"But I say to you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from him who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt."

Lk 6.27-29 (Parallels: Mt 5.39f, 44; compare Jonah 4)

God's grace as the basis of the command

The commandment to love one's enemy is often called an expression of a moralistic illusion. Some theologians look upon it as a rule of the kingdom of God which cannot be fulfilled in our history. The early Christians tried, however, to take this commandment seriously; see Rom 12.14 and 20 (compare Proverbs 25.21).

The impression of moralism disappears when we read these words in the context of the entire history of Jesus or at least of his so-called Discourse in the Field (Lk 6.20-49), which offers us the basic contents of the well-known Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7). Right at the beginning, in the Beatitudes, the kingdom of God is promised to the poor, the hungry, and the sorrowing, as joy and table fellowship. The promise of the grace of God is the beginning point. The poor do not receive this promise because of their inner quality, but because they are suffering. In the version found in Matthew (5.33f), these words are understood spiritually and referred to those who consciously stand on Jesus' side. That is the result of the promise which we hear in Luke, in agreement with Jesus' entire proclamation of the kingdom of God (compare paragraph 1.1-3). We must understand this commandment therefore against the background of the given perspective, which Paul expresses with the doctrine of the faith-righteousness of the sinner. That is the very opposite of a moralism which makes requirements but which demonstrates no love, which sees the correctness of the law but not the real person for whom Jesus died. Jesus and Paul rejected the moralism in the Jewish teachers of their day.

It is paradoxical that Protestantism, which builds upon the grace of God, has become so profoundly moralistic. Sometimes I hear that we are "too theological" and not practical enough. In reality, we are too moralistic and too little theological, pious, and practical. The confusion comes because this moralism is religiously coloured and appears to speak in concrete terms. Often atheism, to take one example, is condemned with moralistic outrage, whereas most atheists have never heard from us an understandable witness to Jesus Christ, to the gospel.

The justice of the love of God

Jesus is distinguished from the moralists not by his proclamation of grace alone, but also because he promises it to the poor. God's love includes justice. The love of God is not a mere sentiment, a weakness. The kingdom of God is also offered to the rich, and certainly there are those poor who reject it, but that does not change the just structure of the kingdom where the priority of the rich is set aside: "You cannot serve God and mammon" (Lk 16.13; Mt 6.24). We read of rich people whose wealth has become an obstacle for their finding of faith (for example, Mk 10.17-31 and parallels). The poor person is not morally better because of his poverty, but he has one advantage: he is not bound to the status quo. Jesus' promise to the poor finds its correspondence in his concern for women, for children, for the sick, all of whom were outcasts in the society of that day, but also for the hated tax collectors and the public sinners (Mt 11.19 and parallels). The fact that the gospel must take on concrete shape on the social level makes manifest that it is not only a matter of individual salvation.

For today's world, in which millions of people are undernourished, whereas others are made sick by the excesses of their consumption, the Beatitudes to the poor, hungry, and sorrowing may not be explained away. They are relevant in their original wording. It is sufficient merely to translate them. This is largely true too of the warnings about mammon (compare Lk 12.16-21). In the New Testament there is no alibi for the rich which could appease the poor by making some reference to the kingdom of God, for they are expressly warned (Lk 6.24f, and even in James (chapter 2 and 5.1-6; compare Psalm 82) the arrogance of the rich in the Christian community is strongly condemned. That was a small but very real break in the idea of the necessary division of society into the poor and the rich - a sign of the order of God, the coming victory over the misused powers.

Another form of the gospel in concrete expression was the above-mentioned relationship of Jesus and the early Christians to the sick. What is new and relevant is not the way in which they were treated, but rather the relationship to them. Sickness was often looked upon at that time as a punishment of God (read, for example, Job 22). The forgiveness of sins (Mk 2.1-12) and generally contact with the sick was for them a real liberation and a source of the power to live. Sickness is, in the gospels, the typical situation of faith. This is seen quite clearly in the presence of Jesus (for example, Mk 9.14-29 and parallels). When the German theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), spoke about today's "man come of age", he was thinking of man totally outside the church. We scarcely are to expect any kind of return to the classical forms of church-related religiosity. But the idea that today's man is really "come of age" and independent is false. In the developed countries especially, sickness (cancer, heart disease, traffic accidents) is becoming a sign of a disturbance which man cannot master, and for the person who consumes much, every death, even that at advanced age, is a tragedy. I am therefore not ashamed to say that the gospel is intended for a sick world.

