Thought For Today - April 12, 2025
What Did Jesus Say? - About Loving Our enemies?
By: Robert A Searles
It
is natural, according to our sinful human nature, that we love those
who love us, but hate those who are our enemies and do us wrong.
When
someone abuses us or causes us pain or loss, the natural thing for us
is that we get back at them with revenge and like treatment. It seems to
do us good to get even.
Jesus
taught that even if someone causes us a great deal of anguish and pain,
we are, by the grace of God, to love them and forgive them and help
them. This requires a great deal more godliness on our part, and if we
do as Jesus taught,we will reflect God's presence living in us. God has
promised to greatly reward all those who do this.
It
is not much of a problem to love those who are loveable - our friends,
those who love us and help us; but it requires God's grace to love our
enemies, those who would seek our harm.
Jesus’s
teaching was one hundred and eighty degrees out of phase with the
thinking of his time, and it is so with the thinking of our time today.
Jesus
said: "Ye have heard it said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate
thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that
curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that
despitefully use you and persecute you: that ye may be the children of
your father which is in heaven: for he marketh his sun to rise on the
evil and the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if
ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the
Publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more
than others? Do not even the Publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect even
as your Father in heaven is perfect." Matthew 5: 43-48
Let
us pray that God will, by his grace, instill within us his attribute of
loving our enemies as well as our friends and neighbors so that his
light may shine through us.
See More:
telehelppublicationsbookshelf.blogspot.com
booksjewelrygifts.com
Telehelp Publications Christian Literature Ministry
Psalm 26:7
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