Praying for the enemy

 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt 5:43—45, ESV).

Sudeesh is honest and sincere with a good amount of curiosity. While passing by a church on Sunday morning he asked someone walking to the church what do they do in the church every Sunday. Tom, one of the church-goers whom he stopped, thought for a while and answered, “we pray for people like you.” Though it is the simplest answer that Tom come up with, it bewildered Sudeesh. "You pray for others?" Sudeesh was shocked. “We only pray for ourselves and for those whom we love and care for.” That is true. Most people limit their prayers to themselves and also for their dear ones, if they can find time for that. Jesus challenges us further demanding to love our enemies and even pray for them.

Enemies fall into two classes. One, the people whom we consider as our enemies—people whom we hate and hurt. However, a disciple of Christ is not allowed to hate or harm others. So enemy in this context are not those whom we consider as enemies. However, there is another possibility. These are people who hate and harm us. We have no control over them like the authorities who persecuted the poor, helpless Christians. They considered the Christians whom they persecuted as enemies. They could justify persecuting them once they view them as enemies because in their opinion enemies had to be done away with.

However, the value-system that Jesus taught his disciple is different. Jesus taught that our enemy is not the one we hate, but they are those who hate us. But it is our duty to love them and not hate them. In other words, though they consider us as enemies, we have to consider them as people who deserve our love.

Jesus raised the bar further. He said, it is not just loving; love is just a feeling. But love should lead us to pray for them. But Jesus didn’t clarify what should a Christian pray for their persecutors. Are we asked to pray that they should stop persecuting, or that their persecution is more bearable? 

The answer to these questions is in Jesus’ prayer on the cross. He did not pray that they will poke him with their spears a bit more gently, nor their ridicule is milder. His prayer was an intercession for forgivenes for his persecutors. He asked father God to forgive them since they don’t really understand what they are doing. He asked God to forgive their ignorance. 

Prayer for the enemy still focuses on the enemy and not on us. It is not our comfort that we seek when we pray for our enemies but theirs that God may forgive them.

What is Jesus Praying?

None of us can promise those who are requesting prayers for them that we are praying for them constantly. In fact, people may not expect us to pray for them forever. However, the intercessory ministry of Jesus is very different. He is a priest for ever, thus he intercedes for us continually. His intercession is something that I can count on. For this I am grateful to him!

In an earlier blog (What happened to my unanswered prayers?), we were talking about our prayers being carried to the presence of God and offered in golden bowls. God does not consider any of our prayers as spam; he has no spam filter. Even those prayers of us that do not make sense to us, God considers them valuable. In this devotion, I would like to focus another aspect of prayer: the continuing intercessory ministry of Jesus.
The Book of Hebrews presents Jesus as an eternal high priest who continues his work beyond the cross in the heavenly realms. Chapter 7 verse 25 particularly focuses on the intercessory ministry of Jesus where we read: "Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them." Jesus is constantly interceding for us in the heavenly places. Now the question is, what is Jesus praying? For this we have to a similar posture that Jesus took while he was on earth. John 17 records the lengthiest prayer of Jesus, which is also known as the high priestly prayer of Jesus. In this passage, Jesus prays for himself (verses 1-5), for his disciples whom he is going to leave behind (6-19) and then for those who will believe in Jesus through the ministry of Jesus' disciples (20-26).
If this is a model of the high priestly prayer of Jesus, then there are two important aspects in this prayer. I think we can very confidently conclude that this would be what Jesus is still praying for us.
The first concern that Jesus presents before the God the Father has to do with our security. In his prayer for the disciples (verses 6-19), Jesus used the word "protect" three times (17:11, 12, 15). He is concerned about the safety of his disciples. They are in the world, which is hostile (See, 16:33). They have to face the hostility of those who oppose the gospel. This truth that Jesus is concerned about my security brings a lot of comfort to us; especially to those who are facing opposition in their life and ministry.
Second concern that Jesus expressed in his prayer is that we be sanctified by God (17:17-19). Sanctification is setting apart: separating some ordinary things for special use, particularly for God's use. For example, the vessels of the tabernacle where sanctified because they were ordinary vessels set apart for use in the Lord's house. They are now owned by God and used by God. That is what sanctification in the simplest sense. Jesus prayer is that his disciples be fully set apart for God's use and owned by Him. Each of us needs to realize that we are owned by God. We may be working for various organizations, which may not be explicitly religious/Christian. Jesus expects us to have realize that whatever walks of life we belong we belong to God in order to fulfill the purposes of God. In fact, we are lent to the places of our work by God. We need to conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of the Gospel (Phil 1:27).
None of us can promise those who are requesting prayers for them that we are praying for them constantly. In fact, people may not expect us to pray for them forever. However, the intercessory ministry of Jesus is very different. He is a priest for ever, thus he intercedes for us continually. His intercession is something that I can count on. For this I am grateful to him!