The Lord Jesus told us that we are to love our enemies, because God is kind even to the wicked. Since God's kindness to sinners is the standard of love, if we are to be perfect, we must love our enemies also.
Herein is our great failure to attain righteousness, and the Lord Jesus' sparkling attainment of righteousness: that He died for sinners, enemies of God!
Mankind believes that the highest love is displayed when a man dies to save his friends. Jesus acknowledges this, even as He describes His disciples as His friends, thereby signifying His willingness to die to save them.
But ironically, Jesus showed that His love is greater still than any mere man ever possessed: Jesus died for God's enemies!
We were all lost in our sin, and children of wrath. But God showed His great love for us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. God's love is "perceived" by us when we understand that Jesus laid down His life to save us!
Indeed, Christ died for sinners, not righteous people. When we were enemies, Paul exults, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son!
Jesus made peace between God and His enemies through the blood of His cross! His people were His enemies by wicked works, but He reconciled His enemies in the body of His flesh through death!
So the impossible happens: Jesus changes God's enemies into God's friends. We all have enemies that we cannot conceive could ever be reconciled to us, yet God has reconciled impossible enemies to Him by the blood of Jesus!
Jesus has accomplished this great feat by taking away all the sin that made us God's enemies, and dying for them at Calvary!
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John Pittman Hey was born in 1961 in Jackson, Mississippi, to Godly parents who from the beginning raised him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. With child-like faith he came to Christ on his fourth birthday at his mother's knee. He received his education at church...
