Showing Love to Your Enemy

Scripture Reading

Proverbs 25:21-22

21 If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. 22 In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.

Devotional

I don’t know about you, but one way to get to my heart is through good food and good company. These things are easy to share with people you love to be around and if someone you loved didn’t have food or water, it would be a no-brainer to share what you have with them. We instinctively don’t want people we care about to suffer and that’s a good thing. But how about people we don’t really like? How about people who have betrayed our trust, talked about us behind our back, or went out of their way to cause us pain? If you knew they were hungry or thirsty, how willing would you be to share with them? You may be thinking… “Come on God, you want me to give this person who has given me so much grief, something to eat and drink?” The answer is YES. It’s not about us, it’s about God.

The verse says that when you give your enemy food and water when they need it, it is like “heap[ing] coals on his head.” Just to clarify this passage, it does not mean you’re hurting the person. Coals in the Bible is frequently used to express a cleansing act. In this case, your actions will cause your enemy to be caught off-guard and even be confused. That confusion will dwell with them until it turns into self-reflection and opens the door to reconciliation.

I want to give just a brief example of how this may manifest itself in everyday life. Have you ever received a bill from your phone or cable company and you’re fuming mad because they overcharged you for something you know was wrong? So, you’re dialing up customer service and you’re waiting what seems to be an eternity to talk to someone and when they finally answer you want to say some things that do not represent God and you’re already gearing up for a fight. However, once you express your frustration in not the most Christ-like way, the customer service representative expresses sympathy and says “I’m so sorry you experienced that. That isn’t right. I’m going to fix that for you right now.” And then, *boom* it’s fixed in like two seconds. How does that effect you emotionally? You wanted to be mad and were expecting an unfavorable outcome, and yet that person resolved all your issues immediately. Now that you have nothing to be mad about, you’re confused as to why you were so riled up to begin with. You’re probably also regretful that you spoke so angrily to them at the start because it wasn’t that person’s fault. In this case, you thought you the company was the enemy, but really your behaviors were that of the enemy and the customer service agent disregarded your tirade and made things right for you. God wants us to be like the customer agent knowing that people are going to wrong us, lash out at us for something we didn’t even do, and sometimes go to extremes to hurt us, but we are called to overlook that in their times of need and do what God tells us to do. These actions are sometimes all God needs to reach that person. So, when you’re confronted by your enemy, ask yourself, do you want to repay them with evil or do you want to be part of God’s plan for reconciliation? I should add that Proverbs 25:26 warns of what happens if we choose evil.

26 Like a muddied spring or a polluted well are the righteous who give way to the wicked.

If we are evil in our actions, we become like “a muddied spring or polluted well.” In other words, if we take revenge on our enemy or disregard them in their time of need, we are in sin. Our spring, which is intended to give life, is now polluted and will bring illness or death to not just our enemies, but also ourselves.

Let’s remember that we don’t always know what God’s plan is, but we should always be ready to do the right thing. And let’s not lose sight of the fact that verse 22 ends with “and the Lord will reward you.” God knows this is not easy and he will reward us for following him. Even better news is that we know God’s rewards are better than we can ever imagine. Now that’s something to be excited about! Let’s pray.

Prayer

Jesus, thank you for dying for us when we were your enemies. You prayed as you died for us to all be forgiven because we didn’t understand what we were doing. Then you rose and cleansed us of all our sins forever. It was a gift to each of us out of your love. I thank you for the message today reminding us that we are called to help our enemies in their times of need because it opens the door for them to draw near to you in reconciliation. Please help transform my heart and my mind to follow your Word especially when it’s difficult and counter to the way of the world. I want to be part of your plan, not against it. Amen.