In the New Testament, we find other concrete forms of the gospel. For example, the First Epistle of Peter is addressed to Christians in Asia Minor, who lived in a hostile setting and had to expect persecution. The gospel is addressed to them: Your "Christian existence does not necessarily have to lead to hate and pogroms against you. If it is upright and correct, it can also lead some of your enemies to convert (3.1f, 3.16; compare Rom 12.20f).

In the Revelation of St John, the Christians receive the proclamation that their present suffering does not mean that God's good plans for them have been cancelled, and that the crucified Jesus remains judge and victor. This is just as true of the contemporary threat to the world through military armament, which usually is combined with the profit motive.

Making the gospel concretely practical, which also includes the task of theological interpretation (compare paragraph 3.4), must not be mere accommodation. It must be the gospel which is articulated in concrete and practical terms. The apostle Paul with his doctrine of justification is the best example of the interpretation of the gospel for the Gentiles, who were looked down upon by the Jews, and who stood before God with empty hands. But today, the doctrine of justification must go through the process of interpretation again.

Wherever the gospel is taken seriously, there has been a tendency to make it concrete and to interpret it. In the New Testament we read that God gives the Holy Spirit, who causes renewal. The course of that renewal cannot be foreseen, but it can take on different shapes in different places. For that reason, I cannot address the concrete situations of specific churches. I have often mentioned the common problems of all mankind: the preservation of peace (or at least of armistice) and social justice. But even the sequence of their significance will be adjudged differently in varying settings. The practical application of the gospel must, in addition, pay attention to cultural traditions. Only the person who stands in a concrete, real situation can address that specific situation.

The practical, concrete element which unites us all from various nations and denominations is the necessity for common understanding and trust. The prerequisite for that is the personal position which takes the grace of God (the gospel) seriously. If I have made something of that relevant to our contemporary situation, if it has become clear that the gospel is really pertinent and proves itself in our new situation, then I hope that I have done more for the bettering of the church and the world than could be done through a thousand very practical suggestions.

The meaning and the practice of love

Love means for us affection for the beloved one, a form of fond inclination, "love" in the command to love one's enemies is derived from a specific concept of love (Greek: Agape) which is much more objective. It means to wish the best for another person and to act accordingly. "Enemies" are real people who oppose me. "Love your enemies" does not mean that one should have the same kind of affectionate and fond feelings for them which one has for one's children or friends, or which a man has for his wife. That would be hypocrisy. Love of enemies is not tractable indulgence. The best which one wishes his enemy need not agree with his own wishes. To illustrate this with a crude example, to love an alcoholic will mean not to fulfil his wishes. It would be an abuse of the gospel if one sought, for example, to make the oppressed tractable with the help of the command to love one's enemies.

The best which Jesus envisions and which is the goal of Christian love is the kingdom of God. To love one's enemy would not exclude admonishing him or preventing him from doing something evil.

Participation in the fellowship of the kingdom of God (paragraph 1.4) as the goal and norm of love means simultaneously freedom in the practice of love. No single command, no regulation, no institution, no principle, no ideal, no tradition, and no other power has greater value than the experience of the love of God, which expresses itself in the commandment to love one's enemy. Jesus even subordinated the law of Moses to the love command; see Mt 22.35-40 and read Mk 3.1-6, especially verse 4: "Is it lawful on the sabbath to do good...?" And: "The sabbath was made for man..." (Mk 2.27).

The eschatological thrust of the final norm liberates us for objective decisions in this world, where we do nor confront unambiguous alternatives, but where we must push for that which is relatively better over against that which is relatively worse. In his age, the apostle Paul had chosen the commandment of love expressed in submission to the power of the Roman Empire (Rom 12.21-13.10) as the better possibility compared to the terror and anarchy which he experienced in the remote territories of the Empire. Our fathers recognized that it was better to battle against Nazism and Fascism with weapons rather than to permit the murdering of an entire nation. We support an imperfect peace as the better opportunity than its alternative, war. If we do not wish to accept the kingdom of God as promise and gift in the humility of faith, and if instead we want to realize it directly through our righteous and uncompromising actions, then we will end up in isolation and will separate ourselves from the love of God because we can only condemn the world. Only that love which lives realistically in the grace of God and counts upon the power of forgiveness has enough long suffering and endurance to be effective in this world.

