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).[1]
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.
[1] Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 22, trans. J. H. Freese (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann Ltd., 1926).
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