Scot,
Thanks for continuing to challenge the thinking of the comfortable church. It’s so good to be reminded of the difference and the fullness between Matt. 5 (personal relationships) and Rom. 12 (corporate communities). There is no “escaping” or hiding from your enemies, be they individual or communal.
We’ve been going through the Sermon on the Mount and this question of love/hate has been challenging. Thanks for your faithful work.

Scot,
I so much agree that this is not heard often enough in the Church today, and that it is vital for following Jesus.
At a loss here, is a deficit in our identity. We fail to identify with other eikons. And we fail to identify with Jesus in loving our enemies. This is at the heart of our faith, which is incarnate and grounded in Jesus.
Thanks for all the rest here, too. Good stuff.

I just read Wright’s “Paul for Everyone” on this section and the next. Not enough meat in it, though…
…I was looking for how he connects the end of ch 12 with 13 (some say that since we submit to governmental authority since they are the ministers of God’s wrath against evil then it is okay for us to therefore be in government issuing wrath while still a Christian, others would say that since we are not to avenge, we should not participate in the vengence that is of the govt).
Also, I was looking to see his take on how the tax collection issue raised in 13:6-7 might make sense of how and when we must “submit to the governing authorities” in 13:1-5.

We are to learn to respond to our enemies — however defined here — with charity and grace and hope, and not with vituperative and vitriolic cursings.
Amen!
Brad

Bob,
I heard N.T. Wright recently on one of the downloads from the N.T. Wright page seem to indicate to me, in what he was saying, that Christians can participate in the work of the state, and that, indeed, they must. But that this work is exceedingly difficult, and one in which faith can be (but not of necessity) compromised. -At least that is what I remember, and took away from it.