Love Your Enemies: A How To GuideSample

Day 5: Turning Enemies into Friends: Trust God to Handle It

We know we serve a God of justice and mercy. This week, we have studied His mercies through Jesus’ exhortation to love our enemies, as seen in Scripture and the new film THE BEST OF ENEMIES. But God’s justice is not absent in the call to love our enemies; it is merely affirmed as God’s justice, not ours.

The Psalms are filled with David’s anguished pleadings for relief from his woes, including repeated requests that God smite his enemies. Smite em, God!!

Look, it is not surprising David – a man after God’s own heart, remember – felt at ease sharing these deep emotions with God. (We can do that too.) Nor it surprising that David recanted his cries for vengeance at the end of those psalms, asking God ultimately only to do His will as it pertained to those who caused David so much sorrow.

That is a fitting perspective to close out our examination of what is expected of us in loving our enemies. He asks us to let Him handle it.

Consider Proverbs 20:22: “Do not say, ‘I’ll pay you back for this wrong!’ Wait for the Lord, and he will avenge you.” And Proverbs 24:17-18: “Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice, or the Lord will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from them.” God will deal with it in His way. In due time. Not in our time.

We are called only to love those who hurt us – because in doing so we model and follow Jesus. We are not only to leave the judging up to Him, but to do the exact opposite of judging until such time arrives. Consider Romans 12:19-21: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Pray. Bless. Forgive. Expect nothing in return. Leave it to God. That is the calling, and the duty, of the Christian.