Demand #28 – Love Your Enemies – Lead Them to the Truth
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
—Matt. 5:44
Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
—Luke 6:27-28
If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount.
—Luke 6:32-34
Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
—John 17:17
I really want to focus on what God is saying to do rather than what these verses “don’t mean”. I think my sin nature leads me to think of an extreme case like someone attacking my family and then argue from there about how this verse wouldn’t necessarily change my behavior. Thomas Aquinas and just war theory deal with those sorts of things. I want to think about how our lives should be different if we do what Christ tells us to do.
Jesus’ demand that we show love, mercy, and forgiveness toward our enemies has an assumption built in to it. He assumes that we will be face with individuals who are hard to love. Jesus ‘call in our lives is to face them with mercy and love that they don’t deserve. You didn’t get what you deserved from God. You don’t get what you deserve from God when you continue to fail. So you love them with that purposeful love that only God can provide in your heart showing mercy.
Matthew 5:43-48 “You have heard that it was said,‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Our treatment of others should mirror the common grace that God pours out over all humanity. We do this so that our treatment of others testifies that our Father is God. Just like God, we spend part of our lives in outreach to those who are not lovely or loveable.
Enemies in our lives are folks who;
1) Want to see us fail for some reason,
2) Unattractive or repulsive personalities or some aspect of their being,
3) Offended relatives or friends, or
4) Those we hold a grudge against.
We are most in control of the sin if we hold a grudge. Naturally we need to seek God to bring forgiveness into our hearts and deal with that. Even on a purely selfish level, grudges are not healthy and need to be removed before they become old poisonous friends and poison our lives and friendships.
In all cases we need to be fighting laziness, pride, and anger in our relationships and seeking forgiving, peacemaking, and reconciliation. We need to know that this effort will not always produce bluebirds and sweet music.
Having Enemies May Mean You Are in Step with Jesus
Some enemy’s will not be happy with us even if we do exactly what God calls us to do.
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matt. 5:11).
“If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household. . . . If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (Matt. 10:25; John 15:20).
“Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets” (Luke 6:26).
“If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:19; cf. 17:14).
So although you need to search your heart over each instance, it is to be expected that some folks will not be happy with you and will likely criticize you if you live the life you are called to live.
Love Those Who Kill and Those Who Snub
We are to love those who
1) persecute us (Matt. 5:44),
2) hate us (Luke 6:27),
3) curse us, abuse us (Luke 6:28),
4) strike us on the cheek, take our cloak (Luke 6:29), and
5) those who ignore us and are rude (Matt. 5:47; Luke 6:33).
We may have problems understanding exactly how to live out responses to persecution and hatred but I think we just don’t want to understand how to ignore a slight. The root of this offence is just pride.
Jesus is also telling us to seek to greet those you don’t know and do acts of kindness to strangers. We shouldn’t need to be told to “pay it forward” as in the movie. We should spontaneously be seeking ways to express God’s love which is in your heart and must find expression for (again in a purely selfish way) for you to be happy. If you can’t believe that then simply obey God’s command for its own sake.
Jesus command to love began with Scriptural truth. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:43-44). When Jesus said this he was attacking a false teaching. The verse said, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18). Some false teachers had wiggled that verse so they could justify hating somebody.
Truth Is the Root of Love
We will never truly express the love that God calls us to show to the world apart from motivation born from a right understanding of these doctrines. Our culture tends to teach that love unites and that doctrine divides. That is really baloney and throws out the example we have of Jesus in Scripture. Doctrine is the root source of this love. If you love in your own strength you either won’t walk in those works that God has for you or you’ll burn out in the midst of the works God has for you. In addition, we know from the example of Christ that love teaches sound doctrine even when it is unpopular or will result in persecution or death. It isn’t love to tell people whatever they want to hear just to avoid an unpleasant discussion. This was a characteristic of God’s love expressed in the life of Christ.
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).
“The one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood” (John 7:18).
“For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37).
“Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone’s opinion” (Mark 12:14).
“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me” (John 15:26).
“Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:38). “
Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God” (John 8:47).
“Because I tell the truth, you do not believe me” (John 8:45).
“Sanctify them in the truth,” Jesus prayed; “your word is truth” (John 17:17).
