More on Loving Our Enemies

MacArthur pointed out in his sermon on loving our enemies that when Jesus prayed from the cross "Father forgive them for they know not what they do," God answered that prayer in the salvation of the thief on the cross next to him and  the onlooking Centurion who recognized Him  as the Son of God.  

When Stephen prayed for those who were stoning him to death,  that God not lay this sin to their charge, that prayer was answered in the conversion of Saul of Tarsus who was in the crowd that was stoning him.    

I've admired for years those who actually live that way.  You'd think that would be enough to change me but alas I'm a hard case.  I'm thinking of Pastor Josef Tson who was persecuted for his faith in Ceaucescu's Romania, his precious library destroyed, and he himself beaten at periodic interrogations.  He asked his wife to make tea for those who were destroying his library, and he prayed for the interrogator who had him beaten.  

Another wonderful example was Corrie Ten Boom's sister when they were in the concentration camp because they had protected Jews from the Nazis in their home, and the sister -- Betsy? --  I'm not sure of her name, was sick and weak and the Nazi who had charge over the work they were commanded to do was harsh with her for her weakness in doing the work, and I don't remember exactly what she said but it was something that blamed herself for her weakness and more or less apologized to her tormentor.  She died in the camp soon after that.   And after the war when Corrie was speaking somewhere that Nazi who had tormented her sister came up to her aftgerward to say he'd been saved.  Corrie at first didn't even want to shake his hjand but then realized it was what God would have wanted.  The man was saved, and very likely because of the Christian witness of her sister.

  

And another favorite example is the stpry of the young KGB officer who was assigned to break up Christian house meetings in the sixties and seventies, and during one raid a woman prayed out loud that the Lord would forgive him, to which he reacted with rage and lifted his club to hit her, at which point he felt a hand grip his uplifed arm and prevent him from striking her.  There was noone there, just an invisible hand.  He panicked and fled the house, but that was the beginning of his conversion.   He had a torn piece of one of the gospels that did the converting.   (Some years later he made a dramatic escape off a Russian ship on which he was an officer, swam through icy water to the west coast of Canada and for some time lived among Christians there until the KGB caught up to him)_

So here's the ideal.  It can only be built on a deep love of Christ and we need to pray for that first.  But when the Inquisition puts us on the rack we are to pray for our torturers.  When they put us in the iron maiden we are to pray for our torturers.  When they starve us to death we are to pray for our torturers.  When they raise the scimitar to behead us we are to pray for our torturers.  .  

So when they censor us today we are to pray for them.  When they lie and call us racists and white sepremacists we are to pray for them.    That doesn't mean we stop working against their evil policies of course, seeking jjustice, it just means we are to forgive them presonally, as individuals, for they know not what they do. 

God Loves His Enemies and So Must We Love Ours.

This is one of John MacArthur's most powerful sermons.  No, for me at least I think it is THE most powerful he has ever preached.  Becausre i needed to hear it.  I know God says we are to love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us, and I remember to do it from time to time, but not with much fervor or consistency.  I still flare up in anger when I'm lied about or otherwise slighted or put down.  Sometimes I remember to pray for the enemy in those cases too but pretty rarely.  As I listened to this sermon tears were running down my face.  Finally I understand it.  Thank You LORD, thank you John MacArthur.  I don't think I can bgo on forgetting it anyh more.  

Loving Your Enemies as God Does - YouTube

I disocvered people to pray for I never think about, people I do regard as enemies without really acknowledging to myself that I do, but my reaction is to avoid them.  Now I will pray for them and pray that God will give me real desire to pray for them rather than the cursory dutiful prayers I'm likely to fall into.

I'd heard some wrong preaching on this before.  For instance I'd heard the imprecatory prayers in the psalms recommended to Christians as something we can pray against God's enemies.  But MacArthur makes it very clear that those psalms are for particular situations and have nothing to do with the command to us to personally love our personal enemies.  He did a marvelous job of mustering all the scriptures in both Old and New Testaments that exhort us to love our enemies.    I'd always assumed that loving our nieghbor or our enemy didn't mean we have to FEEL love for them simply will the best for them, but I'd heard a preacher contradict that idea and insist we are to feel love for them.  I knew that for me that's impossible, and I wasn't sure that was the correct understanding anyway.  But MacArthur preached that it a love of the will and not of the affections that is meant, agape love, willed beneficence, kindness to all, not the personal felt love.  That makes more sense and I'm grateful to have that cleared up.

The teaching is also general, we are to pray for all sinners, not just our personal enemies.  The hard thing for me, and I don't think I'm alone, is to pray for the leaders who are promoting dangerous and evil social policies these days.  Now I want to pray for them. 

I'm convicted to the core of my lack of love.  Thank You LORD.