Ezekiel the prophet lived during the time of Israel’s exile
to Babylon, an exile God brought about to purify and restore Israel to a
faithful relationship. Chapter 20 tells
us that the history of Isarel is the story of Israel’s unfaithfulness,
idolatry, and disobedience. It is also
the story of God’s faithfulness, outrage, and patience. God says to Israel through Ezekiel: I will
not allow you to ask me anything. You
have made up your minds to be like the heathens around you who worship
nature. But I will not allow it. Angry as I am, I will rule you with a strong
hand. I will gather you and speak your
doom to your face. I will make you obey
my covenant and I will send away those who continue to rebel and sin. I will act with honor despite your wicked,
evil actions, so I will not deal with you as you deserve.
There is a true mystery in the relationship of our free will
and God’s free will. How is it that God
makes space for us to choose against God’s will? Just from looking around us we see that God does make this space, and the consequences ensue. At the same time, the freedom to choose
against is the freedom to choose for, and I want to encourage each of us today
to choose for God and do what we know is right to do that lies immediately
before us today and each day. When you
choose to ask God into your life, God takes you very seriously and will do all
God can to make you resemble your elder Brother Jesus. But, of course, you are still choosing
whether or not to cooperate with God.
In this post, I am going to focus on what the Bible tells us is the
will of God for each of us with regard to our opponents, our enemies, our
adversaries.
Matthew 5
I haven’t come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to
fulfill them. Anyone who breaks the
least of the commands and teaches others to do so will be least in the kingdom
of heaven, but anyone who practices and teaches these commands will be great in
the kingdom of heaven. You have to be
more righteous than the professionally righteous people around in order to
enter the kingdom of heaven.
Not only can you not murder someone, you also must not hold
another person in contempt because of being angry with that person. You can’t offer a gift acceptable to God with
contempt for another person in your heart.
God will be sure your heart is right, so cooperate as quickly as you
can.
Not only must you limit revenge to the harm done you, but
you must be generous with those who harm you or want something from you.
Not only must you love your neighbor, but you must love your
enemy and pray for those who make your life unpleasant.
Try being more like God, your Father, who sends sunshine and
rain to both evil and good people.
Extend your love to all.
Matthew 5:25 (Luke 12:59)
Be well disposed, of a peaceable spirit, wish well toward
your opponent, your enemy, your adversary without delay while you are still
traveling together on the same road so that your opponent will at no time
deliver you into the hands of the judge and the judge turn you over to his
officer who will throw you into prison, into confinement, where your every move
is watched. Amen. This is the truth. I
tell you, you will never by any means go freely from that jail until you have
restored what you owe that opponent to the very last penny.
I owe a lot of how I understand this passage to George
MacDonald, a 19th century preacher who often focused on holiness.
First: do today what you know you will have to
someday.
George MacDonald, “The Last Farthing,” Unspoken Sermons. “I
think I do know what is meant by 'agree on the way,' and 'the uttermost
farthing.' The parable is an appeal to the common sense of those that hear it,
in regard to every affair of righteousness. Arrange what claim lies against
you; compulsion waits behind it. Do at once what you must do one day. As there
is no escape from payment, escape at least the prison that will enforce it. Do
not drive Justice to extremities. Duty is imperative; it must be done. It is
useless to think to escape the eternal law of things; yield of yourself, nor
compel God to compel you.
Second: this parable does not threaten punishment so much as it explains the natural consequences of God’s nature and of human nature. Our
response to it reveals our own hearts.
“To the honest [person] the word is… sweet as most loving
promise. He who is of God's mind in things, rejoices to hear the word of the
changeless Truth; the voice of the Right fills the heavens and the earth, and
makes his soul glad; it is his salvation.
Third: God will judge between us if we
will not come to agreement by our own choice.
This satisfies our love of justice even though we ourselves will be
judged as we judge others.
"If God were not
inexorably just, there would be no stay for the soul of the feeblest lover of
right: 'thou art true, O Lord: one day I also shall be true!' 'Thou shalt
render the right, cost you what it may,' is a dread sound in the ears of those
whose life is a falsehood: what but the last farthing would those who love
righteousness more than life pay? It is a joy profound as peace to know that
God is determined upon such payment, is determined to have his children clean,
clear, pure as very snow; is determined that not only shall they with his help
make up for whatever wrong they have done, but at length be incapable, by
eternal choice of good, under any temptation, of doing the thing that is not
divine, the thing God would not do.”
…
Fourth: therefore, choose to do the right thing now. And you know what it is.
“I read, then, in this parable, that a man had better make
up his mind to be righteous, to be fair, to do what he can to pay what he owes,
in any and all the relations of life--all the matters, in a word, wherein one
man may demand of another, or complain that he has not received fair play.
Arrange your matters with those who have anything against you, while you are
yet together and things have not gone too far to be arranged; you will have to
do it, and that under less easy circumstances than now. Putting off is of no
use. You must. The thing has to be done; there are means of compelling you."
MacDonald includes the following dialogue. I've put the words of God in bold italics to clarify the parts.
'In this affair, however, I am in the right.'
'If so, very well--for this affair. But I have reason to
doubt whether you are capable of judging righteously in your own cause:--do you
hate the man?'
'No, I don't hate him.'
'Do you dislike him?'
'I can't say I like him.'
'Do you love him as yourself?'
'Oh, come! come! no one does that!'