If the kingdom of God, which transcends our history, is our goal and norm, and our actions require the judgment and responsibility of faith, then this means a demythologization and secularization of power. If in Romans 13 the institution of the state is declared to be God's desire for this period of time, then that does not mean that every factual power is intrinsically holy. In the hunger-plagued lands there are power structures whose maintenance means more suffering than their replacement would. This problem played a great role in the Bohemian Reformation. Petr Chelcický (15th century) called for the separation of political power from the church. Otherwise one would not have the inner freedom to proclaim the gospel and soberly to judge the situation of society. He analysed the fall of the kingdom of Israel and drew the attention of Christians to the fact that the witnesses of Christ must learn to live as a minority. They are not called to the outward expression of power. How then is their witness effective?

The persuasive power of love

Chelcický knew that the objectivity of love can be misused. The Inquisition of the 12th to 18th centuries used to torture heretics with the argument that this was intended to result in the salvation of their souls. The colonization of Africa and Asia was supported by some people with the subjective conviction that it would be the best thing for the people who lived there. In secularized countries, Christians sometimes think that it is good to complicate the lives of atheists, so that they will have an opportunity to think about these matters. The heretics, the natives of Africa and Asia, and atheists have had a different view of it. They have experienced it as outer or inner aggression. It did not lead them to faith, but rather to a greater hate.

Jesus knew this, and his command to love one's enemies is protected against such abuse. The disciple of Jesus should do everything he can so that his distinctive existence, which always calls forth irritation from the world around him, is properly understood. The objectivity of the action must be combined with the understandability of the intention. Love always tries to win over the heart of its object. That is the principle of Jesus' love of enemies. The Essenes, a Jewish sect during the period in which Jesus lived, commanded the hate of enemies in their rule (compare Mt 5.43). It was not a direct expression of aggressivity, but rather their concern for the right distinction between the good and the evil. The great "discovery" of Jesus consists of his having begun to battle evil in another way. Instead of condemning sinful man with his evil, he tried to separate man from his sin, to condemn the sin and save the man. That cost him his life, but it has been demonstrated that this is the only way to life, God's way (paragraph 2.2). That separation is called forgiveness, in Paul the justification of the sinner. There is a helpful analogy for this separation in the story in which Jesus drives out the demons (for example, Mk 5.1-13 and parallels).

That does not mean that everyone responds to forgiveness with repentance. It is always a minority, just as according to the parable of the sower, only a few seeds bring forth fruit (Mk 4.1-9, parallels). But a truly believing person means more than if one were externally to prevent many people from doing evil.

What does it then mean for me to say that we must do everything we can so that the objectivity of our love is not misunderstood, and so that we will be capable of checking out ourselves? Sometimes our words are not enough. Jesus says, "To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also..." (Lk 6.29). That is not a sign of weakness and not the blind application of a moral principle. It is an understandable and focused attempt to show the world that our being different does not mean that they are threatened but it is for their benefit. It is the extreme attempt to win over people in their hearts. Jesus describes the structure of such attempts in the two examples in Lk 6.29 (compare Mk 5.41f). It is not direct instruction on how to do it. In every actual situation we will have to consider anew what would be the most persuasive sign of our sincerity. That is the prophetic sign which should accompany our proclamation, the sign that we want to live in the post-Constantinian age in which the gospel is not a camouflage for the aggressivity of so-called Christian civilization, that we do not want to grasp external power, that we take seriously that "Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory."

Renunciation of outer power does not mean that we renounce any effectiveness or impact in the world (compare paragraph 5.1). The renunciation of political power strengthens the impact of the gospel, which was compromised in the so-called Constantinian age. The witness to the kingdom of God was weakened. The church should make its impact upon a more elementary level: it changes primarily the basic attitudes of people, because through the gospel it discloses to them a new perspective. Its direct churchly effectiveness is more witness than programme. It "has its effect" in that it experiences the kingdom of God now as joy and radiates that joy.

Christian distinctiveness within the world does not mean the exercise of Pharisaic judgment upon all those who have power or who want it. Whether or not we support them is something we must decide in the objectivity of love (paragraph 5.3). In this sense, Christians should involve themselves, and they should even endeavour to make their public impact as convergent as possible. We have seen that the gospel is supposed to be applied actually and concretely (paragraph 5.1). For the sake of its neighbour, the church must sometimes make political statements, where the preservation of life is at stake. But it must be part and parcel of its public utterances that there is a convincing sign (not just a declaration) that it is not fighting for external power. Otherwise it will only divide the secular movements and will fail to express the priority of the perspective of the kingdom of God, which is what gives meaning to all of life.

Questions

How do you explain the moralism of Protestant spirituality?
How do you understand the being-different of Christians in their environment?
How does the gospel become practical and concrete in your situation?
What could be the concrete signs of our pro-existence?