Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

⁹ So then, have faith with love. This is the “wedding garment.” You who love Christ, love one another, love your friends, love your enemies. Let not this be hard to you. What then do ye lose thereby, when you gain so much? What? Do you ask of God as some great favour, that your enemy may die? This is not “the wedding garment.” Turn your thoughts to the Bridegroom Himself hanging upon the Cross for you, and praying to His Father for His enemies; “Father,” says He, “forgive them, for they know not what they do.” You have seen the Bridegroom speaking thus; see too the friend of the Bridegroom, a guest “with the wedding garment.”

Look at the blessed Stephen, how he rebukes the Jews as though in rage and resentment, “You stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you have resisted the Holy Ghost. Which of the Prophets have not your fathers killed?” You have heard how severe he is with his tongue. And at once you are prepared to speak against any one; and I would it were against him who offends God, and not who offends you. One offends God, and you do not rebuke him; he offends you, and you cry out; where is that “wedding garment”?

You have heard therefore how Stephen was severe; now hear how he loved. He offended those whom he was rebuking, and was stoned by them. And as he was being overwhelmed and bruised to death by the hands of his furious persecutors on every side, and the blows of the stones, he first said, “Lord Jesus Christ, receive my spirit.” Then after he had prayed for himself standing, he bent the knee for them who were stoning him, and said, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge; let me die in my body, but let not these die in their souls.

And when he had said this, he fell asleep.” After these words he added no more; he spoke them and departed; his last prayer was for his enemies. Learn ye hereby to have “the wedding garment.” So do you too bend the knee, and beat your forehead against the ground, and as you are about to approach the Table of the Lord, the Feast of the Holy Scriptures, do not say, “O that mine enemy might die! Lord, if I have deserved ought of You, slay mine enemy.” Because if so be that you say so, do you not fear lest He should answer you, “If I should choose to slay your enemy, I should first slay you.

What! Do you glory because you have now come invited hither? Think only what you were but a little while ago. Have you not blasphemed Me? Have you not derided Me? Did you not wish to wipe out My Name from off the earth? Yet now you applaud yourself because you have come invited hither! If I had slain you when you were Mine enemy, how could I have made you My friend? Why, by your wicked prayers do you teach Me to do, what I did not in your own case?” Yea rather God says to you, “Let me teach you to imitate Me.

When I was hanging on the Cross, I said, 'Forgive them, for they know not what they do.' This lesson I taught My brave soldier. Be My recruit against the devil. In no other way will you fight at all unconquerably, unless you pray for your enemies. Yet by all means ask this, yea ask this very thing, ask that you may persecute your enemy; but ask it with discernment; distinguish well what you ask. See, a man is your enemy; answer me, what is it in him which is at enmity with you?

Is it in this, that he is a man, that he is at enmity with you? No. What then? That he is evil. In that he is a man, in that he is that I made him, he is not at enmity with you.” He says to you, I did not make man evil; he became evil by disobedience, who obeyed the devil rather than God. What he has made himself, is at enmity with you; in that he is evil, he is your enemy; not in that he is a man. For I hear the word “man,” and “evil;” the one is the name of nature, the other of sin; the sin I cure; and the nature I preserve.

And so your God says to you, “See, I do avenge you, I do slay your enemy; I take away that which makes him evil, I preserve that which constitutes him a man: now if I shall have made him a good man, have I not slain your enemy, and made him your friend?” So ask on what you are asking, not that the men may perish, but that these their enmities may perish. For if you pray for this, that the man may die; it is the prayer of one wicked man against another; and when you say, “Slay the wicked one,” God answers you, “Which of you?”