Four Ways to Love an Enemy

 Four ways to love an enemy are expressed in the New Testament.  First, however, let us note what Aristotle says about love.  Aristotle defines love as follows:

Let loving, then, be defined as wishing for anyone the things which we believe to be good, for his sake but not for our own, and procuring them for him as far as lies in our power (Rhetoric 2.4.2).

Such a definition rings true with statements in the New Testament.  The Golden Rule of Jesus is, ‘So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets’ (Matthew 7.12).  Here, ‘love’ is not mentioned, but what else does Jesus say fulfils the Law and the Prophets?  In Matthew 22.36-40, Jesus answers the lawyer’s question, ‘Which is the greatest commandment of the Law?’  Jesus offers two related commandments on love, love of God (Deuteronomy 6.5) and love of neighbour (Leviticus 19.18).  He then says, ‘On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets’ (Matthew 22.40).  The Golden Rule, then, is a law of love.  To apply Aristotle’s definition, we should wish for others what is good, do so for his own sake and not for something that benefits us, and do what we can to assist in procuring this good for them.  While there is no reason to expect any connection between Jesus and the New Testament authors to Aristotle, the definition fits well.

Thus, consider another passage in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount on love (Matthew 5.43-48).  Jesus tells His disciples to ‘love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ (v. 44).  Praying for someone is a way to wish them what is good for their own sake.  God answers prayer, and therefore prayer is one way to procure for our enemies what is good.  Jesus rests His command on God’s example of making the sun rise on the evil and the good and of bringing rain on the just and the unjust.  Doing good to others does not depend on their goodness.

The next sentence from Aristotle is about friendship: ‘A friend is one who loves and is loved in return, and those who think their relationship is of this character consider themselves friends’ (Rhetoric 2.4.2).  In Jesus’ statement on loving enemies, the point is not that they are or become friends: they are and remain enemies.  They do not reciprocate love, but one offers love to them in any case.  This is, as Jesus says, what the Father does, and in this way we behave like His sons (v. 45).

Prayer is not the only way to love enemies.  Jesus emphasised the importance of forgiveness.  What does forgiveness really mean?  It is not about becoming friends with an enemy but releasing a debtor or transgressor from what he owes.  Jesus makes this point in answering Peter about how many times he should be expected to forgive someone who has wronged him.  Jesus replies with a parable of a slave who was forgiven an enormous amount of money by his master only to turn around and insist that another person repay him a very small debt (Matthew 18.21-35).  The parable illustrates Jesus answer to Peter that he should not forgive up to seven times but up to seventy-seven times (18.21-22), that is, without limit.  To forgive someone is a form of loving an enemy (or at least someone causing one harm, intentionally or unintentionally).  Applying Aristotle once again, such love is wishing good for another for his own sake and, as much as in our power, helping to procure it.  God forgives us, but He expects and requires us to forgive as well.  In fact, Jesus tells His disciples, ‘For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, ¹⁵ but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses’ (Matthew 6.14-15).

There is an element of self-reflection in forgiving others.  As we say in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors’ (Matthew 6.12).  A debt is whatever we owe someone, and the word for ‘forgive’ (from aphiēmi) captures the sense of dismissing something: let go what someone owes you.  A Christian facing someone owing him something is also faced with the heavy and wonderful reality that he has been forgiven so very much, as the parable mentioned above illustrates.  As Paul says, ‘forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you’ (Ephesians 4.32; cf. Colossians 3.13). 

Paul applies this when advising the Corinthian church about taking one another to courts of law.  This is always a shameful matter for Christians.  Why should those who know justice better than any others take their cases to the law courts rather than settle them in the church?  Yet there is an even higher principle to consider: Paul says, ‘Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded’ (1 Corinthians 6.7).  Paul does not offer Christ as example here, but how could any Christian not remember that Jesus suffered wrong for our sakes?

This passage makes reference to the church’s role in judging someone who has done wrong.  In 2 Corinthians, Paul addresses a specific case where the church has disciplined someone.  Having done so, they should then forgive and comfort the person (2.7).  One assumes the discipline led to repentance, hence the possibility of forgiving the person.  The church’s role is different from an individual’s role here: the individual can forgive apart from the person repenting, but the church has the role of establishing justice and exercising discipline.  The person in the wrong is not turned into an enemy, and the exercise of discipline has the goal of restoration. It should lead to repentance, which then might lead to forgiveness and offering comfort (2.7, 10).

A third way to love an enemy is related to forgiveness: simply desisting from revenge.  Paul says in Romans, ‘repay no one evil for evil’ (12.17).  One needs to understand that this is not a matter of replacing justice with love.  The basis for not repaying an enemy with evil—revenge—is that God is judge.  Justice will be done, but not by us.  The person doing evil will get punished, but the punishment lies with God and not with us.  Proverbs 20.22 says, ‘Do not say, “I will repay evil”; wait for the LORD, and he will deliver you.’  Paul quotes from Deuteronomy 32.35 to make his point, saying, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’ (Romans 12.19).  In this passage, God’s justice is not something far off, at the end of this age.  True, we will be judged by God for every act done in the flesh (2 Corinthians 5.10), but this is not the point here.  Paul continues in Romans 13.1-4 to explain that governing authorities play or should play the God-given role of meting out justice:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. ² Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. ³ For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, ⁴ for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer (Romans 12.1-4).

This is not some endorsement of authority no matter what they do but an explanation of the role of government to do justice.  Paul is saying what Cicero, the Roman jurist, said a century earlier:

It is, then, peculiarly the place of a magistrate to bear in mind that he represents the state and that it is his duty to uphold its honour and its dignity, to enforce the law, to dispense to all their constitutional rights, and to remember that all this has been committed to him as a sacred trust (De Officiis 1.124).

The judicial system, or individual judges, too often fail to administer such justice, and it is a terrible matter when they reject the role with which they have been entrusted.  When they do enforce the law and dispense constitutional rights as a God-given trust, they play a part that God expects of them and that God Himself plays.  They administer justice.  Paul’s image of the magistrate’s sword is not an endorsement of what justice to administer—capital punishment—but a symbol for the judge’s authority to administer justice.

If God sees to justice, holding back the hand of evil by providing legal systems in our societies to administer justice, then we are free to leave justice to them and not avenge ourselves.  This is a form of love to one’s enemy.

A fourth way to love an enemy is to offer good to them in response to their unkindnesses.  Paul continues in Romans 12 with examples:

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.” ²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (vv. 20-21).

To love an enemy by doing good to him when he is still an enemy is a powerful act that could result in the enemy’s repentance and transformation.  The Christian knows this well: ‘God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us’ (Romans 5.8).  As John writes,

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  ¹¹ Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us (1 John 4.10-12).

Simply put, ‘We love because he first loved us’ (1 John 4.19).

Loving our enemies is not about being friends with them.  By loving them, however, we might bring about their transformation even as we have been transformed by God’s love to us while still sinners.  Ways to love our enemies include praying for them, forgiving them, not doing evil to them but leaving justice to authorities entrusted with this (the church, the government), and doing good to or for them in response to the evil that they do to us.  In this, we reflect in our own lives the Gospel, that God loved us in Christ while we were yet sinners.