So we are not to adapt our lives to avoid all offence. Jesus certainly never did that. Jesus wasn’t ever in the ballpark of “seeker sensitive” and spoke the truth all the time. Our embracing of the truth of sound doctrine can never, properly embraced, make us unloving.
The Unloving Use of Truth
Our sin nature can produce a natural inclination to use truth unlovingly. For example;
Luke 9:51-56 When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for him. But the people did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. And they went on to another village.
Jesus didn’t retaliate He just moved on. We really need how to let an offence bounce off of us. That learning process will include being unjustly blamed and misjudged. Only God will keep our mouths shut.
Challenging the Absoluteness of the Beloved
It is not unloving to identify someone as an enemy. Someone who wishes you evil is not a friend. These days we just say they are “no friend of mine” because people are so easily wounded. If someone is upset or feels “wounded” it doesn’t mean that no love was shown. Someone may say that since you have acted in a way that hurt them then you are guilty of not acting lovingly. That just isn’t a biblically defensible position and it really isn’t even reasonable.
Think of Lazarus (John 11:1-44). Jesus did exactly what He was supposed to do at exactly the right time. Two of His closest friends (Mary and Martha) blamed Him for their pain. He could talk to Martha but she blamed Him and didn’t believe He could do anything. She couldn’t really hear what He was saying. Mary was so distraught all she could do was blame Him for her pain and collapse in tears along with all those with her. Jesus wept, but not because of Lazarus but because He had a heart that was grieved over His closest friends who could only blame Him for their pain. He was deeply moved and greatly troubled because He made close friends and they hurt Him. But Jesus kept His mouth shut. If we could just learn to shut up when we get hurt and seek God’s direction we would be so much better off. I know I would have fussed at Martha and told Mary to straighten up and stop crying and then asked them exactly how they knew I was outside God’s will. Jesus was hurt but He didn’t destroy relationships in the middle of this pain. We see the healed relationships in Chapter 12 of John when Mary brings ointment likely purchased for dead Lazarus that never got used in all the confusion and pours it out on Jesus’ feet and wipes them with her hair. What else could she do and how else could she tell Him how sorry she was. An offended heart doesn’t always mean that you have disobeyed God.
Love is not defined by the response of the loved.
It was be nice if we could measure our obedience to God by the responses of those He calls us to love but it doesn’t work that way. Those who are loved may not love you back. They may say bad things about you. You need to seek God and ask Him what to do and seek to please Him.
Love Is Not Oblivious or Uncaring About Its Effects
Piper said, “What matters is not that we are justified before men, but that God knows our hearts as truly (though not perfectly) loving. And he alone can make that final judgment (Luke 16:15).” If we seek God then we will be careful about what we say or don’t say. We will clearly care about the effects of what we say. We will even learn to shut up when we need to shut up even if it means we can’t justify ourselves every time we are misunderstood. We trust God first and don’t put out faith in men.
Demand #29 – Love Your Enemies – Pray for those Who Abuse You
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
—Matt. 5:44
Pray for those who abuse you.
—Luke 6:28
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
—Luke 23:34
Love Hates the Evil That Destroys Persons
If we are to rightly love our enemies then we need to hate the evil that is destroying them. God doesn’t want us to love evil. He wants us to pray for evil to be overthrown in an enemy’s life. As we pray for those who persecute and abuse us (this should be easy if we consider what 1st century Christians were challenged with when studying these verses) we pray against the evil but for their deliverance. The natural urge is to pray for fire from heaven like the disciples wanted to pray. Jesus rebuked them because they were forgetting where they came from and what was at stake.
Excursus on Hating the Wicked
We need to think a little bit about the kind of hatred we find in the Psalms that are imprecatory psalms — psalms that express hatred for God’s enemies and call down divine curses on them. For example, Psalm139:19-22 says, “Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me! They speak against you with malicious intent; your enemies take your name in vain! Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies.”
God doesn’t call us to love evil. Hatred can at times (not always) refer to moral repugnance, not personal vengeance. This is not the same as saying, “Hate the sin and love the sinner” (which can be good counsel, but not all there is to say). There is a kind of hate for the sinner (viewed as morally corrupt and hostile to God) that may coexist with pity and even a desire for his salvation. The hate is moral repugnance, not desire for destruction.
