How Do I Love My Enemies If I Don’t Have Any?

​Matthew records this as part of the Sermon on the Mount:

“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 

Tom Richards

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?” (Matthew 5:43-47)

​I have long found this passage fascinating for a couple of reasons — first of all because it is so radical, but also because I am not sure how to apply it to myself.  In Jesus' time, the Jewish people certainly had enemies — mainly anyone representing the Roman government.  I think of an ‘enemy’ as someone who is trying to hurt me — physically, emotionally, financially, or in some other way, and honestly, I don’t think I have any enemies. I am really not aware that anyone in the world right now is trying to figure out how to hurt me. Strangers may be rude to me or cut me off on the highway, but no one is waking up each morning thinking, ‘How am I going to defeat Tom finally?’

I suppose that I had enemies at one time. There were bullies in my elementary school and Junior High who seemed quite intent on finding ways to hurt me, either physically or emotionally. I am still not sure why. I also don’t remember thinking of them as ‘enemies’, even when we would read the Sermon on the Mount in Sunday School. I was certainly more focused on hiding from them than I was on figuring out how to follow Jesus by loving them, but I was also 10 years old, so maybe I should cut myself some slack!

While I do not believe that I have any current enemies in any real sense, I do still get hurt — often by friends or family members who actually care a great deal. They don’t mean to hurt me, but it still happens.  I think the hurt that comes from a family member can be much more painful than the hurt that comes from an ‘enemy’ like a bully. We don’t expect bullies to be nice to us or to love us, but we do expect our friends and family to support us. When they fail, even accidentally, the hurt can be hard to get past. I am also reminded of the saying “I am my own worst enemy.”  I am certainly capable of doing things that leave me upset, regretful, sad or even angry with myself.  Maybe Jesus is asking us to love people whom we find hard to love, perhaps a family member, a close friend, or even oneself.  
 
A few years ago, a friend of mine suggested something that has stuck with me ever since —learn to love and forgive myself, as well as love and forgive those who have hurt me, particularly close family and friends. To forgive myself — that is sometimes harder than forgiving others, even a schoolyard bully.

The gospel of John gives us the most radical example I can imagine of loving one’s enemies. As Jesus is dying on the cross, he prays, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”  I find it fairly easy to imagine that an 11-year-old schoolyard bully doesn’t really understand what he is doing as he punches some hapless kid. I find it much harder to imagine that Roman soldiers did not know that they were slowly torturing someone to death, or even that the person they were torturing might be innocent. Jesus extends an incredible amount of grace to the people who were most certainly his enemies. I sometimes find it hard to extend this much grace to myself — did I not know what I was doing? 

I would imagine that many of us who attend 1st Presbyterian do not have enemies. No one is plotting a way to hurt us.  If this is the case, what do we do with Jesus’ command to love our enemies? These words still resonate with me and lead me to ponder this question: How do I continue to learn to love and forgive myself, and to love and forgive people who care about me but somehow have still hurt me?  
 
In His Name, Tom