But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. (Luke 6:27–28)

Over two decades ago, on an unusually hot July evening in Syracuse, New York, I stood on Pastor Ken Smith’s porch and knocked on the door. I had been doing this for months, dining with my enemies.

I was a lesbian feminist activist English professor at Syracuse University. I thought I was doing research on this odd tribe of people called Christians, people who stood in the way of full civil rights for gay people like me. Ken was the pastor of the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church. On that July night, Ken opened the door and warmly embraced me and welcomed me inside. Dining with my enemies was a fascinating experience. It made me feel like a bona fide liberal.

I knew I was on enemy territory. But I didn’t believe that I was the enemy. How could I be? I was on the side of social justice, reparations for the disempowered, racial reconciliation, and equitable inclusion for all.

Identifying the Enemy

For years — and before I became a believer and Ken became my pastor — I enjoyed the company of the Smiths’ table fellowship. I sat under Ken’s family devotions and joined in the Psalm singing. And then, at this July dinner, I realized it. I wasn’t the victim dining with my persecutors. I wasn’t at the enemy’s table. I was the enemy.

I thought I was on the right side of history. It was my undoing to finally realize that it was Jesus I was persecuting the whole time. Not some historical figure named Jesus. But King Jesus. The Jesus who was this world’s sovereign King and would become my Lord. My Jesus. My Prophet, Priest, King, Friend, Brother, and Savior. That Jesus.

I don’t like thinking about the fact that I was the enemy who hated, the enemy who cursed, and the enemy who abused. But it’s true. And instead of hating me back, Ken Smith assembled such a wide team of prayer warriors that I likely won’t meet all of the believers who prayed for my salvation until heaven.

From Cursing to Cursed

As soon as the Lord claimed me for himself, I had the opportunity to model what had been given to me: to love, do good, bless, and pray for those who curse me. It’s a lot harder than it sounds.

Everyone from the lesbian partner I broke up with, to the graduate students in Queer Theory whose Ph.D. dissertations I could no longer supervise, to the LGBTQ+ undergraduate student groups I could no longer support felt the stunning betrayal. I had changed my allegiance. Were their secrets still safe with me? I was disappointing almost everyone I loved because I believed in Jesus — the real Jesus who reveals himself in the Bible. My treachery to my lesbian community was only bearable through my union with Christ.

In such circumstances, union with Christ is the source of a Christian’s love that overcomes hatred: spiritual, unbreakable, irreplaceable, and eternal. It springs from the power of Christ’s resurrection, in which every believer abides. Conflict with others is never pleasant. It is disarming, disillusioning, and depressing. Union with Christ is our active comfort.

Cursing Continues

More recently (about a year ago), I found myself under attack again, and this time on three different fronts.

A national LGBTQ+ rights group grew angry with me as the 2020 PRIDE Parade was canceled for the first time in fifty years. Christians from a discernment ministry believed that I was too charitable in my evangelism in the LGBTQ community. Self-described gay Christians believed that I was too harsh in my rejection of “gay Christianity.” It was tempting to handle this in the flesh — to wish that all of these people could be locked in the same room and wrestle it out.

But that is not what God calls us to do when we’re under attack. God calls us to love our enemies. This season was spiritually rich with Psalm singing and reflection, repentance, and prayer. As the negative attacks intensified, the words of the great Puritan John Owen started to make sense. Owen considers union with Christ “the cause of all other graces a believer receives” (A Puritan Theology, 485). This is because union with Christ depends first on Christ knowing you.

Known by Christ

The issue for the suffering Christian isn’t first if you know Christ. Rather, the first issue is: does Christ know you? Union with Christ is first about Christ knowing you. Suffering for Christ is a great privilege. It is the privilege of John 10:27: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Because Jesus knows the believer, we hear him, we follow him, and we suffer with him.

“God’s comfort is power. It’s not meant merely to make us feel better. It’s meant to make us more like Jesus.”

Do you want to know why the church lacks unity? Because we try to build our unity on issues — on where we stand on pressing matters of the day. But unity does not and will never derive from shared loyalty to issues. Christian unity flows from our union with Christ because he alone equips us to die to ourselves.

The comfort we find in Christ is not a passive repose in our favorite recliner. Even in the English language, comfort is an old word hearkening from the Middle Ages and referring to needed moral and physical strengthening. Comfort is active. God gives us comfort because we are too weak to go on, and his comfort enlivens us. God’s comfort is power. It’s not meant merely to make us feel better. It’s meant to make us more like Jesus.

