This is also from CRC-Voices and follows up in the discussion on posting http://leadingchurch.com/wordpress/?p=908

The golden rule is a good rule. It predates Jesus’ articulation of it and it is found in other religious traditions as well. It really doesn’t go far enough, however,

The real challenge is to love your enemy, the kind of “perfection” that Jesus describes of the Father in Matthew 4:43-48. It goes beyond simply doing what the other wants you to do. We all know that this can also mask neglect. We also know that using this as an excuse can also be an attempt to justify withholding love or controlling the other. Loving the other in a context of conflict is an enormously difficult thing that requires nothing short of divinely given wisdom.

I also think that to do so sacrificially, in the way that Jesus did it requires both a firm belief in God as Judge AND a firm belief in the resurrection. For Jesus to let himself be executed on a cross makes no sense without both of those elements. If there is no divine judgment then the sacrifice on the cross is an empty show, perhaps even grandstanding as well as robbing Jesus’ guiding and teaching presence from his disciples. With the ransom for sinners and the beginning of Creation 2.0 in the resurrection the cross is not pointless or vain but instrumental and generative.

Jesus is also very clear that as we follow him into his death we also follow him into his life which means that the kind of costly love that he displayed will be ours as well. He doesn’t take up the cross so that we can avoid cross bearing, and this of course is where we fall down along with the rest of the disciples on that night. The truth is that we are poor lovers who cling to our own supposed narrative of how we think things are supposed to unfold. In the service of that narrative we communicate anything but the kind of generosity displayed in Matthew 5 and instead wade in with imagined fixes that tell us that cross bearing is unnecessary for ourselves and impose burdens on the other that we are unwilling to shoulder ourselves.

The church in North America has grown soft and lazy as a majority culture, imagining that selectively applied past manifestations somehow can be activated to return to a righteous community. It is folly. The lack of cultural traction we now fret from is directly related to an avoidance of love and its costliness that no amount of selectively imposed legalism on others can mitigate even if it were possible.

The cheerful note is that we all get to start over and learn the basics of loving our enemies and loving those that bother us because there are more and more of them all the time. There seems no shortage of opportunities to love in the midst of our failures. pvk