I was once accused of forcing Penthouse Magazine’s advertising out of the airports in South Africa. Well it was way more credit than I deserved for simply noting that they were in bad taste. But they have lawyers who get paid to do stuff and they contacted the NC State Board of Regents who contacted the Dean of the school of Agriculture and Life Sciences who contacted my Research Leader and suddenly I’m talking to the Dean. These people were vindictive evil and repugnant but I could and did still pray that God would not destroy them. I don’t think hate is too strong a word for that entire industry for what it does to men and women. So the personalities involved were hated by me but not in such a way that I wanted to see them destroyed. They were not lovable people but God can redeem whoever God will redeem so I could still pray against their legal action but for their salvation and that God would not destroy them even as unlovable and hateful as they were. There is evil in this world that leads to the final destruction of individuals. Love hates that evil and even those who harbor it but not in such a way that we desire to see them lost forever. Never dehumanize you enemy.
There Is No Evil That Hurts Only You
In our personal lives we need to realize that there is no personal evil. We’ve discussed before that evil in our lives that we introduce privately is not private and we can’t treat it as a lesser evil. It impacts others and hurts others in the Body of Christ. You are unable to entertain evil without impacting each one in the body and more seriously those nearest you. There are secret sins in the sense that only God may see your heart but there are no private sins in the sense that only you are affected.
“Pray for Those Who Persecute You”
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:44). And “Pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:28). I really see Thomas Aquinas in formulating his just war theory and meditating on these verses. Jesus wants us to realize that we need to really want the good of the enemy. Aquinas would say that even when we go to war that, if we are just in our action, we will desire to see evil suppressed and ultimately that our enemy will be better off. Even in our personal life when we have serious differences with another person we need to have this idea in our head and have it kept in our prayers. We want to “Bless those who curse you” (Luke 6:28) so that their well-being is protected and turned into a longing directed to God. The famous blessing that Jesus would have known is from Numbers 6:24-26, “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” Pray that prayer for your enemies. This is not to be hypocrisy. This is how your enemies are good for you. This hurts because it is part of your sin nature dying. When we start taking this seriously then we start acting like we are the Children of our Father in heaven.
What to Pray for Our Enemies
We can pray for God to give our enemy the things He taught us were important in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:9-13)
Pray your enemy would;
• Hallow God’s name, that he value God above all and reverence him and admire him in proportion to God’s worth.
• Come under the saving sway of God’s kingly rule and that God would exert his kingly power to make our enemy his own loyal subject.
• Love to do the will of God the way the angels do it in heaven with all their might and without reservation and with purest motives and supreme joy.
• That God would supply our enemy with all the physical resources of food and clothing and shelter and education and health care and transportation, etc. that he needs to fulfill God’s calling on his life.
• That his sins would be forgiven and that he would be a forgiving person.
• That God protect him from temptation and from the destructive powers of the devil.
We cannot love our enemy without longing for and praying for and aiming at the exaltation of God in their heart. We may not see this transformation in our enemy but we can leave that in God’s hands.
“Father, Forgive Them, for They Know Not What They Do”
Jesus even prayed for those who were crucifying him. Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). In His prayer we have forgiveness and mercy directed toward His enemy. They had really wronged him, they deserved judgment, and Jesus prayed for them to be shown mercy.
Why Do They Need Forgiveness If They Don’t Know What They’re Doing?
These guys were guilty because they didn’t know what they were doing. Their ignorance was part of their sin. Father forgive them for the willful ignorance that has led them to where they are now. We are just as guilty and I recently saw again, Rembrandt’s picture of the Crucifixion in which he painted himself at the base of the Cross. We were each of us the enemy of Christ before God worked on our hearts.
So would God hear the prayer of Jesus on the Cross for a hard and resistant people with a guilty blindness as they crucified the most innocent and loving man who ever existed? We will not know until heaven exactly how that prayer was answered but we see an answer after Jesus prayed and was crucified that “And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts. Lk 23:48.” Pray for your enemies.
Demand #30 – Love Your Enemies – Do Good to Those Who Hate You, Give to the One Who Asks
Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.”
—Matt. 18:21-22
But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.
