‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’

In Matthew 5:43-44, Jesus in His teachings said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbours and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”.

This teaching may sound illogical and quite annoying to those who have been given a raw deal by haters and persecutors. But coming from the Man who spoke like no man, it must have some real value for us today. It is human to love those who love you, and to at the minimum, ignore those who hate you, and this is just the minimum. Typically, we either would hate those who hate us or we would do all we can, to get them destroyed.

But the point is, no amount of hatred for our enemies destroys them. Actually, some enemies of yours may also be people who God would eventually save in His own time. So you cannot kill or destroy them. Loving those who hate us doesn’t mean we must be friends with them. It is also not to say we must not be very careful around them. It simply means we must not waste our time hating them back. Rather, we must pray for them.

But why pray for your enemy? The rationale is simple. Our enemies may be more powerful than us, and not praying for them, fires them up to want to hit hard at us. Praying for them could soften their hearts and stance against us, in a manner that gives us peace of mind. They cannot derail God’s plan for us, but they can steal our peace, and it is only when we love and pray for them that we can tame them and get our own peace. No amount of hatred destroys enemies. The more we hate back our haters, the more we lose our peace.

Jesus was and He is still right. If we choose to love and pray for our enemies, we get our peace. Take note that your enemy and hater today, may become a child of God tomorrow. We must therefore follow the prescription of Christ in adopting the right attitude towards our enemies also as a show of our maturity in Christ.

Finally, we must love and pray for our enemies because sometimes, they serve as the channels through which God’s plan for our lives materializes. Without haters and enemies, we cannot be who God wants us to be. For instance, without the devil’s sponsored killing of Christ, salvation wouldn’t have been given to mankind; without satan’s attack on Job, he wouldn’t have been more prosperous; and without Potiphar’s wife’s lie, Joseph wouldn’t have been a prime minister.

Jesus was, and He is still right in His admonition that we must love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. This may be humanly difficult but with a clear understanding of what we stand to gain, may we strive to do as Christ has admonished. Amen

Source: Prof Yaw Gyampo

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