Why Love our enemies?

Let's start with this premise:

"Therefore, we are ambassador's for Christ, God making his appeal through us." 2cor5:20

The church, the followers of Jesus the Christ, have been as its called "reconciled" to God.  That means we were once far from God as enemies and by our faith through his grace we have been brought back into a right standing with God.  We are willing His slaves but He calls us friend, son, daughter, and even co-heir of an eternal inheritance with Jesus!

I believe looking vertically to God's saving work and inwardly in the grace in our lives when we realize that, having been reconciled, its easier to understand why Jesus said, "But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of the Father who is in heaven." (Matt 5:44-45)  You see, like any good leader you know in your life, they will have a willingness to do anything that they might ask of you.  When Jesus says that we should "love our enemies", he can say it boldly because that is the very thing that He did for us!

You see, we were nothing short of enemies of God before grace. It may not have been an intentional mindset to be militant against the will and person of God, but frankly, hostility is the very nature of sin.  "For the mind that is set of the flesh (humanity's sinful nature) is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed it cannot.  Those who are in the flesh cannot please God." (Romans 8:7-8).  We all sin, Paul says in the same letter to the Roman church that all men are sinners and wholly fall short of God's glory.  There is not way around it, but we were fully hostile enemies to God before his grace.  The unrepentant hard heart is an enemy of God because of the deeply rooted depravity, hostility, and eternally fatal consequences of sin.

That thought might cause you to drop your head, but again Paul says: "but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.` (Romans 5:8)  At that time when we were deeply rooted in depravity, hostile, and facing the eternally fatal consequences of sin, in that state God still loved us! God loved us so much, His enemies, that He gave up Jesus up to death because He is the only sufficient sacrifice to forgive our hostility, pour out His grace to be received by faith alone and make a desperately hateful enemy a friend!

This is why the church is commanded to love our enemies! We are Christ`s ambassadors here on earth to declare the message of reconciliation.  Why ... because we have been reconciled, we were enemies, God poured out His love through the sacrifice of Jesus the Christ, and now we are called friends!

So brothers and sisters, let`s love the ones who the world tells us to hate and be faithful ambassador`s of our Lord.