Fellowship of Suffering

The Heidelberg Catechism declares that our “only comfort in life and death” will not be found in any of the values to which I had decades ago committed my life: social justice, reparations for the disempowered, racial reconciliation, and equitable inclusion for all. No. My only comfort in life and death, says the majestic Heidelberg, is

that I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ; who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, wherefore by his Holy Spirit he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him. (emphasis added)

What’s the big difference between a believer and an unbeliever? The believer does not belong to himself.

What does the experience of hatred, abuse, slander, and unjust discrimination mean to a believer? It means that, under God’s providence, these painful circumstances are “subservient to my salvation.” The hatred that a believer receives is subservient, which means that it is instrumental; it is a means to an end. And what is that end? To join in the “fellowship of his suffering” (Philippians 3:10 KJV). To grow in sanctification. To become more like Jesus.

Persecution Has a Master

Luke’s words are directed only to believers, to “you who hear.” Someone with a new heart, receptive ears, and bright eyes. We live in a noisy world — podcasts, television, social media, and so on — but Jesus is telling us to hear him.

“Persecution is subservient — it is a means to an end. And that end is your sanctification.”

What an amazing privilege it is to be someone chosen, elected, saved, justified, sanctified, and daily guided by the King of kings and Lord of lords. If nothing else is good in your life except that Jesus has unstopped your ears, you are already more blessed than any persecution or persecutor that comes your way. Persecution is subservient — it is a means to an end. And that end is your sanctification.

In God’s providence, as believers, we will have many opportunities to love, do good, bless, and pray for those who hate us. And as God enlarges our hearts by his Spirit, comforting us through union with Christ and assuring us of his sovereignty, we will not fail to do so.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. As you know, if you’ve been listening for a while, we get heartbreaking emails regularly. And that includes this one, from an anonymous woman: “Pastor John, I’m a new widow, a mother of two young boys in my mid-thirties. My husband passed away suddenly and unexpectedly from what we did not know at the time was bacterial pneumonia, which quickly became septic shock. He also had an underlying heart condition. He died one week before his 34th birthday. He was normal one day and home with the Lord three days later.

“My question relates to the issue of blame and God’s timing in his death. We had thought his ailments were a flu bug or COVID and didn’t realize the severity of what was truly going on. We had responded by following telephone guidance from a Christian homeopathic provider who had also assumed COVID, someone we trusted but perhaps should not have. As I grieve, I can’t seem to stop blaming myself. I desperately want reassurance to know that I didn’t hurt my husband, let him down, or by our actions shorten his life span. I tried to care for him and protect him as best as I could, based on the knowledge I had at the time. We didn’t know we were wrong. Once we were in the ER and discovered he was facing septic shock, I prayed fervently for the Lord to rescue and heal him.

“I guess I’m left wondering if I should continue to feel responsible. I need help to trust God, if he was responsible, and if so, that he is still good despite taking my soul mate and my best friend home at such a young age, and difficult-to-understand time. I would greatly appreciate any help you can offer.”

The reference to COVID makes me realize how recent and raw this loss is. This didn’t happen five years ago. So I want to be so careful. I think the fact that she is reaching out to us in this fairly public way is a good sign that she hasn’t despaired of discovering new things in God’s word that might ease the pain. I think she’s right in that, that there are new things I’m sure she hasn’t yet seen that God wants her to see for her own help and comfort and hope. I think there will be new, fresh things, in fact, for her to see for the next fifty years.

She will see things in God’s word fifty years from now that will shed light on this heart-wrenching loss in such a way, even at that distance, to make the love of Christ and the memory of her husband even more precious. I am seeing things at age 76 that are shedding light on sorrows that I experienced 60 years ago. I still am getting new light on the meaning of those years. So, I expect that for her.

Another Question

I think the way I would like to come at this is to raise this question, and it may sound surprising: What would you do, how would you think, if you knew that it was your fault that your husband died? Now, I’m not suggesting that it was at all. Clearly, it was not your fault. But I’m asking you to make an experiment in your mind.

What if you had failed to put the emergency brake on the car and it had rolled over him and killed him while he was working on it? What if you were helping him clean one of his hunting guns and it accidentally went off and killed him? What if you fell asleep at the wheel and crashed and only he died in the wreck? What if you mixed up one of his medications?

