Love your enemies.
You’ve heard this before, haven’t you? Even if you’ve never picked up the Bible in your life, you know that’s in there somewhere. In Matthew 5:44, Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” But have you ever tried to do this? If you have, you know it’s hard. It’s hard to love those who mistreat us and take advantage of us. And it’s even worse when it’s our loved ones who get hurt. What does it mean to love someone who has hurt your kids?
Martin Luther King, Jr. had enemies, many of whom hated him for the color of his skin. For example, in 1957 white supremacists bombed his home in Alabama. How do you love someone who would attack your home?
But King took Jesus’ command seriously. He knew he must love even his attackers. And King began to understand that love from an unexpected place - Greek. King went to the language of the Scriptures and saw that there are three words for love in Greek.
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There is eros, which King understood as a romantic kind of love. If you hear the word “love” and think of a Nicholas Sparks novel, you’re thinking of eros.
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There is philia, which is more like friendship. This is why Philadelphia is called the city of brotherly love.
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Then there is agape. King wrote that agape is “an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. And when you come to this level you begin to love men not because they are likable, not because they do things that attract us, but because God loves them.”
It was in agape that King found the key to loving his enemies. To love someone in these terms doesn’t mean you kick up your feet and watch football together. Agape isn’t a love we give to others because we like them; it’s a love we give them because God has lavishly given it to us.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think these three Greek words break down quite as neatly as King did. There’s a lot of overlap between them. Even still, his insights on Christian love are right and helpful. When God calls us to love our enemies, that’s not the same as liking them. King reflected, “It is pretty difficult to like someone bombing your home; it is pretty difficult to like somebody threatening your children.” We might not like them, but we must love them. We must seek their good, even if our enemies still hate us.
This is the love Jesus has shown us. Jesus didn’t die for his friends; he died for his enemies (Rom. 5:10). Jesus went to the cross seeking the good – seeking the redemption – of people who hated him. And the apostle John tells us this is the very definition of love – to give up our lives for another (1 Jn. 3:16).
King understood what the Bible says about love and it empowered his civil rights action. Love’s not a response to sentimentality. Love’s not giving people their due. Love is a commitment to give ourselves for the good of others, even if it ends in a cross. That’s agape - the love of Jesus.
In Him,
Tom