Pre-Emptive Love for Enemies--March 10, 2026

Pre-Emptive Love for Enemies--March 10, 2026

"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)

If we didn't know it already, these verses from Romans make it clear: God's way of dealing with enemies is not at all what the world calls "common sense."  This passage, which many of us heard last Sunday in worship, fly in the face of conventional wisdom and its need to hit them before they hit you.

Here's an example. In the last twenty-four hours, I've seen several clips of powerful people at podiums insisting that the only way to deal with your enemies is with unapologetic cruelty and unrelenting intimidation. "Ruthless means were used to get rid of the people" who were deemed as threats and enemies in the past, one said, proudly encouraging the same ruthlessness in the present against whomever is deemed to be an unacceptable danger.  Another said defeating your enemies can't be constrained by any "stupid rules of engagement" (like limiting what kinds of targets one would or wouldn't attack, or where there are rules against pre-emptive attacks without provocations, or whether it is imperative to avoid harm to civilians in war), but only that one's enemies should be afraid that they could be killed at a moment's notice.  (Never mind the fact that throughout most of Christian history, the consensus of theologians has been that even if one finds oneself in a situation of war, there must be limits on attacking civilian targets, no pre-emptive attacks, and clear agreements about how prisoners are treated, and the like.) The conventional wisdom, still shouted from podiums and press conferences today, is that enemies must be crushed, and any means are acceptable in the service of that crushing.

It is worth noting, of course, that the apostle Paul had certainly seen his share of that same logic in his own day, carried out by the Roman Empire against whoever was the enemy of the day for them.  Plenty of people have heard the old story that the Romans salted the ground around the city of Carthage when they attacked it, supposedly so that nothing would ever grow there again. Even if that is more a legend than fact, the Romans were certainly willing to employ ruthless tactics against enemy nations they conquered or the dissidents they crucified to send a message of intimidation. So as Paul wrote to the Roman Christians, he knew full well that emperors and kings often justify cruelty in the name of defeating and destroying their enemies. That has been standard policy of empires throughout history, all convinced that they are accountable to nobody and subject to no restraint from anybody.

And in spite of the empire-logic of "Ruthlessness and cruelty toward your enemies is OK when we're the ones doing it," the apostle says that God has a very different policy toward enemies. In Christ, God deals with enemies, not by killing them, but by dying for them.  In Christ, God responds to those who are turned away in hostility by reaching out to reconcile with them.  In Christ, God does not threaten the ungodly with violence, but rather bears the violence we inflict because of our ungodly and sinful ways.  Paul knows that runs counter to the conventional thinking of the day--in fact, that is precisely why he knows he needs to say it.

This is part of the beautiful scandal of the Christian gospel: God doesn't deal with us in the way we have told ourselves is permissible in dealing with each other.  God doesn't destroy enemies--God absorbs the destruction of death at the cross for the sake of those who are enemies of God.  Paul knows it--and insists on it--because he knows that he himself is one of those enemies whom God has loved.  He knew it from his own days as a fierce and zealous persecutor of the church, when Paul himself received both forgiveness and welcome from the risen Christ himself and from the community of Christians who let him in, cared for him, and took the risk of practicing the same kind of enemy love they had seen in Jesus.  And Paul also understood that he was not a singular special case.  The way God had loved him, even when he was an enemy of God, was in fact the way God loves all of us--yes, particularly us Christians!  In other words, we can never cast ourselves as "worthy" of God's love because we are so good and well-behaved and devoted; rather, Paul says that all of us were loved already even when we were God's enemies, turned completely away from God, and that for those of us who have come to faith in Jesus, it is only because God loved us first, before we did a thing to come to God.  God has a policy of pre-emptive love for enemies, you could say; God doesn't zap us before we can zap first, but rather loves us to the point of dying for us even before we were turned toward God at all.  It is that pre-emptive love of God--what theologians sometimes call "prevenient grace"--which makes it possible for us to be turned toward God in faith in the first place.

Today, how will we face the people we struggle with the most--the ones we find no better label for than "enemy"?  How will we treat the people we have the most difficult time getting along with--and whose logic will we let shape our response?  The loud voices of the world still insist they are allowed to be cruel and ruthless to their adversaries, simply because they "can," but the living God revealed in Jesus shows us an alternative.  Whose way will we follow in?  And can we dare to love others the way God has loved us first--which is to say, can we dare to love our enemies precisely because that is how God treated us when we were God's enemies?

That's the challenge--and the gospel's good news declaration--which meets us in this new day.

Lord God, help us to see how your love reached out to us when we were turned away from you, so that we will love others in the way we have been loved.