by Ethan Zuck

“He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all…” (Romans 8.32)

In the grand meta-narrative of Scripture, God displays his redemption story through the means of humanity, and, ultimately, through the use of His very own Son. When humans choose to defy the Source of beauty, goodness, and morality to define and shape their own morality, we cause a schism between heaven and earth. Through David’s line, God provides a way out of our helpless situation that we have dug for ourselves, and offered the beautiful plan of salvation through Jesus the Christ.

But if God hated his enemies, this plan of salvation would have been utterly nonexistent. For “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5.8). That is, while we were enemies of God, He still chose us. He actively worked (and continually works) in favor of His “enemies,” to rescue them from the path of our own self-inflicted destruction.

And He urges us to imitate Him in the very same way.

Deny yourself (Mark 8), love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. Oftentimes this phrase is coated in familiarity and is breezed past by us. We think we already do love them, or that we don’t really have “enemies” since we’re not engaged in war, or because we don’t really hate anyone. But I think the word “enemy” has a deeper implication than what’s on the surface. Maybe “enemies” refers to those people that you simply don’t get along with; the people that you have never really liked, or the one that holds different political views than you do; perhaps “enemies” refers to when you and your best friend hate each other’s guts, or when you and your son simply can’t see eye to eye; perhaps it demands us to respond without passive aggression. Rather, we respond in the purity of love to those who are rude, condescending, or spiteful to us, or to those who have wronged us intentionally or unintentionally.

Perhaps it means to love those that are hardest to love, from moment to moment.

And when we do that, we participate in the very love that gave Himself up for us.

The attached video is a score I composed that reflects on the humanity of everyone around us, and reveals the imago dei, the image of God, in everyone—especially in our enemies.

With an education in both piano and philosophy, Ethan Zuck is an aspiring music composer with a love of deep thinking, camp ministry, and music composition. When he isn’t teaching piano at his studio, he can be found hiking or running his calligraphy business. He resides in Houston, Texas. You can see more of his work at https://www.ethanzuckcalligraphy.com/ and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXxBTnZwOm7dRju7nUskc8w.

Lent 16