Bold Love Series- Message # 4 Resource: Bold Love, Dr. Dan Allender
For several weeks I have been preaching on the theme of being a better lover! Love is the distinguishing mark of the Believer. How do we live in love? What does it mean to love?
Loving An Evil Person
The question that we are grappling with today is a hard one.... How do we love an evil person?
Everyone of us deals with people who mistreat and/or take advantage of us.
∙ There are supervisors at work who refuses to think of people who work with them as persons, treating others as an machines.
∙ There are spouses who cruelly manipulate and use their wives/husbands for their own selfish needs without a thought for the needs of the other person.
∙ There are those ego-centric people who cruelly and viciously attack others, pointing out flaws, sins, and failures with a sick joy.
∙ There are those who use their power to prey on the weak... exploiting the ones over whom they have power for their own needs.
In this world it does seem that survival demands ruthlessness, a willingness to engage in bare knuckle brawling to win the fearful respect of others, doesn’t it? Early on we’re taught that ‘nice guys finish last!’ The law of the claw - that the most powerful survive - makes a lot of sense and seems to be confirmed by life around us.
And yet, Jesus demands that His followers live differently! He says - “Love these evil people!”
Text: Matthew 5:38-44
Those words of the Lord Jesus stir up a powerful conflict in me.
∙ "Yes, yes - Evil cannot be defeated with its own cruel tactics." I recognize that truth....
But there is a second response of irritation even anger, saying,
∙ "Sure, go ahead and turn the other cheek. What will that get you except a second black eye?" As Christians we are taught that love will overcome. Do we believe it? If we believe it, are we willing to work out a deeper understanding of the nature of love defeats evil in the end?
Remember last week’s challenge.
This love to which we are called is not some romantic notion of perpetual niceness. It is not a call to eternal sweetness. It is a love that is:
-- courageous enough to engage with others even when it is dangerous to do so.
– sustained by our calling to serve Christ as His disciples when loving is more than simply hard.
– shaped by convictions of truth that make us passionate about doing good. And,
– cunningly clever, strategically working to pierce the armor of others and to bring them to relationship with Christ and ourselves.
There are people who are masters of evil. Every generation knows a few of these monsters.... Hitler; Idi Amin, Stalin, Usama Bin Laden a few that come to mind. Next to these kinds of monsters, it is easy to forget the rather ordinary kind of evil person that lives in our neighborhood, who works in our shop, or who attends our church. Most evil does not jump out in our face and announce its presence. That smiling person might be hiding a cruel heart, a deceitful intent, or a malevolent desire.
Dr. Allender, whose work in a book titled, Bold Love writes:
"All of us are capable of doing evil things, but evil people are driven by a self-interest that is so heartless, conscious, and cruel that it delights in stealing from others the lifeblood of their soul.... evil is present when there is a profound absence of empathy, shame, and goodness. An evil person is unmoved by the inner world of the other person (and consequently has no empathy). An evil person is unaffected by exposure so is consequently shameless. An evil person delights in stripping away purpose and vitality (consequently he is not good)."
Most people who fail to show regard for our feelings are either thoughtless, ignorant, fatigued, or self-absorbed at the moment. Even tho' their act is evil, they are not necessarily an evil person. Each one of us has a history of failing to do good to someone else when given the opportunity but that is usually more a symptom of our selfishness than it is a hardened evilness of character.
How do we recognize the difference between ordinary sin and true evil?
True evil is cold, hard, destructive, and it robs people of hope.
∙ 1. A truly evil person lacks the warmth of human emotion.
He will not allow himself to be touched by the feelings of others. It is beyond being insensitive. It is a deliberate distancing, a choice to see others only as objects.
Examples: An evil father who beats his children is incapable of understanding the pain that he is causing goes beyond bruised flesh. He will not allow himself to see the emotional hurt his rage visits on his family.
An evil husband refuses to see how his power and control is deforming his wife’s personality. He only cares and knows that when he rages, he feels release. He is evil, because he is coldly distant from the emotional consequences of his actions.
∙ 2. A truly evil person is hardened and self-contained like a defensive concrete bunker!
He is without conscience and moral boundaries. Right and wrong are not set by God or society but rather by his own desires of the moment. A evil person feels no shame. He mocks good as foolish. He scorns love as weak. He laughs at restraint, arrogantly becoming a god to himself.
In the short run, these kind of people do get ahead. They are capable of brushing off any suggestions that their actions are harming others. They seize control by intimidation and feel no shame. In fact, the deeper the evil runs in their life, the more efficient they are able to be in their viciousness. They never ask forgiveness for they do not have sense that they need to be forgiven!