—Luke 6:27
And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
—Matt. 5:47
The Opposite of Forgiveness Is Not Alienation
Jesus had the nerve to say, “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you [referring to God’s punishment in the parable of the unforgiving servant], if you do not forgive your brother from your heart” (Matt. 18:35). The opposite of forgiveness is not alienation but holding a grudge.
Not everyone was reconciled to Jesus and you’ll likely find individuals who chose to remain alienated from you. You must not hold a grudge but you can’t change another person’s heart. You are responsible for prayerfully submitting your heart to God for correction. The effort to reconcile is crucial but the outcome is outside your control. Somebody was always offended with Jesus. Many refused to forgive and be reconciled. That is can be OK. Jesus did what He needed to on His part to restore a relationship. Restoration of relationships is beautiful. It is why I like movies like “Field of Dreams” and “The Straight Story”. But it isn’t the only possible outcome. Sometimes alienation remains.
Resisting Reconciliation Imperils the Soul
If someone has a good reason to be hurt or offended by something we did then we should move quickly to be reconciled (Matthew 5:23-24). Jesus says in verse 23: “So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you . . .” the “so” word connects this verse back to “Everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment . . . and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire” (Matt. 5:22) indicating that the critical hang up at the altar is to be contempt for another person. We can’t go to worship with something like that in our heart and it needs to be cleared up first.
While the driver is contempt of another person the contempt has broken the relationship and so we need to deal not just with our heart but with the reconciliation of the relationship. The demand is, “Leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matt. 5:24).
Love Greets People Outside Our Group
Jesus’ demands vary from self-sacrifice to greeting people. In the context of enemy-love Jesus says, “If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” (Matt. 5:47). Sometimes we might have the big stuff dealt with and be moving in international missions, feeding the third world, and bringing peace to the middle east and still be treating individuals as if they were insignificant obstacles to our mission. Jesus wants your heart right and not just your world view.
“Do Good to Those Who Hate You”
“He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). Sun and rain are two essential things beyond our human control that are needed for crops to grow. In the first century they were much more connected to how they stayed alive so they realized that they were being told that God reaches down and feeds both His enemies and those who serve Him. God didn’t wait for you to confess Him as Lord before He started feeding you. Likewise you shouldn’t wait for your enemies to become Christians before you start blessing them.
Doing Good When Hated
The miracles of Jesus did not always result in saving faith. Think of what Judas was exposed to and saw with his own eyes without saving faith. Jesus knew what would happen in the end but was good to Judas every day. Jesus warned that “Many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another” (Matt. 24:10).
Most of us respond with a desire to get even (or ahead) when someone hates us or is not fair to us. We don’t love the evil but we need to want good for the hater. The response in the heart of the hater is outside our control.
Turn the Other Cheek, and Give to the One Who Asks
“To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back” (Luke 6:29-30).
Piper says, “The challenge I feel as I face these radical demands is how to let them have their full impact on my heart and life and yet not take them more absolutely than Jesus intended. My fear is that if I make any qualification I will minimize their intended force. On the other hand, they will also lose their force if they seem so unrealistic that people just pass over them as irrelevant to real life. So I will try to find the middle way of showing that Jesus does not absolutize these illustrations of love, but does not water them down to the irrelevance of mere middle-class morality either.” Amen. Piper is saying that we need to find out how this command applies and not simply rule it out as unrealistic.
“The Laborer Deserves His Wages”
To give to give freely is the kind of thing love often does rather than the exact thing love always does. Giving should be a common behavior for us. Jesus embraced the idea of a fair wage for labor so that would fall apart if the laborer merely needed to ask rather than work. So since we don’t see Jesus and the disciples running around broke and naked from giving everything including cloaks and shirts away … and since we see that the laborer deserves his wages … then we are looking at a way in which love behaves but not under a ritual compulsion and not without praying and obeying God.
When Doing Good Does Not Give
We would not give alcohol or money to purchase alcohol to an alcoholic because that would not be doing good to that person. In fact, it would be doing harm. Giving to Christian rehabilitation programs is giving to those who ask in a way that does good to them. So “doing good”is not always equivalent to giving to those who ask.
When Candidates for Love Compete
We nearly always are making decisions in which we must balance a set of priorities that are God given. Do I pay my mortgage or give my money to the poor. If a thief asks for your car keys and your child is in the car. So the general principle is that if you have a limited set of resources to spend in God’s service and you must pray through how to love and demonstrate these principles in action.