'Then no one is to be trusted when he thinks, however
firmly, that he is all right, and his neighbour all wrong, in any matter
between them.'
'But I don't say I am all right, and he is all wrong; there
may be something to urge on his side: what I say is, that I am more in the
right than he.'
'This is not fundamentally a question of things: it is a
question of condition, of spiritual relation and action, towards your
neighbour. If in yourself you were all right towards him, you could do him no
wrong. Let it be with the individual dispute as it may, you owe him something
that you do not pay him, as certainly as you think he owes you something he
will not pay you.'
'He would take immediate advantage of me if I owned that.'
'So much the worse for him. Until you are fair to him, it
does not matter to you whether he is unfair to you or not.'
'I beg your pardon--it is just what does matter! I want
nothing but my rights. What can matter to me more than my rights?'
'Your duties--your debts. You are all wrong about the thing.
It is a very small matter to you whether the man give you your rights or not;
it is life or death to you whether or not you give him his. Whether he pay you
what you count his debt or no, you will be compelled to pay him all you owe
him. If you owe him a pound and he you a million, you must pay him the pound whether
he pay you the million or not; there is no business-parallel here. If, owing
you love, he gives you hate, you, owing him love, have yet to pay it. A love
unpaid you, a justice undone you, a praise withheld from you, a judgment passed
on you without judgment, will not absolve you of the debt of a love unpaid, a
justice not done, a praise withheld, a false judgment passed: these uttermost
farthings--not to speak of such debts as the world itself counts grievous
wrongs--you must pay him, whether he pay you or not. We have a good while given
us to pay, but a crisis will come--come soon after all--comes always sooner
than those expect it who are not ready for it--a crisis when the demand
unyielded will be followed by prison.'
Fifth: God can use the consequences of our bad choices to
move us toward redemption.
“The same holds with every demand of God: by refusing to
pay, the man makes an adversary who will compel him--and that for the man's own
sake. If you or your life say, 'I will not,' then [God] will see to it. …
“If the man acknowledge, and would pay if he could but
cannot, the universe will be taxed to help him rather than he should continue
unable. If the man accepts the will of God, he is the child of the Father, the
whole power and wealth of the Father is for him, and the uttermost farthing
will easily be paid. If the man denies the debt, or acknowledging does nothing
towards paying it, then--at last--the prison! God in the dark can make a man
thirst for the light, who never in the light sought but the dark.”
My Experience
I share this with you because my own experience makes clear
to me how true this is. When I identify
someone as my enemy, essentially I am saying, “You are not giving me what you
owe me.” Often this is true. However, if I do not choose every day to align my
will with God’s will as much as I can that day, I am choosing to be imprisoned
by my own sense of having been wronged.
I can’t ever get out of that prison by focusing on how right I am. A friend of mine described this as putting a
barrier across the neck of an hourglass. My state of
mind freezes time at the point where my sense of being treated unfairly or unjustly
occurs. Every day my mind rehearses how
badly my enemy has treated me. It comes
into all my significant conversations and colors all my relationships with others. I had a high school friend who cut herself to
remind herself of how other people had betrayed her. She did it on purpose to prevent herself from
accidentally forgetting the wrong. This
is a picture of how we treat our souls when we refuse to obey God's will to reconcile with our opponent.
I usually have to start by asking God for justice. Essentially, I am turning my opponent over to
God to judge. I also, against my own
inclination but with my will, start praying for God to bless my enemy. I hate this part but I do it. I try and fail to let the person off the
hook. But I’m trying. I am by sheer act of will removing the
barrier in the hourglass so that time can move on from the moment of
injury. So that the cut can heal from the inside out and then scab
over. God honors my efforts, feeble and
incomplete though they are. God loves me
in them and lets me know it. Often I end
up blaming God for how things have gone so wrong: "You could have stopped this,
you could have done something, I hope you know what you’re doing."
My experience, and I am not lying to you, is that God shows
up when I express honest anger toward him.
It is a lot like the book of Job—Job insists that he did not deserve the
suffering he received, he blames God for it, and God shows up and is
friendly. I will tell you two stories. I was complaining out loud to God and added,
“And on top of that, you have let me have a hemorrhoid. Don’t you think that’s
piling on.” And God said, almost aloud, “Piling on—that’s funny.” You see, the plural of hemorrhoid is piles. I
laughed out loud for about 10 minutes, and something deep inside me eased up
the pressure. Because God showed up when
I got really honest about what I was feeling.
The second story came after a huge disappointment, when it
looked like I wasn’t ever going to achieve what I dreamed of. I was in church, with my head bent down on
the pew in front of me, crying with rage, really, and asking God why God
favored my enemy over me. God said to
me, very clearly, “Look up at me.” I kept my head down. And I felt as if God placed a finger under my
chin, lifted my head, and made me look into God’s eyes. “What do you see?” God asked. “Love, nothing but love,” I replied. I cannot
get over that experience. I hope everyone reading this knows what is in God’s eyes for you.
Finally, as things turn out, God helps me get to a place
where my heart is no longer at war with my enemy. God pinned me down in the car once to tell me
that simply saying “You can let that so and so into heaven if you have to, but
I don’t want to sit close to him,” was no longer the best I could do, and God,
unsurprisingly, was right. I said, “OK, God, please let that so and so into
heaven,”
That’s a good place to end.
Dear God, please let our enemies into heaven. If you can’t get there yet, start here: Dear
God, please decide justice between me and my enemy.
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