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Eye for an Eye
The moral standard of the world is.
Do to others what they do to you.
It is easy to understand. It is rational. Fair. If they do evil to you, then you have a right to do evil to them. If they took $100 from you, then you have a right to take $100 from them. It makes sense. Logical
That was what Moses said too.
Anyone who maims another shall suffer the same injury in return: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; the injury inflicted is the injury to be suffered. (Leviticus 24:19-20)
We often misunderstand “Eye for eye.” We think that this means to revenge. Moses gave this rule not to revenge but to treat others fairly. Don’t return with excessive retaliation. If they took your eye, don’t take more than eye.
But Jesus’ teaching is different from the moral standard of the world.
It wasn’t
Do to others what they do to you.
It was this:
Do to others as you would have them do to you.
Treat others as how you want to be treated.
How do I want to be treated? I want to be treated with respect and honour. I want to be treated without prejudice and discrimination. I want to be accepted. I want to be loved.
Then treat others in the same way. Don’t treat them as they treat you. Treat them as you want them to treat you.
Just because they treat you badly, don’t bring yourself down to their level. Don’t let them control how you live. We cannot control how they treat us. But we can control how we treat them. We don’t follow what they do to us. We follow what is good. We don’t follow the evil they do unto us. We follow the good that is good for all.
Understanding Love
Understanding this is the first step of understanding love. Love is not about how you feel. Love is not our response to those who love us. Love is doing the good that each person needs whether that person deserves it or not. In that sense, even to our enemies, we do good – that is love.
But come to think of it, that is how God loves us. God has been good to us. Not because we deserve God’s goodness but because we need it.
This was what St. Paul said.
But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)
Then in two verses later, he said this.
For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. (Romans 5:10)
While we were God’s enemies, Jesus showed us God’s love by sacrificing himself for us.
Love your enemies – it is paradoxical. It is oxymoron. Enemies are those you hate by definition. But Jesus said to love your enemies and he showed us his example. Jesus died for us to save those who were enemies to God. In loving enemies, God’s mysterious plan of salvation is hidden. God’s love for us is like loving enemies. That is God’s love. In loving our enemies, the essence of the gospel is hidden.
Also, in loving your enemies, the essence of love is hidden. We will find love in its PUREST FORM in loving our enemies. In other kinds of love such as romantic love, altruistic love, love is mixed with selfish desire, selfish motivation, heroism, and personal gain. But in loving enemies, you will be able to see love in its purest form.
From this pure love comes true power and confidence. Our enemies cannot intimidate us any more. They no longer become the object of our hatred.
Hatred
Hatred is hard. Hating somebody takes a toll on us. You don’t know how many people live their lives trapped in the ugly feeling of hatred. When we have hatred within us, we can never be happy. Hatred brings evil to all of us. It creates a bad cycle. Hatred takes away freedom from us. We become paralyzed when we are trapped in hatred.
Hatred poisons our soul. It is like a bug. When you catch it, you cannot sleep. It makes you feel down and depressed. It makes you angry. It makes you weak. It takes away joy. It damages our mind and our body. It is like a severe disease. It is a disease our enemies bring to us.
It is like opening the door for the evil to come in and destroy us. That’s what hatred does. What our enemies did was bad enough. Now if we hate them, we are doing what is worse to us than what our enemies did to us. We let the evil come in and take us into deeper darkness.
That is not a very wise thing to do, is it? So love your friends and hate your enemies – it sounds logical and it sounds good but it is not really a wise thing to do. Do to others what they do to you – it sounds rational but not a very practical thing to do.
Loving your enemies makes much more sense than hating them. It stops them from harming us more than what they already did. It is good to all of us.
But the problem is we cannot do it on our own. We don’t have that kind of love.
Love From God
This kind of love comes from God. When we experience this love from God, love enters into our soul. It touches every cell of our body, and strengthens and empowers each cell. It heals our poisoned soul. It heals our wounded heart. It strengthens us. With this strength, we can defeat the evil our enemies bring to us and do what is good.
Love is the power to bring light to the darkness, hope to despair, goodness to evil. Love conquers. Love brings victory. This love brings victory even over death. This is the only power that defeats death. This is the power that casts out fear.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:18, 19)
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39)
This love flows from God. It is not what we have. It is not something we can create or cultivate. It is not something we can learn on our own. It is not something we can experience in this world.
It is God’s gift to those who seek it.
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