Like Piper, I think you must conclude that Jesus’ commands to give to those who ask and lend expecting nothing in return are not absolute for every situation. However, they would only be infrequent (necessarily for most of our incomes). However, just because they are infrequent doesn’t free us from the obligation to hear God and do these things as He moves us.
Demand #31 – Love Your Enemies to Show that You are Children of God
To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.
—Luke 6:29-30
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.
—Matt. 5:44-45
Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
—Luke 6:36
Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great.
—Luke 6:35
As we wrapped up last week we saw that Jesus commands such as, “To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back” (Luke 6:29-30) are not absolutes and without qualification. In this chapter we’ll try to get closer to what is required of us and how can we love that way.
Jesus Is Our Treasure, Our Security, and Our Honor
So what is the point of Luke 6:29-30? First and foremost to obey this command is to show a great freedom from earthly things. To have the freedom to think twice and not respond to an offence is a testimony to the abundance of your wealth being in heaven. If you are earthly minded then you can’t let an offence pass or lose some of your possessions in peace. So you have no peace because your mind is set on earthly things.
But we must also want to see good in the lives of our enemy. Think about how irrational it is to know that we can’t take anything here with us except people and yet to live our lives as if we are going to take stuff with us. Those who hate God and are enemies by their actions against us are taking a long walk on a short plank. There are times when responding in an opposite spirit and turning the other cheek or letting your stuff go will be what God uses to bring the first break in the wall of a hard heart.
Dealing with a Skilled Liar
We are really good at rationalizing our way to disobedience with regard to these commands. We are so worried about being taken advantage of we draw back from obedience. Pride is at the root of that response. I don’t want my pride to be hurt by finding out that someone fooled me into giving them money that they wasted, misused, or didn’t need. We are more careful with God’s money than He would have us be sometimes. Sometime people lie to us. Some are good liars and some are really poor liars who need someone to help them come up with a coherent story. God might lead me to give money to a con artist. It’s His money. Nobody is going to fake Him out. He can take care of Himself and me too. It is clear from the verses that we are better to err on the side of generosity.
How Can We Love Like This?
There are actually two ways to do this and the can look similar. One is the counterfeit in which we simply wish in a pathological way to have others wonder at our wonderfulness and our gracious hearts. That will make you into a whitewashed sepulcher. The real power to love like this comes from God via the indwelling Holy Spirit.
In the Security and Help of Our Heavenly Father
We are told to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:44-45). You demonstrate that you are sons of God by this behavior. We watch what our Father does and just like a child will act like their father then we begin to act like our Father. In the same way, as we respond to God’s command to be perfect (Mat 5:48) or merciful (Luke 6:36) we can only accomplish these things in His power for His glory.
We need to be so secure in being Children of God that we can risk our pride and stuff here on earth.
“Your Reward Will Be Great”
The other aspect of these losses is the promise that God will reward us. “Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High” (Luke 6:35). You really can’t separate the reward from being an heir. We are not earning our wealth. We are demonstrating our wealth by behaving in this way. When I traveled into another country I always acted like a sojourner or visitor. I had their currency but there was a game I always played and that game was to leave the country with none of their money because my real wealth was in another kingdom and another currency. When you get on the flight to leave this world you will not take any of this worlds currency with you. Since you really don’t know when your flight is departing … be careful not to place your treasure here. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5). Nothing about the first century made a connection between meek and inheriting the earth. But a Christian’s wealth is already laid up for them where moth and rust can’t corrupt and thieves and stock markets can’t take it. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Matt. 5:11-12). You don’t rejoice at the reviling and the persecution but rather in your sure reward.
As You Have Received Mercy Freely, Give It Freely
In Luke 6:36 we are told to, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” The flash of mercy that God showed in your salvation should change us and cause us to be merciful. Jesus said, “You received without paying; give without pay” (Matt. 10:8). You have come into the place you are now in Christ as a result of a mercy too great to describe adequately. You did nothing to deserve the mercy you now enjoy. In fact, apart from God’s saving Grace in keeping you, you’d fall away even now. So live a life that shows that you know what mercy is.
No comments:
Post a Comment