Loving Others Your Question: Should you love people who hurt you? Why? The quick answer to this question is yes? Why? Because Jesus told us to. In Matthew 5 Jesus talks about loving your enemy. In verses 44 – 48 Jesus taught that we should “love our enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you” – that covers every category of those who may hurt us. The Christian life is not an easy life, but Jesus intended that his people would be different, hence the teaching to love those who hurt us. Everyone can love those who love them, and are nice to them, but it takes a different kind of person to love those who hurt us. Usually when people hurt us, we want revenge and justice but for the Christian we are told to leave that up to God (Romans 12 verse 19 - 21). As Christians we believe that God is watching everything that everyone does. When someone does something really hateful and hurtful toward us it does not go unnoticed. God has seen it. What happens next in our lives is really important, as we are being tested to see whether we will trust in God to sort things out, or take the law into our own hands. For the Christian who wants to grow strong we must have the faith to believe that God will give us justice in his own time. When we harbour hate and desire for revenge we can be sure that these emotions will destroy our peace, joy, our love and happiness. When we hand situations like this over to God, it will be a great burden lifted and if we really begin to show love to those who have hurt us in the end you will be surprised what can happen. Romans 12 verse 20 says “if your enemy is hungry, feed him, if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this you will heap burning coals on his head [make him ashamed of his actions]. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” This is one of the hardest lessons we can learn, but Jesus was our greatest example, and Hebrews 12:3 tells us to think about Christ, who endured hurt, hate and opposition from evil men “so that we will not grow weary or lose heart”. Hopefully we will never know the hurt and hate that Jesus did, but many times the hard situations we experience could easily overwhelm us unless we cry out to God to help us.
Posted on: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 12:41:01 +0000
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