Wednesday, July 27, 2022

An Act of Perfecting Grace

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy.  But I say, love your enemies!  Pray for those who persecute you!  In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven.  For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.  If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that?  Even corrupt tax collectors do that much.  If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else?  Even pagans do that.  But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.  Matthew 5:43-48

Sisyphus is a notable in Greek mythology.  He was a king, so clever, his schemes to  increase his power and wealth are common to this world’s ways.  In the myth, chief god, Zeus, sentenced Sisyphus to rolling a rock up a mountain, only to have it escape his grip each time he neared the top, rolling down to the base of the mountain.  The dethroned king had to roll it up again and again, for all eternity.  The teaching of the myth was the pointlessness of avarice and power…it only leads to the mindless task of increasing effort to maintain what is, in the end, neverending worthlessness.  It’s empty, unable to slake even the slightest thirst.

It's kind of like paying a mortgage, month, after month, after month, ad nauseum.  But in this case, the only deed you have is the assurance of a place in hell.

Jesus turned Sisyphus’ status-climbing on its’ ear, telling His disciples to bend lower, rather than climb higher.  Loving requires lifting…most often heavy lifting.  To lift another who is struggling is heavy enough, but Jesus points to doing the heaviest of lifting, loving those who struggle against you.  We are instructed to love our enemies.  Now THAT is rolling some huge kind of rock uphill.  And it would seem a Sisyphean task, because you KNOW it’s gonna slip right through your hands and end up in the valley.  And you’ll be left with nothing but bruises.

And that’s just the point, Jesus says:  Do it anyway!

And, as with Sisyphus, we wonder – why?  Why love them when it’s just going to turn out bad? 

And Jesus’ punch-line is a jaw-dropper:  …you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.  The purpose, meaning, and cause of all this loving your enemies, is to draw closer to the fellowship we seek with our Creator.  Against all human wisdom, we are to trust God’s ways, not our feelings (especially that anger against our enemies).  That is what God did, knowing infinitely well how much pain it would cost Him on the cross. 

John Wesley called it going on to perfection in love.  We are not going to be perfect in all our attitudes and actions in this life, but we can move in the direction of loving perfectly.  And, like it or not, that includes treating our enemies with respect, and the kindness we all crave.

For You Today

You may never develop a fondness for an enemy, especially when he’s got you by the throat, or picking your pocket.  But God doesn’t require you to have fond feelings; He expects you to remember how to treat your enemy:

Do to others as you would like them to do to you.  Luke 6:31

THAT is an act of perfecting grace, possibly for your enemy; definitely for you!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts in the Rocky Road Devotions library. 

To dig deeper on today’s topic read:

  Wikipedia Commons on Sisyphus   and 

 What Did John Wesley Mean? and  A Life of Polar Opposites

[1] Images:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©   

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