Our lives are entangled in sin. Every.Single.Day.
That sin leads to so much disappointment and relational breakdown.
In our human weakness, we fully admit that we don’t know how to handle it, nor do we know how to handle the unintended effects that it has. But God knows exactly how and when to deal with the sins that have permeated our lives and deeply impacted the most sacred of things—our relationships.
God sees them all. He sees the big sins and the seemingly no-big-deal sins. Nothing is hidden from Him, nothing is a surprise to Him, and no sin—whether ours or others’— is too big for Him to handle. Redemption is the way He handles sin. It’s always part of His holy plans.
Here is a hard truth. Jesus’ redemption isn’t just for us or for those we get along with or for those we love. It’s also for our enemies.
And because of that, we need to love them, too.
It’s a radical course of action that feels foreign and fairly fanatic, but Jesus’ actually taught His followers to love their enemies.
Yes, He taught that.
And yes, that’s hard.
Really hard.
It gets especially hard when our enemies are people we don’t want to be our enemies. People we should be able to be vulnerable with. People we should have loved well and who should have loved us well in return. Accepting the reality that those relationships are not as we want them to be is hard enough, and trying to love those people while also being hurt by them can be confusing—especially if we are confused about what real love is.
Like most of us are.
All of us have grown up in the enemy territory of the temporal world, and our view of real love is incredibly flawed. Love has been taught to us as something it just simply is not.
Real love is not a certain feeling.
Real love is not a set of actions.
Real love is a perfect person.
His name is Jesus.
And the Holy Spirit in us is the only way to be able to show real love to those around us. We have to be committed to following real love Himself. So cling to the Scriptures and embrace the Holy Spirit, friends. It’s the only way to experience real love and to be able to extend it to others, too—even our enemies.
“Love Your Enemies? Yes, He taught that.” Parts 2 and 3 coming soon!