I Chose to Love

As you may (or not…) recall, I am working my way through the memorization of the Sermon on the Mount, in Portuguese. I am finding it a challenge, especially because the Bible uses both the second person singular and plural, switching them around, even within the same verses. Second person is not used in common speech, especially the plural, so it’s really hard for me. It would be the equivalent of using thee and thou conjugations (only in Portuguese it’s much more complex than English) for someone who had never heard “King James” or Shakespearean English.

Yesterday when I finished chapter 5, I stopped dead at verse 48, which in English, says: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Don’t you love the imperative conjugation of “ye” in the King James English? It sounds so lovely on the ear.) Guess what word stopped me? Yeah, I bet you got it – “perfect”. Fat chance, I can be perfect.

Back up in verse 45 of chapter 5, it says that we should love our enemies so  “That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.” You have to understand one verse to get the other one. Being a “child of God” was tantamount to being “god-like”, or as we say more frequently, “godly”. When we love our enemies, we are like God.

Loving is what God does. And we are all his enemies, have no doubt of that. Paul says it in many ways, but Romans 5:10 is very clear: “… while we were God’s enemies”. Our sin makes us enemies. Yet, while we were sinners (i.e. enemies), Christ died for us. Now that is love! (But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.- Romans 5:8)

Be patient, I am getting there. We don’t deserve to be loved, but God chose to love us, his enemies. If I want to be His child, that is the same choice I have to make. I don’t mean ooey gooey, sloppy kiss on the cheek love, or love that makes my body melt, or love that makes me feel all good inside. I mean volitional love. Love that I consciously chose to display. That’s the easier said than done kind of love. It doesn’t just happen. It doesn’t just rush over me in a hormone surge. I chose to love, when I am not loved, when I am, in fact, hated. It comes from my will not my heart. It seems to me I would be much more honored to be loved like this, than to be “loved” by someone who just “fell” in love with me (and could fall out of love just as quickly.) That means choosing to love when it’s not easy.

Yeah, right, I can do that. Let me think about that… nope, can’t do that. Yet, Matthew 5:48 says that we are to be perfect like God. This word “perfect” means that we should function as we were made to function. That we should be fulfilling our purpose in life. To become “perfect” is to mature, or to ripen. And what is our purpose? Remember how we were created in Genesis?

Yeah, you remember! In the image of God. We were created to be like Him. That is our purpose. We were meant to be like God. That is what it means to be perfect: to fulfill our purpose. Our purpose isn’t to make the world a better place, or to be a better person, or to pursue happiness, but to be the very image of God.

That means I must CHOSE to love – even my enemies. That sounds nice on a Monday morning when I am safely ensconced in my little corner of the world with no one near me. That gets harder when I am nearly run over by the guy who runs the red light. Or when someone spreads false gossip about my husband. Or when someone I invested lots of time in, and considered a friend, rejects me. I want to yell at those people and to hate them. (Or at the very least turn a cold shoulder.)

But I am called to love them. I am called to choose love. That is my purpose in life. That is who I am meant to be. Scary stuff. But I read something on the internet (I couldn’t find the source) that helps me when I think that I just “CAN’T” do this: “You can't. He never said you could.
But He can and He always said He would.”  So while it is true that “with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Mt 19:26). Amen. Chew on that this week. And when you think of it, love your enemies.