In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us to love our enemies (Matt 5:44).
Since love for enemies is one of the most unnatural things for a human to do, I believe that enemy-love is one of the clearest and most defining characteristics of a true follower of Jesus. Show me someone who truly understands the heart of God, and I will show you someone who loves his or her enemies.
In recent months, I have discovered that one reason we can love our enemies is because they, above all others, might tell us the truth about our actions and behavior.
Normally, we humans tend to gather around us the people who will affirm our beliefs and behavior, and tell us that everything we think, do, and say is correct and loving and godly.
Of course, it is true what Proverbs 27:6 says, that “Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiples kisses,” but this principle can often be reversed as well, in that friends often overlook our faults and failures because they love us (and maybe because they have the same issues), whereas enemies see through our self-righteous attitudes and hypocritical charades and are more willing to criticize and call us out for our many failures.
Yet when they do this, we tend to ignore what they say, because we believe they are only saying such things from spite and anger. And maybe they are.
But might there also be truth to what they are saying? If so, could it be that the criticism from our enemy is actually the voice of God to us?
I am reminded of the prophet Micaiah in 1 Kings 22. King Ahab and King Jehoshaphat were planning on going to war against Ramoth in Gilead. So they call all the prophets together to tell them whether their war will be successful or not. They have a parade of prophets — 400 of them — who tell the two kings to go to war against Ramoth, “for the Lord will deliver it into the hand of the king” (1 Kings 22:6).
King Jehoshaphat finds this a little strange that all 400 prophets say the same thing (or maybe they were not all prophesying in the name of Yahweh), so he asks if there is not a prophet of Yahweh around to ask what they should do (1 Kings 22:7).
And I love what King Ahab says. He tells King Jehoshaphat, “Oh sure… there’s Micaiah. But I hate him because he never tells me anything good.”
In other words, King Ahab viewed Micaiah as his enemy. He hated Micaiah.
Nevertheless, they had Micaiah come in, and initially, he agreed with the other 400 prophets in telling the two kings to go to war, for they would be victorious. But King Ahab knows Micaiah better than this (and I imagine that Micaiah’s tone of voice of flippant and sarcastic), so King Ahab says, “Stop lying to me. Tell the truth!” (1 Kings 22:16).
And Micaiah does. And he is the only one who prophesied correctly.
The King’s enemy was the only one who prophesied truth to the King.
I think the same thing is happening today within Christianity.
We have gathered around ourselves teachers who tell us what our itching ears want to hear, and we ignore and silence the prophetic voices who tell us what we need to hear because these prophetic voices come from those many Christians love to hate.
Our enemy is our prophet, but we ignore what he says because he is our enemy.
Like who?
Who is our prophetic enemy?
How about atheists?
Christians love to hate atheists. We feel we do not have to listen to them, because “They don’t believe in God.” They live “secular” lives. They “live in sin.” They “don’t believe the Bible.”
Atheists are prophets for Christianity.
Atheists often point out real problems with Christian theology, Christian practice, and Christian hypocrisy. They often show us how our portrait of a loving God is not very loving, how a God who accepts everybody really doesn’t, and how the values and priorities of many Christian churches and organizations do nothing to help with the real problems in this world.
In my opinion, we Christians fail to listen to the prophetic word from atheists at our own peril.
How about Muslims? Especially Muslim terrorists.
I watch the angry Muslims on TV calling for the death of America and waving signs about “the Great Satan.”
I believe they are flat-out wrong, but at the same time, I have to ask myself, “Why are they saying these things? What have we done to make them think such things about us?”
It is too “easy” of an answer to say that they are just delusional or that they have been lied to about Americans. Certainly they hear lies about us, just as we hear lies about them. But at the same time, we must listen to the complaints they have about American values, American greed, American morality, and American intervention in foreign affairs and recognize that our Muslim “enemies” might be making some good points.
This is especially true when the Christians in American offer full and complete blessings on everything the United States does overseas, including the killing of Muslims and the bombing of cities. Why is it okay for Christian leaders to call for God to bless us in killing our “Muslim enemies” but it is not okay for Muslim leaders to call for Allah to bless them in killing their Christian enemies?
Whatever happened to Jesus instruction for us to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”?
How about the LGBTQ community?
When they tell us that we Christians have treated them with hate and contempt, our response is, “No, we haven’t! We’re just warning you about your sin! It is loving to do so. If you don’t repent and change, God will judge you and our nation!”
Their response is, “See? That right there was hurtful. We think our lifestyle is loving, not sinful. Furthermore, it is not right to blame us for all the ill that happens to our country.”
“Well, you’re trying to put Christians out of business!”
“That’s true. Some people are doing that. Just like you Christians have done to us for hundreds of years. Are you saying it’s wrong?”
“Well, it’s wrong when you do it, but not when we do it, because God is on our side. You’re on the side of the devil.”
“That right there was hateful also.”
And the conversation goes on from there. Or more likely it stops.
But I believe that in these sorts of situations, Christians need to stop and listen to the LGBTQ community and what they say about Christian hatred. In this case, they are prophets, bringing to us a revelation from God.
Listening to Our Enemies is One Way to Love Them
In his excellent book, Engaging the Powers (I HIGHLY recommend it!), Walter Wink talks bout the gift of our enemy. He says that our enemies bring us revelations of ourselves that we cannot get from any other source:
These “revelations” (and they are precisely that) need to be treasured, because that is the gift our enemy may be able to bring us: to see aspects of ourselves that we cannot discover any other way than through our enemies. Our friends seldom tell us these things; they are our friends precisely because they are able to overlook or ignore this part of us. The enemy is thus not merely a hurdle to be leaped on the way to God. The enemy can be the way to God (Engaging the Powers, 273).
Do you have someone you consider to be your enemy? Do you know of a group of people that are considered the “enemies” of Christianity? If so, do not seek to harm, discredit, or ignore them. Instead, listen to what they have to say, for their words may in fact be the very voice of God to you and to me.
If you want to hear the voice of God, start by listening to your enemies.





