When We Were Enemies--October 18, 2024

When We Were Enemies--October 18, 2024

"For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath.  For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life." [Romans 5:6-10]

Let me be honest with you. Sometimes people ask me why I make such a big deal about loving our enemies as Christians.  

It is, for an awful lot of folks, one of the harder teachings of Jesus to accept and certainly one of the hardest to actually practice.  So, why do I keep rubbing it the faces of people around me (after all, I have a "Love your enemies" stole I often wear on Sundays, and frequently wear a lapel button with the same message on my suit jacket), when it would be an easier sell for potential new church members or on-the-fence seekers if my first message were something less, I don't know, explicitly countercultural and subversive?  (I recall, for example, sitting in a church gathering of some sort years ago where parents and their teenage children were around the table, and I had causally made some remark about inviting not just friends to church, but strangers or enemies.  In response, one of the young people there immediately turned to ask his mom, "Why would anybody do anything like that for their enemies?" to which the mother immediately answered in all sincerity, "Oh, well, you've got to keep tabs on your enemies and keep them close enough so you can get them before they get you!" It was as if both the child and the parent were completely unaware of the teachings of Jesus we have been looking at in these recent days, even though it is at the heart of the Sermon on the Mount.)  So, knowing how unpalatable this notion is even to lifelong churchgoers, why keep coming back to it?  

Here's the truth: it's my only hope.

Now, when I say that, I don't mean that I believe if I don't love my enemies perfectly enough I will get kicked out of God's good graces and won't go to heaven when I die. My hope doesn't rest on how proficiently I maintain love for my enemies, but rather on the gospel's claim that God has loved me when I was the enemy of God--and, frankly, when my hard heart and stubborn sin makes me act in opposition to God even now.  In other words, the good news of the gospel has everything to do with enemy-love, because it is first and foremost God who loves enemies and rescues us even when we are dead-set turned away from God.  The gospel itself is about enemy-love; it's not just a difficult moral teaching we tack on for expert-level Christians, but rather it's the currency of the whole economy of grace... because it is God who has loved us first even "while we were enemies" and saved us through Christ.

The Gospel depends on a God who doesn't just love us when we are already turned toward God or who tolerates us when we are basically pointed in the right direction, but who loves us and is willing to take action to save us even at our worst... even when we are turned away from God... even when we oppose God.

That's precisely Paul's point here in this critical moment in his letter to the Romans.  He grounds our salvation, not in our willingness as humans, as Christians, or as good little disciples, to be God's friends, but rather in God's choice to love us and reconcile with us precisely when we have been estranged and at odds with God.  This goes even further than what we read earlier this week from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.  When Jesus says, as he does in Matthew's version, that God "makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous," it could sound like God only passively lets good things happen to stinkers because they also happen to the well-behaved.  It could sound like Jesus is saying, "God is already sending sunshine on the perfect peaches, and it's just too much of a hassle to prevent the sun from going to the crooks and cheaters, so God just lets it shine on everyone."  Or it could sound like there is some basic "free version" of God's love that doesn't cover very much or only applies to the weather, but that the "full version" of God's love operates by different rules for paying subscribers for salvation.  But no, Paul insists that God's reckless, enemy-embracing love doesn't only apply to sunshine and rain for your fields, but is actually the heart of our whole salvation history, because Jesus gave his life, not just for people you might label as "friends" of God or "followers" of God, but in fact for us when we were "enemies" of God.  The cross, Paul insists, wasn't just for the "godly," or the "strong," or the "virtuous," but precisely for the "ungodly," the "weak," and for "sinners."  That's the nature of God's love, not just for low-stakes things like sun and rain, but for the cross and the empty tomb.

My only hope, in other words, is that God is committed to loving God's enemies (myself included!) to the point of saving them and reconciling with them from God's side, even before I've "turned to God" or "gotten my act together," or even "prayed the sinner's prayer" or "accepted Jesus into my heart."  God's love did not need to wait for me to take the first step, or for me to at least show a little promise before rescuing me and a whole world full of us.

And maybe we need to stop and sit with that reality for a minute: if Paul is right on this (and again, I am banking my salvation on the trust that he is) and God's saving love in Jesus rescued us while we were enemies opposed to God, then whatever the cross is about, it's not about changing God's mind about us.  Let me say that again: whatever the cross means, Paul seems to insist here that it is NOT a matter of persuading an angry God on the verge of zapping us with hellfire into a change of attitude so as to love us instead.  God's saving love wasn't waiting for us to improve our behavior, and God didn't need to make Jesus suffer a certain amount in order to be able to stomach the sight of us.  (I feel the need to say this because, to be completely transparent here, sometimes you do hear Respectable Religious Voices whose theology sounds like Jesus had to die on the cross in order to make a change in God's mind, from vengeful rage to amazing grace.  And even though they intend to stress the goodness of God's love at the end of that transaction, it ends up sounding like God is emotionally unstable like an abusive parent and needs Jesus to step in to take a beating in order to keep us from bearing a violent outburst.)  And again, if we take Paul seriously here, there was never a moment in time when God's mind had to be changed about us, since even at our absolute worst and most diametrically opposed to God, God already loved us and was redeeming us in Christ through the cross.

So when I say that enemy-love is my only hope, it's because I realize that even in the moments when I am turned away from God, God isn't turned away from me--and God hasn't been turned away from any of us. Our call to love our enemies is simply what it looks like to take seriously that God has loved us all when we were enemies of God, all the way to a cross.  Even when humanity's expression of that animosity toward God crucified Jesus, God's anointed, God loved us and exhausted our hatred and violence.  

That's the hope on which our faith hangs.  That's the kind of love that not only changes the world, but saved it at the cross.

What will our day look like in light of that kind of love?

Lord Jesus, ground us in your unfailing love for us, even at our worst, so that we can love others as they are, too.