The Daily Grace - Minister of Reconciliation

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached on a Sunday morning in 1957, he fought the temptation to retaliate against a society steeped in racism. "How do you go about loving your enemies?" he asked the Dexter Avenue Baptist congregation in Montgomery, Alabama. "Begin with yourself. . . When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it".

Quoting from the words of Jesus, King said: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you... .; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven" (Matt. 5:44-45, KJV). As we consider those who harm us, we are wise to remember our former status as enemies of God (See Rom. 5:10). But "[God] reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation", wrote Paul (2 Cor. 5:18). Now we have a holy obligation. "He has committed to us the message of reconciliation" (v. 19). We are to take that message to the world.

Racial and political tensions are nothing new. But the business of the church is never to feed divisiveness. We should not attack those unlike us or those who hold different opinions or even those who seek our destruction. Ours is a "ministry of reconciliation" that imitates the selfless servant heart of Jesus. As King quotes, "Hate destroys the hater as well as the hated".