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In the name of Jesus. Amen. Dear saints, in my reading of things, I think the devil has three generally different tactics for attacking us, three different directions that he tries to get at us. If you could think of your heart like a house, he’s like a thief trying to break into the house, and he first will try the front door.
The front door attack is what we normally think of with the devil and his temptations. This is where the devil tempts us to sin, to break the commands of God. He tempts us to misbelief, to unbelief, to despair, to other great shame and vice, to breaking the commandments and sinning against people. The result is that when we fall to the devil’s temptation, we’re guilty. We feel that sometimes we are guilty all the time, and we are sinners.
And so, we know what to do. We’re Christians, and we know that the Lord is the one who forgives sins. We come to church. We hear the preaching of the kindness of God. We come for the absolution. We know that we’re baptized. We confess every night, “Lord, forgive me for all that I’ve done wrong this day.” We know that the Lord is merciful, that he forgives our sins, that he puts them away, that he covers our guilt. That’s the front door attack.
Then there’s, if the door is locked, and you’re a Christian, and so the door is normally locked, the devil has to sneak around into the backyard and try to break in through the patio door. The patio door attack is when the devil sends someone else to sin against you. And that’s really what I want to talk about today. How do we deal with that? How do we deal with not our own sins against God and other people, but how do we deal with the sins that are committed against us?
But just so we have the full picture, I’ll tell you what the third attack is, and then we’ll preach on that another day. The third attack is when the patio door is locked and the devil tries to sneak in through the bathroom window. I think that’s the devil’s attack on hope. It’s when he, through persistent suffering, tries to diminish our hopefulness and destroy our hope in the good things to come in this life. But another time.
We want to think about this attack on love, this attack that comes when we are sinned against. Because all of us are not only sinners; we live in a sinful world. So I know this about each and every one of you. I know that each and every one of you is a sinner, that you have broken the commands of God. But I also know this about you—that you have been sinned against; that people have hurt and abused and spoken poorly and thought poorly of you, that you are also the victim of sin.
And when this happens, our reaction is to become angry. I suppose that’s natural when we’re sinned against. But that anger starts to form a loop. And I think there are different loops that happen. There’s a loop that happens inside of us. There’s a loop that happens outside of us. But you know how it starts: you start thinking about that offense, the thing that was done to you, the thing that that person said about you. Why were they even talking like that? You start to replay that over and over in your mind.
And you become angry at the person who’s sinned against you. And let’s just define anger in this way: that anger is a kind of justified lovelessness. I know I’m supposed to love everybody, but that guy who did that thing, he doesn’t deserve my love. In fact, it wouldn’t even be right to love him after all the hurt and harm that he’s done to me. Do you see? Anger is this justified lovelessness.
And I start to play it over in a loop in my own mind, which is a sort of passive mulling this thing over, but it starts to become active and I start to plot revenge, see what I can do to get away with it. And then this is when the loop becomes external, because now my conscience is hardened toward that person. Our conscience, I think, can be hardened in a number of different ways. There’s sort of sin-based hardening of the conscience where I don’t realize I’m breaking this commandment or that commandment. But here we’re talking about person-based hardening of the conscience.
That person who sinned against me, it’s like—I think the picture that I was thinking of is like Novocain, you know, the dentist? Yeah, and you don’t feel the pain. So when someone sins against me, it’s like Novocain in the conscience, and I don’t feel any guilt when I sin against them back. And I sin against them, and now they’re angry with me, and you know what happens? They sin back towards me. They don’t feel any guilt doing that because I, after all, did that thing to them, and then it goes round and round and round.
We keep sinning against each other and hardening our hearts against each other, and we are in this sort of death spiral of anger. At some point, we cross a threshold of what the Bible calls being an enemy. I don’t think we notice it when this happens because this is all so natural. This happens without us even thinking about it. In fact, when someone sins against us, we even think it’s the right thing to get even with them or at least to not be nice to them because, after all, they don’t deserve it or whatever.
And so we start in this sort of angered death spiral, and at some point, we cross below a threshold and that person becomes my enemy. Now, I’ve sat with many of you; I’ve sat with lots of people, and we’ve talked about this phenomenon. It’s really interesting. How do you know that someone has become your enemy? One of the marks of that is that they can’t do anything good to you. Oftentimes this will happen with the people that we’re closest to.
