Now that we’ve spent time last week acknowledging our enemies who God wants to free us from the bitter condemnation we hold over them, and lead us into actually loving them, let’s move on to follow in Jesus’ footsteps in John 13.
“Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.” John 13:1-5 (ESV)
Jesus laid aside His outer garments.
In doing this, Jesus was humbling Himself.
The holy Son of God who left His rightful place above us and over us stripped Himself even more, and took the place of a servant to the people He created.
This week we will put our focus on taking off our own outer garments.
We need to ask God for strength to have similar humility toward those who’ve hurt us.
If we cannot take on the humility Jesus did, we cannot move forward in loving them.
Jesus lived a sinless life. He had nothing holding Him back from loving His enemies. For Him, humility was as profound, yet simple, an act as stripping off His outer clothes because He was sinless.
But we are not.
We get caught up in hoarding hurt and harboring hatred and bitterness toward those who’ve wronged us.
We need His strength to throw off all of our reasons why we shouldn’t have to love them, why we deserve to be bitter, and why we should get to hold onto our pain.
As I continued through this process of God teaching me to love those who’ve hurt me, an unexpected, absolutely necessary stepping stone onto this path came up.
If I’m going to really love someone and be able to pray for them, I first need to take time to ask Christ to cleanse me of my own sin towards this person.
Withholding love from someone else is not following Christ in how He has told me to treat others. And so it is falling short of the life I’m supposed to be living as a Christ follower.
It’s not just a side issue, it’s a sinful part of my heart. And I need to acknowledge it as such.
If we allow our hearts to continue to be petri dishes of small hateful, bitter, unforgiving thoughts toward others, it will grow and entangle us, never leading us to loving and praying for them.
We have fallen short of living the way Jesus has asked us to when we fall short in loving our Judases.
And when we see this, it should lead us to humbly come to Him in repentance.
This is a harsh truth for me to swallow.
Yet, every bit as important to humble my heart in order to truly learn to love.
If we cannot take this step in seeing our own faults, we are no better than the hypocrite Jesus exposes in Matthew 7:
“Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” Matthew 7:3 (ESV)
Notice that this verse isn’t saying there isn’t something in the other’s eye, or to ignore what is in the other’s eye.
It’s saying your primary priority should be your own eye.
This process cannot be just recognizing our enemies and then moving onto loving them. But in between, there has to be our own repenting of how we’ve treated them, either outwardly or within our hearts, less than how Christ has commanded us to love them.
So after spending time last week acknowledging who our enemies are, it’s time we take the next step and humble ourselves in recognizing if the way we’ve viewed and thoughts we’ve had towards these people in our lives have been less than love.
We may need to seek forgiveness of how we’ve treated our enemies from the same One who empowers us to love our enemies.
This may seem like a lot to ask when we are recounting all that our enemies have put on us.
But, I encourage you to remember that Jesus made the first move. No one else in the room even knew what was coming. He simply stood up from supper.
Jesus’ washing of Judas’ feet did not excuse the ways Judas was about to betray and hurt Him.
However, His love for Judas was not dependent on Judas’ acknowledgement, much less apology, for what he was about to do to Him.
We can’t let the lie that we cannot move forward into loving someone because they have no remorse or even acknowledgement of how they hurt us keep us from following Jesus’ command to love our enemies.
This will freeze us in bitterness and keep ourselves captive as we try to keep the person who has wronged us captive to pay for what they’ve done.
While holding onto bitterness may feel like freely getting back at the person who’s hurt us, it’s instead the very opposite: falling captive to the snares of the devil.
He wants to distract and destroy us in our following Christ.
I’m done being held captive because of holding onto what others have done to me and using their actions as excuses for my treatment of them that falls short of how Christ wants me to treat them.
This week is about repentance and freedom.
Week 7 Challenge: Take time this week being honest about how you’ve fallen short of loving these enemies in your life. Ask God to help you strip off your own outer garments and let go of the justifications you’ve held onto in order to continue in hatred, disgust, or even apathy toward these people. And if, like me, you realize areas where you need to repent, ask God for the humility and freedom to do that.
It helps me to physically do something that acknowledges and solidifies that I am taking steps in this. So it was helpful for me to write down all of the reasons I’ve held in my head against the person I’m learning to love and pray for.
I took time to write them down and then pray over them and cross them out one by one as an action of asking God to help me let go of them, regardless of how true and right they feel.
Not excusing what they’ve done. But instead loosening my grip on pain and bitterness, and grabbing onto freedom and restoration.
Father, expose our thoughts and actions that are not of You in how we treat these people in our lives. Expose the lies we’ve held onto in order to keep withholding love from our enemies. Lead us into the freedom that repentance brings as we lay our hearts before You, choosing to lay down our pride and humbly take the position of Your follower that we may love the way You want us to.
From one of His children to another,
Christi