The Enemies of God

Imagine you're sitting in the audience as Jesus Christ delivers His "Sermon on the Mount." Whether you're a disciple, an antagonist or someone curiously seeking what all the fuss is about, you no doubt are captivated by what He is saying. What goes through your mind when you hear Jesus say, "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:43-44)"? Today, many Christians take this statement as a command to love your enemies as if it is somehow possible if you just try hard enough or develop a system designed to help you accomplish it. However, let me suggest another possibility. Perhaps, Jesus wasn't encouraging you to love your enemies as if He thought you could do it. I think He was trying to get His audience to realize that what He was telling them to do was impossible. Think about it, could you love all your enemies all the time regardless of what they were doing to you? Jesus wasn't encouraging His audience, He was burying them under the impossibility of such a command.

Jesus was, in many ways, describing how God is treated by the unbelieving masses of the world and how He was treated up to the time He died on the cross. What did Jesus exclaim just moments before His death? "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34)." He was praying for His enemies, those who who were persecuting Him. There is no way in the world we can, on a consistent basis, love our enemies without first realizing that we were an enemy of God. Romans 5:10 says, "For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!" Ever wonder when it was you were God's enemy? It was before you accepted Christ as your savior. You might say, "I am not an enemy of God! I didn't persecute Jesus. I don't persecute Christians." That may be true, but to God you are an enemy in your mind to Him if you haven't accepted Him as your savior. For example, the Bible describes a believer prior to conversation as someone who once was "alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior (Colossians 1:21)." Apart from Christ you are God's enemy because you have not come to realize that you are dead in sin and need of the forgiveness and life offered in Christ Jesus.

This is what Jesus was getting at in Matthew 5. He was trying to show us what it took to be accepted by God apart from faith in Jesus Christ. Total perfection. Jesus said a lot more than just the passage I mentioned. But, do we really need to look at all He said as if we can do any of it? If you think about it, if we could "be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48)" than we are saying we can become like God. Some people will say that we aren't trying to be like God, but they will say things like, "we need to be sinless." Well, Jesus was sinless and He was God. Or they will say, "we need to be a better Christian." What that means is that we need to stop sinning, which means we should become like Jesus, which means we need be like God. No matter how it is packaged it is the same message. Jesus was not our heavenly coach giving us a halftime pep talk trying to encourage us to perform better because He believed in our ability. He was saying that if we want to enter heaven than we need to be like God! This should humble you to the point that you ask, "Who then can be saved (Matthew 19:25)?" When you come to this point in your life you are very close to ending your role as an enemy of God.

For me, I realized I was an enemy of God when I had the sobering realization that relying on my own understanding was not working out. Like many people I thought I was a good person that God couldn't help, but to be proud of and allow me into His presence in Heaven. I never got into much trouble. I was a good son. A good brother. I treated my friends and family with love and respect. I was a hard worker and loyal. My reputation was pretty much spotless. But, I didn't know God from the man in the moon. I was spiritually dead to Him trying to find fulfillment in anything and everything life had to offer. All I cared about was what was best for me in the end. And if I didn't break any laws or hurt anybody along the way then I must be doing what God wanted. Like those people thinking God was encouraging them I was like, "Yeah, I can do it." I can do what God commands. Wrong. The realization that I was not who I thought I was and had no relationship with God made me cry out for help. And it came in the Person of Jesus Christ, my God and my Savior. He raised me from the dead spiritually and gave me the life I had always tried to find through the sin the world offers and the flesh craves. I was no longer God's enemy because of my love of the world, I was His friend, His child, a saint.

"Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." 1 Corinthians 6:9-11