I think all of us “Christians” should stop referring to ourselves as “Christians.”
The Christians of Antioch were not known for their hate, venom, judgmentalism, or religious pride, or even for their good theology, pious life, and vast Bible knowledge. Instead, They were knowing for looking and acting and behaving like Jesus Christ, and as a result, they were “called Christians” by those who were not Christians.
I walked by two guys in the store the other day who were both wearing Christian t-shirts. One was saying to the other, “Yeah, they all hate me at work, but that’s okay, because I’m standing up for Christ.”
If love is of God, and everybody who loves is born of God and knows God because God is love (1 John 4:7-8), then it only makes sense that love will be the prevailing characteristic of one who is born of God and know God!
It is common in Christian circles to hear admonitions to “Love the Sinner; hate the sin.” 
The simple fact that we label the person we are talking about as a “sinner” indicates that we do not have love for them in the first place.
When a watching world says Christians are full of hate, it is not a good strategy to tell them that we don’t hate them we just hate their sin. 

When we say, “Love the sinner; hate the sin,” what we are really saying is “I will love only those I want to love, and I will hate and despise and cast out those people who do things I have decided are worse than the things I myself do, and this way I can make myself feel better while I condemn them for all the problems that I myself have contributed to but don’t want to admit.”
And why can’t that be enough? When we see someone else behaving in ways we don’t approve of and which we think is sin (and as long as it’s not illegal or harming someone), why can’t “love” be the only word that comes to our mind? 
I just didn’t think it would all happen so quickly… But I was wrong.
In the wake of the Supreme Court basically saying that two people can get married if they love each other, even if they are of the same sex, 

Furthermore, it has been said, โWhoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.โ But I say to you that it looks bad to divorce your wife, so stay married for appearance sake, while you sleep around as much as you want. If you can get your wife to agree to this, even better, for itโs not adultery if your wife knows what youโre doing.
