Last week we talked about our love for others flowing out of abiding in God and He in us.
The intention of this week comes from Jesus’ well-known command in Luke 6:
“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” Luke 6:27-28 (ESV)
At first, I expected this post to be a study on these verses.
But, as I started to dig deeper, God led me to another passage that breathes such beautiful, raw life into this topic.
It’s found in John 13, where we get a front row seat peering into an incredibly intimate moment between Jesus and His disciples:
“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)
Now, when Jesus came to Peter to wash his feet, Peter refused out of misunderstanding what Jesus was really doing. (You can read about this more in John 13:6-20)
But verse 11 is what struck me:
“For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.” John 13:11 (ESV)
I have to admit, my focus has previously been on Peter when I’ve read through this passage before.
But, I want to turn our focus onto Judas this week.
Jesus knew that Judas was going to betray Him. After following Jesus and being a part of the core of His friends/disciples for the past few years through His ministry, Judas was about to turn around and hand Jesus over to His death.
Yet, Jesus washed Judas’ feet.
This very thought brings me to tears and my knees because I know the limitations of my own heart.
I cannot love the Judas in my life the way Jesus did.
Not out of my own effort.
And yet, in Luke 6, Jesus asks us to display this kind of treatment filled with love toward our enemies.
I am desperate for Him to abide in me as I lift up to Him my empty, idle hands when it comes to loving and praying for those who’ve hurt me.
As God started showing me what this week was to be about, I started getting self-conscious and questioned:
“God, what if this doesn’t relate to everyone?”
And He, as He so faithfully does, reminded me of His word:
“In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33b (ESV)
Trouble in this life is a guarantee. And since we are all sinners ourselves, who live life alongside other sinners, we are bound to be let down, hurt, and even persecuted or abused by others as we walk through life.
We all have Judases of our own.
We get into trouble when we start comparing our Judases to other people’s Judases.
We either end up belittling the reality of how we feel towards some people and situations they brought into our lives OR we start taking in the lie that what our Judas did and who they are is too much to love.
Regardless of who we are, and who our Judases are, we are all asked to follow this command to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute and abuse us.
And Jesus gave us a perfect picture example in John 13 to follow Him in how to do that.
Over the next few weeks we will be taking a deeper look into and following Jesus’ example in washing His betrayer’s feet. These weeks will take time and brutal honesty with ourselves and with God.
My prayer is that as we seek to deal with our hearts towards the people who are hard to love and may not seem to deserve it, God will lead us into freedom to be able to live out Jesus’ command for us to love our enemies and pray for these people.
So, this week, let’s begin with acknowledging who these people are in our lives.
Jesus did not blindly wash all of His disciples’ feet. He knew each of their hearts. He knew Judas’ heart and who he’d chosen to pledge allegiance to.
He knew every bit of the pain he was about to bring into His life.
And as He dipped His holy Hands into the dirty water basin and gently grabbed the feet of the man who would sell Him out to His death that very night…
He chose to love him.
Jesus knows all. He was honest about all that Judas had done and was going to do to Him. There was no pretending or pushing aside that He knew every detail of what was going on.
As I started to try to dive into loving and praying for my own enemies, God showed me that I can’t begin to pray for and love an enemy that I don’t acknowledge as one.
So, at the very start, we need to take time with God and ask Him to reveal our own hearts to us.
To reveal all those we hold captive as enemies in our lives.
For me, some people came straight to mind without too much thought. But, the very cleansing part was taking time to ask God to expose my heart deeper than the surface so that I could see.
As I sat quietly, He opened my eyes to feelings I had towards certain people in my life that I haven’t taken time to recognize and see the reality that I categorize them as my enemies.
I would have never called them enemies, but my feelings toward them are as one would feel about an enemy: hurt, pain, anger, frustration, regret. People in my life where the thought of washing their feet made me cringe. People who I still hold the pain from their actions or neglect in my heart.
These were the people I needed to bring into this time of learning to love those who’ve wronged me.
Week Six Challenge: Take multiple times this week seeking God to open your eyes to who the people are in your own life who you hold captive as enemies. Let this be a week of honestly listening and acknowledging the grudges, pain, disappointment, and shame you feel toward or because of people in your life. Ask God to take blinders off of your eyes that have kept you believing that feeling these ways towards others is just who you have to be. Let bitterness and self-righteous condemnation start to melt away to expose your own heart’s condition.
Father, I pray that as we come to You, desperate for You to reveal our own view of others to us, that You would answer our call out to You. Open our eyes to be able to name the people who we hold grip as enemies. Expose to us who in our own lives Luke 6 is referring to so that we can begin to follow Your Word.
From one of His children to another,
Christi