Love Your Enemies
44 ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν· ἀγαπᾶτε τοὺς ἐχθροὺς ὑμῶν καὶ προσεύχεσθε ὑπὲρ τῶν διωκόντων ὑμᾶς, 45 ὅπως γένησθε υἱοὶ τοῦ πατρὸς ὑμῶν τοῦ ἐν οὐρανοῖς - Love your enemies and pray on behalf of those who persecute you, that you might be sons of your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:44-45a, author's translation)
The phrase "love your enemies" is certainly shocking. I have read it or known about this teaching of Jesus for the vast majority of my life. It still shocks me. As I read it again this morning, I am drawn to the phrase "so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven". We who are the image of God (i.e., all humanity) are precisely those who have lost touch with what it is to be like God; so much so that when he condescends to become a baby and then a man we balk and spend lifetimes constructing tinker-toy excuses for why Jesus cannot be the Son of God. The Son of God is the One who is Image (human) and also like God. Or like St. John the Evangelist tells us, "he is the explanation of God" (Jn 1:18). The Son of God is telling us (images of God) how to be sons of God (like God). If we're concerned about what God's like, we need to know He's exactly Christlike; and Christlikeness is precisely the thing in which we're called to participate. Christlikeness/Godliness is seen in the love of us when we were still sinners - love to the point of dying in our place (Romans 5:8). This reconciliation of sinners (image of God living in His unlikeness) to God happens in the context of enmity. "For while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son..." (Romans 5:10). It is out of the fellowship with God restored to us as we participate in the life of Christ that we demonstrate His likeness which calls us to love as He loves; that is, to love our enemies that they to might become our brothers.