∙ 3. A truly evil person is destructive.
He literally sucks life out every situation and all those with whom he has any sustained contact. You’ve been around these kind of people, I’m sure. They are not just the people who have a problem with negativity. It isn’t that they are just gloomy or melancholic. They are parasites who drain others. They criticize. They create conflict. They demand worship and absolute loyalty. They are always right and you must conform to their ideas and wishes in order to be around them. In this they are evil!
∙ 4. A truly evil person is one who steals hope.
They paint bleak and horrible scenarios of life and then portray themselves as the only persons with any answers. They allow for no other vision. Evil always wants control and power over others. It feels no remorse for stealing the hopes and dreams of others to gain that control.
Each of us does deal with evil persons just about everyday. Remember evil comes in degrees. When unchecked it grows like a weed. It increasingly controls the individual who gives into it. Ordinary sinners who do not allow the Spirit of God to transform their thinking can become evil. As they give in to the Evil One, they descend deeper into deceived darkness. It is our mission, Believer, to resist evil and by the power of God’s love, rescue those who have fallen into the slavery of Satan and his evil kingdom.
And the way is not that of force and power. We are called to “overcome evil with good.” Romans 12:21
How? With the power of love!
KEY Q. -- *How can we overcome evil with good and love an evil person in a healing way?
The process begins with an evaluation of ourselves as warriors of love. Genuine love that takes on evil and brings about change in the world is a costly thing. Consider the example of the One whose love most affected this world- JESUS CHRIST. His love was costly, in the extreme. Romans 4:24-5:2
but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness - for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
Romans 5:7-8
Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
The BIG Question for you and me...
Do I love that evil person enough to pay the price of boldly loving them with the hope of change?
The Old Testament contains a story of amazing love. It is told in the books of Samuel and is about a young man named David who was called by God to love an evil king named Saul! David left his father’s house and moved to Saul’s palace. There he played his harp, sang his psalms, and served the king. Eventually, he became a warrior and God gave the young man great success. Saul’s evil heart did not appreciate David’s faithfulness to the nation and the Lord. Instead, he became increasingly consumed with prideful jealousy, and it caused him to become awful and evil!
Time and again, he tried to kill David. He manipulated him. He played on his goodness of heart. And David’s response was only to love the man more. This went on for 20 years!!!
One incident shows us the love of David in a wonderful way.
TEXT - 1 Samuel 24: 1-15 Pew Bible 458
Keep that story in mind as we consider the costs of genuinely loving an evil person....
1. We must be willing to endure loss.
David ‘s love for Saul was the cause of his being treated like a criminal. He lived in caves for months, even fled the country at one point in time. He was separated from friends and family because of his loyal love for Saul. Loving an evil person will cause us to lose sleep, comfort, and even relationships. Most of the time it is much easier to simply go along with an evil person in a pseudo-loving way, than it is to genuinely love them. Hopefully this will become clearer in a few moments.
2. We must be willing to face shame and hatred.
David was publicly and privately condemned by Saul. The evil king lied about him and shamed him.
An evil person knows where you can be shamed and will not hesitate to use shame to gain your compliance with their schemes. They may use a relatively harmless phrase calling you something like "chicken," or they may call into question your masculinity, your femininity, your intelligence, or your integrity. Because they are evil, they are not interested in truth or fairness. They feel no pain as they inflict it on others!
If you and I do not have a firm grasp on the gracious forgiveness of God and His great love for us despite our weaknesses and failures, we will not be able to withstand the assault of shaming. We will turn from the evil person in self-preservation.
3. We must be willing to set and enforce clear boundaries.
David refused to go along with Saul’s destructive demands. He would not hurt the king, but he would not participate in his sins, either!
An evil person will not respond to a simple discussion of good and right. Unlike the fool who can be changed by education, the evil person must be caught in the act and called to account.
*ill.- If your spouse has a habit of using cruel and selfish words, he or she may not respond when you explain how powerful speech really is. In that case, genuine love will cause you to confront the selfish spouse at the moment of cruelty. "You cannot speak to me in that way. It hurts and it is not right. If you continue to speak to me in this way, I will have no recourse other than to tape your speech and share it with a church elder for judgement."
That is an example of genuine love. Many mistaken believe that love would mean that the abused spouse would just meekly submit to such cruelty. Is that love? Is the abuser made a better person by the submission of that spouse? Is he forced to face his need to change?
NO! Remember, I'm not talking about a momentary lapse into human sinfulness. I am talking about a conscious, repeated pattern of evil. We must be prepared to set boundaries and enforce them.
