Breakfast With Christ - The Test Of Love
BREAKFAST WITH CHRIST
TOPIC: THE TEST OF LOVE
SCRIPTURE: LUKE 6:35
"But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked".
Welcome to BWC. In the Gospels, Jesus gave us three levels of love. First, He commanded us to love God. Then He asked us to love our neighbours. The third level is the most challenging, our Lord also commanded us to love our enemies. This is the test of love.
It is quite easy to understand why Jesus would ask us to love God. God absolutely deserves our love. Loving our neighbors is also understandable. But why would the Lord ask us to love those who wants to destroy us? Why should you love someone who wants to kill you?
To understand why Jesus wants us to love our enemies, we need to understand that God also loved us even when we were yet sinners. As sinners, we were enemies of God. We didn't deserve His love, but He loved us all the same. The Lord is asking us to extend that love to our fellow human beings who hate us.
It is not easy to love those who hate you or have hurt you in the past. But that is exactly what Jesus is asking us to do. Is it impossible? If it were impossible, the Lord wouldn't have asked us to do it. You need to love as if you have never been hurt before.
The Lord also asked us to pray for our enemies not to pray against them. No where in the Gospel of Christ did Jesus ask us to pray against our human enemies. If we are praying for our human enemies to die, we don't have the love of God in us. The Gospel of Christ is to be obeyed fully, not partially.
In Luke 6:35, the Lord tells us loving our enemies and being kind to those who hate us make us children of God. A Christian must not return evil with evil. We gain nothing if we hate those who hate us. We must love even when it is difficult to do so.
PRAYER LINE
Lord, please give me a heart that loves unconditionally. Amen