![]() ![]() It’s good to want justice in the world, but when you try to get it for yourself, you’ve put yourself in His place. He is the God of justice, and He loves justice. He will avenge you. That desire you have for justice? That comes from the One in whose image you were created.Next time you have an enemy coming against you, obey Luke 6:27-36, then pray Luke 8:17 and thank God that He will bring everything hidden into the light. Even so, there is One who sees everything that is done in secret, and He says, “Nothing is secret that will not be revealed, nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light” (Luke 8:17, NKJV). They will say cutting remarks to you no one else notices, threaten you when others aren’t around, or try to quietly cheat you out of money, opportunities or relationships. He will bring everything hidden into the light. Enemies can be sneaky.How? Here are five ways God promises to deal with your enemies. God says He will handle them on your behalf. You don’t have to worry about your enemies. When you obey Jesus and respond to your enemies with love, prayer, forgiveness and blessing, you take yourself out of satan’s line of fire and make room for God to handle justice as only He can. The next thing we know, it’s consuming all our thoughts and causing us torment. ![]() We can even find ourselves distressed as we try to figure out why they are against us in the first place. Our natural response to enemies is often to fight back, get even, put them in their place, or demand justice. Enemies are something each of us has to deal with in this life, and they can try us in every possible way. People speak against you for no reason, betray you, or try to keep you from success. What is impossible for man becomes possible for those who give their lives to Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives in our hearts.“I have many aggressive enemies they hate me without reason. They repay me evil for good and oppose me” (Psalm 38:19-20). That which God demands, only He can accomplish, including the demand to love our enemies. So how can Jesus demand the impossible? He later tells us, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). This unattainable standard is exactly what the Law itself demanded (James 2:10). This is utterly impossible for sinful man to achieve. As sons of our Father (Matthew 5:45), we are to be perfect, even as He is perfect. It’s only through the power of God’s Spirit that His people can truly love and pray for those who intend to do them harm (Romans 12:14-21).įinally, after giving us the admonition to love our enemies, Jesus then gives us this command: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Jesus is teaching us that we must live by a higher standard than what the world expects-a standard that is impossible for us to attain by our own efforts. His disciples then must reflect His character and exhibit this same undiscriminating love for both friends and enemies. If you love your enemies and “pray for those who persecute you,” you then truly reveal that Jesus is Lord of your life.īy using an illustration of the sun rising and the rain falling on both the good and the evil, Jesus shows God’s undiscriminating love to all people. Here Jesus taught that His followers must demonstrate love to all kinds of people-no matter what faith, nationality, or personality-enemies included. Jesus then told the Parable of the Good Samaritan. A Pharisee once asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29). Jesus explained to His followers that they should adhere to the real meaning of God’s law by loving their enemies as well as their neighbors. Then He commands us to “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:43-48). Jesus goes on to explain that loving those who love us is easy and even unbelievers can do that. But Jesus replaced this idea with an even higher standard: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:44-45). While no Bible verse explicitly says “hate your enemy,” the Pharisees may have somewhat misapplied some of the Old Testament passages about hatred for God’s enemies (Psalm 139:19-22 140:9-11). That we must therefore hate our enemy was an inference incorrectly drawn from it by the Jews. He proclaimed to the crowds listening to His Sermon on the Mount that they knew they were to love their neighbor because the command to love our neighbor was a law of God (Leviticus 19:18). When Jesus said we are to love our enemies, He was creating a new standard for relationships. ![]()
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