Allender says it like this.... "we need to catch evil in the act an smile, calmly and confidently stating what we are willing and unwilling to endure- then we must stand back and watch hell rise out of the fury and explode. When we are prepared for the assault we can re-state the boundaries even as we shake inside. Inform an evil person that you will leave his office, hang up the phone, or call the police. Then do it with deliberation, without apology, and without vindictiveness." Bold Love
Withholding relationship is one of the ways of showing genuine love to an evil person!
It takes away support and hopefully allows him or her to experience the kind of loneliness that they cause others to feel. Be careful! Don't withhold relationship simply to protect yourself from pain. That is wrong.
Don't withhold relationship without taking many steps of prayer and counsel. But realize that even as a Christian, you may love a person by refusing to be a part of their evilness.
Excommunication?
The church is instructed in the use of this tool of love. We have come to call the process- excommunication. Many who misunderstand it, think that excommunication is a method of eliminating evil persons from the church. No so, at all. It is an attempt to cause that evil person to see the depth of their sin, so that they will change. It is an attempt to cause ultimate good. The right kind of Church discipline is not purely punitive. It is redemptive!
*ill.- In the book of 1 Cor., we find a Biblical example of this kind of love. The church in Corinth thought that they were really loving a man who was living in gross sin by continuing to offer him fellowship and support. The record is found in the opening verse of chapter 5. The man was living with his stepmother in an incestuous relationship. The Apostle Paul rebukes the Corinthian church for thinking that they were loving him in their tolerance. He commanded that church to put him out of fellowship, to remove the comfort of relationship.
Later, after the man had repented, we find these further instructions in 2 Corinthians 2:6-8
The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient for him. Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him.
Genuine love will often mean that comfort is lost, that shame and hatred are uncovered, and that boundaries will be set and enforced. BUT that is not the end of the story.
Our Christian understanding of the will and purposes of God means that we go beyond these and offer good gifts to overcome the evil in another. What kind of gifts?
a. We must offer the gift of an opportunity to repent.
If we treat an evil person firmly and lovingly, they may alter course slightly if it suits their selfish aims.
*ill.- If you tell your son who is a rage addict, who flies off the handle and breaks your furniture and your heart, that he can no longer enjoy the comfort of your home and no longer find joy in your relationship, he will likely modify his behavior a little to see how much you really expect him to change.
We must not be fooled by a little change. Repentance is not a little bit of change!
Repentance is a radical step of contrition that involves a full admittance of guilt and an agreement to do what is necessary to see a total change.
The world insists that we should be rid of the person who does us wrong. We should just go on without them and re-build our life with them excluded. But that is not how treats us when we are evil. He doesn't write us off and re-build His universe without us. He extends us the gift of repentance and tells us that we can walk with Him again as we comply with His will.
b. We follow up the gift of repentance with a second gift - reconciliation.
When we are wounded our natural self screams for protection. "Don't let that person near you again. Never trust them. Close the door on them. Hate them. Sever all ties to them." But the Spirit of God pleads for greater love. In 1 Corinthians 13, we find this description of bold and conquering love.... "Love is patient, love is kind.....it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. (6) Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.........It hopes, always perseveres. (8) Love never fails....."
Sensing a genuine repentance, an acceptance of God's power to change, Love offers a restored relationship built on hope that God gives. Is it risky? Oh, yes. Is it hard? Certainly.
That husband or wife who has been betrayed by a spouse's unfaithfulness will find it terribly hard to accept the repentance of the spouse and to open the door to a renewed relationship. But that is the way of Christ's love.
Ill. - A man whose marriage has fallen into difficult times was talking with me. He showed mixed feelings... he wanted to find a way to bring his home back together, but he didn’t want to risk being hurt yet again. He asked me: “How do I know that this same thing won’t happen again in 2 years?” He doesn’t!
Love offers the opportunity of repentance and seeing genuine change, seeks reconciliation even knowing that in the human condition of sin, there is always the possibility of sin in the future. Love always HOPES!
IF we are secure in the love of Jesus Christ, we can offer up our self-interest and give the gift of reconciliation, as we remember how much He has forgiven us and continues to forgive us EVEN WHEN we relapse into sin.
Are you faced with an evil person who is hard, cold, and destructive? The only hope of real and eternal change is through the power of love, Bold Love! Some of the costs are...
1. Loss.
2. Shame and hatred.
3. The willingness to set and enforce clear boundaries.
To finally defeat that evil, we offer two gifts in Jesus's name:
-the gift of repentance, and
-the gift of reconciliation.
Lord, teach us to love! Amen
Jerry D. Scott, 2008