{"id":19470,"date":"2020-11-09T09:41:04","date_gmt":"2020-11-09T14:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19470"},"modified":"2020-11-09T09:41:04","modified_gmt":"2020-11-09T14:41:04","slug":"love-your-enemies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19470","title":{"rendered":"Love Your Enemies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Transforming Power of\nLove<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Love\nYour Enemies<\/strong><br>\nMonday, \u202fNovember 9, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1T2tMt0Ky6g\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>You\nhave heard that it was said, \u2018You shall love your neighbor, and hate your\nenemy.\u2019 But I say unto you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute\nyou, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.<\/em>&nbsp;\u2014Matthew 5:43\u201345<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>In the United\nStates few public figures have spoken more plainly and powerfully about Jesus\u2019\nteaching to love our enemies than the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This\nwas not an abstract theological question for Dr. King. He wrestled practically\nand at great cost with how to love his enemies, both through prayer and through\nnonviolent direct action. This passage is an excerpt from King\u2019s sermon \u201cLoving\nYour Enemies.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When\nI speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am\nspeaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the\nsupreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the\ndoor which leads to ultimate reality. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Probably\nno admonition of Jesus has been more difficult to follow than the command to \u201clove\nyour enemies.\u201d Some people have sincerely felt that its actual practice is not\npossible. It is easy, they say, to love those who love you, but how can one\nlove those who openly and insidiously seek to defeat you? . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This\ncommand of Jesus challenges us with new urgency. Upheaval after upheaval has\nreminded us that modern humanity is traveling along a road called hate, in a\njourney that will bring us to destruction. . . . Far from being the pious\ninjunction of a Utopian dreamer, the command to love one\u2019s enemy is an absolute\nnecessity for our survival. Love even for enemies is the key to the solution of\nthe problems of our world. Jesus is not an impractical idealist: he is the\npractical realist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\nam certain that Jesus understood the difficulty inherent in the act of loving\none\u2019s enemy. He never joined the ranks of those who talk glibly about the\neasiness of the moral life. He realized that every genuine expression of love\ngrows out of a consistent and total surrender to God. So when Jesus said \u201cLove your\nenemy,\u201d he was not unmindful of its stringent qualities. Yet he meant every\nword of it. Our responsibility as Christians is to discover the meaning of this\ncommand and seek passionately to live it out in our daily lives. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When\nJesus bids us to love our enemies, he is speaking of neither <em>eros<\/em>&nbsp;[romantic love]\nnor <em>philia<\/em>&nbsp;[reciprocal love of friends]; he is speaking\nof <em>agape<\/em>, understanding and\ncreative, redemptive goodwill for all people. Only by following this way and\nresponding with this type of love are we able to be children of our Father who\nis in Heaven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Richard again: This is a timely\nreminder to Christians around the world. We must ask ourselves \u201cWhat would it\nmean to seek to embody <\/em>love as<em>&nbsp;\u2018creative, redemptive goodwill\u2019 on behalf of\nall living things?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Transforming Power of Love<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>A\nCommandment to Love<\/strong><br>\nSunday, \u202fNovember 8, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Beloved,\nlet us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten\nby God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is\nlove.<\/em>&nbsp;\u20141 John 4:7\u20138<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>This is my\ncommandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this,\nto lay down one\u2019s life for one\u2019s friends. You are my friends if you do what I\ncommand you. . . . This I command you: love one another.<\/em>&nbsp;\u2014John 15:12\u201314, 17<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Love\nis perhaps the last thing anyone wants to be reminded of in these days\nfollowing the election in the United States. Yet our resistance to love is\nprecisely why we need to talk about it! We have strayed so far from love; and\nyet, love is the essence of who we are, and how we are called to treat one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhoever\n<em>loves <\/em>is born of God and knows\nGod\u201d (1 John 4:7). Unfortunately, many Christians think, \u201cIf I read the Bible,\nI\u2019m born of God; or if I go to church, I know God; or if I obey the\ncommandments, I know God.\u201d Yet the writer of 1 John says it\u2019s simply about\nloving. Note that the converse is true also: \u201cWhoever is without love does not\nknow God, for God is love\u201d (1 John 4:8). In the Gospel of John, Jesus takes\nthis to its logical conclusion. He does not say, \u201cThere is no greater love than\nto love God.\u201d Instead he says, \u201cThere is no greater love than to lay down your\nlife for your friends\u201d (John 15:13). As biblical scholar Allen Dwight Callahan\nwrites of this passage, \u201cJesus has loved his followers so that they may love\neach other. Love calls for love in turn. Love makes love imperative.\u201d [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nbeginning and end of everything is love. Only inside of this mystery of the\nexchange of love can we know God. If we stay outside of that mystery, we <em>cannot<\/em>&nbsp;know God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When most of us\nhear the word \u201ccommandment,\u201d we likely think of the Ten Commandments; that is\nnot what Jesus is referring to here. He speaks of a \u201cnew\u201d commandment\nsurpassing and summing up the \u201cten\u201d of the Hebrew Bible (Exodus 20:1\u201317;\nDeuteronomy 5:6\u201321): \u201cThis is <em>my<\/em>&nbsp;commandment: Love one another\u201d (John 15:17).\nHe also says that the entire law and the prophets are summed up in the two\ngreat commandments: to love God and to love one another (see Matthew 22:36\u201340).\nPerhaps we don\u2019t want to hear these commandments because we can never live up\nto them through our own efforts. We\u2019d like to whittle this down to a little\ncommandment, like \u201cCome to church on Sunday,\u201d so that we could feel we have\nobeyed the commandment and accomplished love. But who of us can say that we\nhave fully loved yet? We are all beginners. We are all starting anew every day,\nin utter reliance on the mercy, grace, and compassion of God. This is a good\nexample of \u201cthe tragic gap\u201d that faith always allows and fills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Transforming Power of Love Love Your Enemies Monday, \u202fNovember 9, 2020 You have heard that it was said, \u2018You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.\u2019 But I say unto you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.&nbsp;\u2014Matthew 5:43\u201345 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19470"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19471,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19470\/revisions\/19471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}