Or maybe, instead, just ask how would you counsel somebody in that situation. Because there are thousands of people in that very situation. They don’t just wonder if they could have done more to save their loved one. They know they caused the death, accidentally.

Now, I suppose I could join the chorus of everyone around you and say what is obvious — namely, you did all you could. Nobody is doubting your love and your care for your husband. Everybody knows you are not responsible for his death, and I do join that chorus. But I don’t think you wrote to us just for me to say the obvious that everybody else is saying: “It’s not your fault.”

Mercy for the Guilty

So what I want to say is that, if the Bible has an answer for how you would press on in life with freedom and hope and usefulness, and even eventually joy, even if you had caused his death, then how much more can you be assured that God will help you press on in life with freedom and hope and usefulness, and eventually joy, when you did not cause the death and were helpless to stop it?

Most of the time, we turn to Genesis 50:20 to remind ourselves that all the bad things that happened to Joseph turned out for good by God’s design. Remember, he said, “As for you” — you brothers, you rascal brothers who caused all this trouble — “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” So we usually focus on Joseph and all the bad things that happened to him. But very rarely do we ponder what that verse means for Joseph’s brothers, who really were guilty of multiple sins that caused Joseph’s misery.

Here’s what Joseph says in the next verse to those brothers: “‘So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.’ Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them” (Genesis 50:21). Wow. This does not mean they are not guilty. They are guilty. But it does mean that God has a future and a purpose for them, even though they were guilty. They were the guilty ones, and they caused all that misery for seventeen years of Joseph’s life. Through one of them, amazingly — Judah — God would even bring a Savior into the world.

“There is a future and a hope. No suffering of God’s loved ones is in vain.”

Now, Paul handled his own guilt as a murderer the same way. He saw that God had a merciful purpose in it for other guilty people. He said in 1 Timothy 1:16, “I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost [of sinners], Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.” In other words, somehow Paul was able to transpose the horrible-sounding guilt of persecution and killing at his own hands into the beautiful music of mercy through him to other guilty sinners to whom God would show amazing patience.

Mercy for the Innocent

Then change the focus just slightly from situations where someone really was guilty, but God made a future for them, to the man born blind in John 9. Now here, the apostles assume that someone must have sinned. They just must have sinned for this calamity to come upon this blind man — like you perhaps from time to time are tempted to think, “Did we do something wrong? Can there be a catastrophic loss like this without someone having done something sinful?”

So they asked Jesus, “‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him’” (John 9:2–3). Now that is an amazing answer. And surely it applies to your situation. “Who sinned? Who was neglectful? Who put their trust in the wrong place? Who reacted too slowly? Who failed to see the symptoms? Who’s guilty here? Where’s the sin? There’s got to be sin here.”

To which Jesus answers, “It was not that you or your homeopathic advisor or your doctors or your husband sinned or were neglectful or put your trust in the wrong place or reacted too slowly or failed to see the symptoms. Rather, it was that the works of God might be displayed in him.” To which you ask, “What works?” Well, for starters, your persevering faith in the reality and power and wisdom and goodness of God. That is a miraculous work of God.

Ten Thousand Ripples

But it might be helpful for you to think on this: When your husband died, God set in motion ten thousand effects that you can’t see. Some of them will become manifest in a year or two, and some of them in fifty years. Your husband’s death did not take God off guard, nor was it meaningless or absurd or without profound purpose — a holy purpose, a sacred, precious purpose. “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints” (Psalm 116:15). “Your eyes saw my [husband’s] unformed substance [while he was being knit together in his mother’s womb]; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for [him], when as yet there was none of them” (Psalm 139:16).

“When your husband died, God set in motion ten thousand effects that you can’t see.”

His days were written down with divine wisdom, and the ten thousand ripple effects that flow out from his life and his death will not be in vain. Some of them you will know in this life. Most of them you won’t. You are being tested, but God has promised not to test you beyond your strength. “God is faithful, and he will not let you be [tested] beyond your ability, but with the [test] he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Christ’s Own Peace

Jesus promised his disciples that they would have trouble in the world, and he also promised peace in the midst of it. “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

So that’s what I want to leave you with — the promise of peace, Christ’s own peace. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27). There is a future and a hope. No suffering of God’s loved ones is in vain.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15696224/what-to-say-to-the-grieving