One of the most difficult and most counter-cultural things Jesus calls us to do is to love our enemies—to do unto others as we could have them do to us (Luke 6:31). We are to treat others in the way we would wish to be treated, for the mark of true love is that it is selfless—it acts not first for the good of self but for the good of the other. To make sure we understand what this true love looks like, Jesus contrasts it with a kind of fraudulent love. He provides three little illustrations of actions that may have the appearance of love, but that are all essentially a kind of transaction where we do good to others only so they will do good to us. And it strikes me that Jesus’s instructions for relating to our enemies are words we need to hear as we relate to our spouses. Sometimes “love your enemy” really means “love your spouse.”
The first example: if you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? There’s nothing extraordinary about loving people who love you back. And really, that’s the basis of what passes for love
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