on sinners!

Moreover, even later in his life when Ahab committed another odious act of killing an innocent man in order to take his inheritance which was in the form of a land, God’s love was still available to Ahab. Indeed, in His love, God sent Elijah the Tishbite, a prophet to Ahab to tell him that his actions were disgusting and deserving of a judgment (1 Kings 21:19). This word struck a chord with Ahab and he humbled himself before the Lord. Because of this humility, the Lord decided to bring his judgment of Ahab and his household not during the life of Ahab. God’s patience is to the end that many will be saved. Had Ahab repented, God’s love would have welcomed him. This kind of love is beyond our understanding, loving our enemies and those that do not deserve our love is what we have been called to. Indeed, it is while we were still sinners that Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). And we love, because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). There is nothing we could have ever done to deserve this love and it is available to all who would believe and trust in the name of Jesus! 

If God could stoop so low as to becoming human, coming into this world of limitations, stripping Himself of all power so that He could take away our sin, our shame, our suffering, why can we not love our enemies? Why should we find it difficult to love those that hurt us or are against us? One of the beautiful benefits about Christ dying on the cross on our behalf is that He gave us power and authority to be above the flesh so we can now live according to the spirit because we have his Spirit in us. Now, we can no longer respond with pride but with humility and forgiveness. The love of God compels us to love our enemies, it compels us to do the extraordinary for others. As Jesus essentially said, there is no reward in loving those who love you, everyone does that, it is not anything special, the beauty is found in loving those who hate you, those who cannot give you anything in return, those who do not ‘deserve’ your love as that is where the reward is (Matthew 5:46-47). In light of this, let us push to love our neighbours as ourselves for it is a command from our Lord. May the Lord help us.