A longtime reader responded to my column “Love Your Enemies So You Can See Straight” with a gentle critique. The best way to love our enemies, he said, is to breathe out forgiveness, just as our Savior did on the cross. He noticed I didn’t mention forgiveness until late in the column. I chose instead to foreground godliness. Here’s how I put it:
The pleasure and gratification that exceed the pleasure of hating can be found ultimately in a life of growth toward God, as we come to resemble him more and more. There’s no Christian response to hatred that doesn’t involve a call to holiness.
My friend worries that a focus on godliness can be too easily twisted by our fallen nature. The moment we begin thinking of ourselves as “godly,” or even imagining ourselves on “the road to godliness,” we start separating ourselves from people who aren’t as far along that road or people who may not be on the road at all (and thus are on the path to destruction).
If we’re to be tenderhearted (Eph. 4:32) instead of hardhearted (as the Gentiles are described in v. 18), wouldn’t it be better to foreground forgiveness instead of godliness? Wouldn’t forgiveness do a better job of bringing to mind our need for pardon?
Dangers of Pursuing Godliness
I appreciate this pushback. I knew my choice of the word “godliness” might raise an eyebrow, which is why I described it as a churchy word that has fallen out of favor. It conjures up the notion of superiority, much like “righteous” easily gets twisted into “self-righteous” these days. And for good reason. The distance between righteousness and self-righteousness is a chasm, but crossing it takes just a step.
The pursuit of godliness can get sucked into a vortex of self-referential pride, where we feel satisfied in how Godlike we’re becoming or we look down on others who aren’t as “far along.”
Seen this way, it’s understandable to assume the best way to love your enemies is to emphasize forgiveness, a virtue more closely associated with God’s grace. A focus on our need for forgiveness helps us avoid the elder-brother syndrome that hinders our ability to rejoice at the return of the prodigal.
Perils of Forgiveness
The problem is, forgiveness too can get twisted. I’m not persuaded that focusing on forgiveness instead of godliness will resolve the self-righteous tendencies of the human heart.
I’m reminded of Katerina Ivanovna in The Brothers Karamazov, who stays with Dmitri, a man who has shamed her and treated her abominably. She forgives him over and over again. From the outside, everyone looks at her and says, “What a model of selfless suffering and heroic virtue!” But Dmitri’s brother, Ivan, pierces the facade. Her forgiveness is rooted in self-love, not enemy-love. She finds delight in her role as martyr-victim. She doesn’t love Dmitri; she loves the image of herself as long-suffering and virtuous.
Training in Godliness
The apostle Paul commands us to train ourselves for godliness because “godliness is beneficial in every way, since it holds promise for the present life and also the life to come” (1 Tim. 4:7–8). We’re to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness (6:11). Likewise, Peter says we’re to “make every effort” to “supplement . . . endurance with godliness” and “godliness with brotherly affection” (2 Pet. 1:4–8). John Stott comments,
Godly people are God-fearing people. They have experienced the Copernican revolution of Christian conversion from self-centredness to God-centredness. Previously it could be said of them that in all their thoughts “there is no room for God.” But now they say: “I have set the Lord always before me.” They have heard God’s call to renounce ungodliness and to live a godly life, and so to anticipate on earth the God-centred life of heaven, which is dominated by God’s throne.
Becoming More like God
My friend would agree with all this, of course, but he might say the best strategy for achieving godliness would be to focus on forgiveness so we don’t lose sight of our own need for grace. Perhaps. But the apostles command us, without an asterisk, to train in godliness—to pursue a godly life. They don’t assume this focus will devolve into a source of rotting self-righteousness.
Of course, the pursuit of godliness is a dangerous path; it’s easy to be ensnared in pride, to wander into pomposity and fall into self-righteousness. Those dangers are real.
But rightly understood, pursuing godliness ought to remind us of the massive distance between us and God. The bigger God is in our vision, the smaller we feel. The more we look up to him, the less we could even think of looking down on our neighbors. The closer we get to God, the more we see how far is left to go. The pursuit of godliness is a journey ever deeper into being entranced by the beauty and bigness of God.
And so we must walk the dangerous path, with eyes wide open, knowing the command to love our enemies immediately precedes Christ’s command to “be perfect, as [our] heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). Godliness supplemented with brotherly love—a holiness that receives the forgiveness of Christ and then breathes the same out to the world—is the goal. The more we love our enemies, the more we resemble the God who forgives.
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