Posted on 04/21/2022 7:38:12 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Recently, some Christians in Ukraine came under fire for putting up billboards in their city with verses from the Bible, one of which quoted the words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount where He called us to love our enemies (see Matthew 5:43-48). As a result, these Christians have been branded separatists and traitors, with some calling for their church to be investigated.
But was Jesus referring to situations like this when He called us to love our enemies? Are we to love those who ruthlessly bomb our families? Are we to love those who rape our women and murder our children? Are we to love those who tie the hands of civilians behind their backs before executing them? Is this really what Jesus meant?
To be sure, these Ukrainian Christians (some of whom I know) were not calling for pacifism. They believe in defending their country, and they believe in the use of force to resist and repel the attack on their nation. In fact, I could easily see them praying for God to be with them as they fought against the Russian army, the result of which would be Russian casualties.
But can you love an enemy soldier while at the same time trying to kill him before he kills you?
Let’s first consider whom Jesus was talking to in the Sermon on the Mount, namely, first-century Jews under the occupation of Rome. They had personal enemies, religious enemies, and national enemies. And there were some Jewish groups who taught that it was absolutely right to hate their enemies.
Jesus says absolutely not. We are to love them, even the worst of them.
That means that, in times of war, you would rather see your enemy surrender than kill him, and if he did surrender, you would not treat him harshly.
It means that you would recognize his humanity, remembering that he has a loving wife and children (or parents) waiting for him at home.
That you would understand that, in all likelihood, he is simply following orders and has been fed lots of misinformation about you.
That you would want to see him rehabilitated after the war, truly repenting for his actions, truly coming to know God, and living a redemptive life. (In the case of someone who committed war crimes and would be sentenced to prison or death, even then, you would want him to repent and get right with God before he died.)
That you would even have pity on the enemy who has seemingly lost all human feeling to the point of acting like a rabid animal. Surely this was not who God created him to be. Even if he must die, we should pity his poor, lost soul.
That is how you can love your enemies even during a time of war, all while fighting with all your might to defeat that very enemy.
Some might quip in facetious response, “So, it looks like this? Before the sniper shoots the enemy in the head, he mutters under his breath, ‘Jesus loves you, and so do I. Here’s a token of my love. Bang!’”
Obviously not.
But he might pray regularly for God to have mercy on those he has to take out. Or for God to help the widows and orphans left behind. Or for God to give them a change of heart and mind, resulting in a change of actions, so the sniper does not need to take them out.
On the other hand, if the sniper enjoys the kill itself, if he revels in the bloodshed and longs to have the opportunity to take more enemy lives, I would question how much of the love of God is in his heart.
The fact is that we are products of our environment more than we care to realize, and the ones we brand as terrorists are often hailed as freedom fighters by their people. (Ask yourself this: how would British historians writing in the early 1800s describe the Revolutionary War? Our American heroes and freedom fighters were anything but that in their eyes.)
And are all Russians guilty of the barbaric Ukraine invasion? Should all Russians be blamed and hated? Obviously not.
Of course, I’m not saying there is no such thing as objective morality. Quite the contrary. For example, there was nothing good or noble about the Nazi cause. It was downright evil, to the core. And the Nazis absolutely deserved what they got. I wish they had been stopped in their tracks and destroyed years earlier.
Yet, as New Testament scholar Craig Keener notes in his shorter Matthew commentary, Jesus “also makes a demand that can require more than merely human resources for forgiveness. Corrie ten Boom, who had lost most of her family in a Nazi concentration camp, often lectured on grace. But one day a man who came to shake her hand after such a talk turned out to be a former prison guard. Only by asking God to love through her did she find the grace to take his hand and offer him Christian forgiveness.”
So, by all legal means, let the Ukrainians fight against the Russian invaders, and may their triumph over the Russian army put a stop to this senseless shedding of blood. And may the Ukrainian Christians continue to love their enemies through it all. (For those of us feeling smugly self-righteous right now, how about us loving our enemies, right where we live?)
Dr. Michael Brown(www.askdrbrown.org) is the host of the nationally syndicated Line of Fire radio program. His latest book is Revival Or We Die: A Great Awakening Is Our Only Hope.
Yes and pray for them as well.
Romans 12:20
King James
Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.
Yes, but only until you run out of cheeks
Most people don’t realize that number is 4 unfortunately
G.K. Chesterton pointed out that Our Lord didn’t have a lot to say about the occupying Roman army, except that he generally got along with them.
You don’t have to hate your enemies to fight for your freedom and faith.
Many soldiers in WWII didn’t hate the Krauts or the Nips, in fact that was a sign of weakness to hate them. Those that understood what they were fighting for fought to the death for the cause of freedom and didn’t hate, and often respected their enemies.
Paul the Apostle had much opposition and many adversaries in his good fight of faith and grace. He, too, fought to the death but didn’t hate his enemies. His enemies were the ones he was trying to help and save.
I would have to call that title a false dichotomy.
I tell my kids as they are becoming CCW age. If you need to use it, you will most likely be sending them to Hell.
https://soundcloud.com/user-216129961/art-bell-dr-glenn-kimball-the-lost-history-of-jesus
Cause he was a Roman psi-op ?
I wish that I had the strength to love Democrats.
Matthew 8:5-13 King James Version 5 And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, 6 And saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. 7 And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him. 8 The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. 9 For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. 10 When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. 11 And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.
There are worse things than killing your enemy.
For instance,when the enemy teaches your toddlers about sex. And your supposed government pays for it.
IMNSHO that is worse than putting a bullet in someone’s head.
Loving our enemies comes from the same place in G-d that tells us to love the sinner. We know G-d does not mean for us to love the sin. We are to condem the sin.
G-d also does not want us to love a war an enemy commits against us. He expects us to condem the war. The problem comes when we fail to sperate the two parts and wind up not codemning the bad that the sin or the enemy is doing.
I think that CS Lewis said
“I have often thought to myself how it would have been if, when I served in the first World War, I and some young German had killed each other simultaneously and found ourselves together a moment after death. I cannot imagine that either of us would have felt any resentment or even any embarrassment. I think we might have laughed over it (p. 119).” Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
Lewis thought war horrible, but not the worst thing that could happen to us. To kill or to be killed in war is not murder. Rather, war is a species of punishment that may require our death or the death of the enemy, but we cannot hate or enjoy hating those we kill.
Turning the other cheek is one of the most if not the most misinterpreted scripture in the Bible.
It doesn’t mean we let people walk all over us.
Also, the Bible mentions righteous anger.
There are times when anger is not sin.....e.g. if an elderly person is being beaten up and you step in and beat the snot outta the attacker I would consider that righteous anger and not sin.
You don’t have to allow evil to love your enemy. Stop him... and pray for his salvation. We are Easter people. We long for resurrection and Heaven. There are times when you have to usher some people on their way.
Love them to death...
That’s the appropriate verse.
You wanna pour coals of fire on your enemy’s head? Pray for them.
I do understand, just being cheeky
All depends on how the words “love” and “hate” are defined. I’ve always maintained there are circumstances where hate can rightfully be considered a virtue.
Regarding this paragraph:
“Some might quip in facetious response, “So, it looks like this? Before the sniper shoots the enemy in the head, he mutters under his breath, ‘Jesus loves you, and so do I. Here’s a token of my love. Bang!’””
It gave me this sarcastic thought “It is easier to kill the enemy if he is a godless commie.”
Brown has written a good article.
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