This kind of spiral of anger will happen in the home with parents and children or with husband and wife. And when you think of the person as your enemy, even if they do something that’s loving or affectionate or kind, it seems like a threat to you. It doesn’t even seem like a good work. So if Pastor Davis, just to give an example, was my enemy, and tomorrow morning, when we’re sitting in the office, he brought me a nice warm cup of coffee and he put it on my desk and said, “Here, I made this for you,” do you know what I say? What did he do to it? Did he spit in it? Is it poisoned? He probably wants to get something from me. You see, even a nice, kind gesture is received as an attack and an affront when the person is considered your enemy.
Now, this is a particularly difficult thing because we know what to do when we sin: we confess our sins and we ask the Lord to forgive our sins. But what do you do when you’re sinned against? Right? How could it be that when you’re kneeling for confession and you say, “I, a poor sinner, am guilty of all these sins,” but I am also sinned against? What is there to ask for? What are we looking for from God?
It’s a pretty difficult problem. We can talk about it in terms of shame instead of guilt, even though it’s not a technical way to do it, but I think it’s helpful—is that now I’m harmed, I’m abused, I’m afflicted, I’m diminished. I’m shamed. I’m sinned against. And the danger is that we get trapped. We get trapped in this anger, and we get trapped in this sin that’s committed against us.
Sin can enslave in both directions. We can become a slave to the sins that we commit. But we can also, in this way, become slaves to the sins that are committed against us. I become defined by them, or the sins committed against me and the abuse that I’ve suffered and the harm that’s been afflicted on me now begin to shape the way I think about God, the way I think about other people, the way I think about myself, the way I think about the future, the way I think of prayer, the way I think of my own good works. I become defined as the victim of this sin.
And I’m angry and curved in on myself and looking for revenge or looking for avoiding people or whatever it is. Now, Jesus is going to find all of us in this situation because this describes all of us. We are all sinned against. We are all tempted to anger. We are all tempted to be loveless to the people that have hurt and harmed us. And Jesus is going to find us today, and he’s going to stand right in front of us, and he’s going to interrupt all of this mess with this word: love your enemy.
Now, we want to say, “Lord, are you serious about this? That I’m supposed to love my enemies?” And we can be specific, right? We can think about that person that has hurt us so profoundly. That’s the enemy that I’m supposed to love—that guy, that man, that woman, that person. I’m supposed to love them. But they don’t deserve it, Lord. He knows that they don’t deserve it.
But they hurt me so profoundly. He knows that they hurt you. But they might do it again. He knows that too. And still Jesus says to you and to me, love your enemy. Now, I want a little aside, but this is an important aside. Because you have enemies, and you know from Jesus how you are to treat them, that you are to love them, but there is this problem of abuse.
And you say, “But, Pastor, look, this is like returning back into an abusive situation.” It’s very risky to think that I can forgive that sin committed against me. And I want you to know, first of all, that it does not matter. The command is to love. But the question is, what does that love look like? And I just want to simply encourage you that when you don’t know what that love looks like, or if that love seems dangerous to you, then that’s a really good time to just call up me or Pastor Davis or Pastor LeBlanc, call the church office and make an appointment, and we can talk through this sort of thing one-on-one, what the situation is, and what the love ought to look like in some of these extreme circumstances.
But here you have to know that all of us are called to be children of our Heavenly Father who is defined by mercy. Why do we love our enemies? Why are we good to those who hate us? Why do we bless those who curse us? Why do we pray for those who abuse us? That’s what Jesus says. The reason is because we have a merciful Heavenly Father. And he invites us into the freedom of this mercy. Jesus wants to set us free.
And he’s setting us free not only from the sins that we are tempted to commit. He is setting us free also from the sins that are committed against us. And so now I want to tell you the hardest thing that I think I ever have to say as a pastor. This is hard for me to preach. I think it’s hard to hear. But it is important to say. Not only does Jesus, not only does your Lord Jesus forgive all the sins that you’ve committed, but your Lord Jesus also forgives all the sins that are committed against you, that he has also died for that hurt and that pain and that rejection and that abuse and that sin.
Jesus carries your sorrows. He covers your shame. And he sends you into the world with this freedom to love even those who hate you and consider you to be their enemy. This freedom, this love, this prayer, this blessing, this doing good is what defines how our Lord acts toward us. And it’s what defines us, his people. And in this way, the Lord blocks the devil from getting in the back door.
People will sin against you. Until we reach the resurrection, you will be sinned against. But this sin is now an opportunity for the Lord’s love and mercy and kindness to show up in your heart and on your lips and in your actions. May God grant us by His Holy Spirit this freedom, this confidence, and this joy.
In the name of Jesus, the peace of God which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
