By Jacqueline Kelly –
Life is a mirror. Each hour of the day reflects you. One moment, these images of oneself may be charming as a glowing, confident personality. The next moment, the mood may change. Despondency and haunting fears may sweep over you. You may think you stand alone in the problems you have or in what you want to do. Learn to have life constantly mirror that happiness, which comes from poise and inner serenity.
The Scripture gives us some clear guidelines to dealing with our enemies, and overcoming evil with good. Understand that your real enemy is the devil. Forgive and guard your heart against bitterness, leave revenge and judgement up to God, set your boundaries [Romans 12: 17-21]. The four enemies of our faith are worry, doubt, fear and human reasoning. Satan and his angels rebelled against God in heaven and proudly presumed to try their strength with His. When God, by His Almighty power, overcame the strength of Satan, and sent him from heaven to hell with all his army, Satan still hoped to get the victory by astuteness.
An enemy is a person who actively opposes someone or something. The Latin word ‘inimicus’ meaning hostile, unfriendly is the root of enemy and it comes from the prefix in or ‘not’ and ‘amicus’, friend: an enemy is not a friend. Anyone who gets angry when good things happen to you is a secret enemy. Anyone who tries to reduce the value of your achievements and success is an envious enemy in disguise. A person who hates or opposes another person and tries to harm them or stop them from doing something makes an enemy. According to Buddha, the four types of enemies disguised as friends are the taker, the talker, the flatterer and spender.
In life, the five enemies are anger, sensual desire, restlessness and worry, sloth and sceptical doubt. Sometimes people just don’t like people who look different from them and they choose to dislike them, mistreat them and make them as an enemy. Some people become enemies when they hurt each other without regret and get angry and the hurling at each other escalates. Enemies engage in destructive criticism, spread gossip, sabotage your path to success and may show defensive body language.
The Holy Scripture says, “God will make your enemies your footstool” Anything that comes against us—persecution, betrayal, disappointment, we have to stay in faith and not use it as a stumbling block in our progress because God will use it as a stepping stone to take us higher. If you are ever unsure, just check God’s Word and see if it aligns with what He says, it is from God. Anything opposite is from the enemy. To love your enemy is to obey God’s law with respect to them. [Matthew 5:44] [Luke 6:27-28]. This is important in telling us how Jesus thinks about what love is.
In the Old Testament, the enemies of God were Philistines, Edomites, Moabites, etc. All the enemies of God were idol worshippers. The people of God were continually drawn to worship the idols of God’s enemies. Our spiritual enemies: the world, the flesh and the devil. The first man, Adam committed sin by disobeying God in eating the forbidden fruit [of knowledge of good and evil] and transmitted his sin and guilt by heredity to his descendants. The devil is extremely active in the Old Testament, even though his actions are seldom attributed to him by name. We see the ungodly line and the godly line represented by two brothers, Cain and Abel. Abel’s faith in God arouses the evil jealousy of Cain, whose rage boils over into murder. Again and again, this godly line is threatened: rivalry and enmity between siblings become a pattern in the generations that follow Abraham, with the threat of murder only just being averted in the cases of both Jacob and Joseph. The children of Israel, redeemed from Egypt- the land of bondage – seem to be sold out to the bondage of idolatry as they bow down to the golden calf, but Moses intercedes for them. Balak hires Balaam to curse these same people, but God turns the curse into a blessing. Every great conflict and crisis in Israel’s history and, more particularly, every crisis and conflict that affects the line of promise is an outworking of the enmity that was forecast in Eden.
Satan’s power is limited; he is tethered by the infinitely greater power of God Himself. We do well to reckon Satan a great and mighty enemy, but we do even better to acknowledge that God is greater and mightier than all else in creation, and that Satan and his leagues are created beings. Louis Berkhof summarises, “He is superhuman, but not divine; has great power, but is not omnipotent; wields influence on a large but restricted scale…. and is destined to be cast into the bottomless pit”.
Jesus himself had many critics and enemies as soon as He came into the world, who sought to discredit Him and sometimes trap Him in His own words. They said, for example, that He had threatened to destroy the temple, that He was a blasphemer and that He acted in league with Satan. On one occasion some religious leaders grumbled, saying “This man receives sinners” [Luke 15:1]. However, what they intended as an attack gives expression to Gospel truth- Jesus did and does welcome sinners; as the Apostle, Paul wrote, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners”. [1Tim 1:15] and He explained that if He experienced hatred from the world, His followers can expect the same. Jesus encountered – demonic, political, religious, emotional, physical and spiritual. Alongside the darkness, it is the light of Christ’s victory that strengthens us to keep proclaiming His Good News even in the face of opposition.
After the death of Judas Maccabaeus, or the Hammerer, his successors, however, fell away from God. Throughout all the rest of the world, idolatry reigned supreme, and all the nations of the earth were sunk in misery and corruption. The few just men, who were scattered among the different races of men, sighed for the coming of the promised Redeemer, the only hope of fallen man. Four hundred years before the birth of Christ, Malachi, the last of the prophets, could not restrain his joy at the near approach of the Messiah.
The Jewish people, torn and weakened by continual dissensions among themselves, called in the Romans to decide their quarrels, and the Romans, a great and powerful nation, settled the dispute by taking possession of all Judaea, and placing on its throne Herod, a satellite of the Roman Emperor. Thus was the sceptre of Judah broken, and that event ushered in the Redeemer of the world. Herod reigned in Judaea when the Messiah, so long promised, appeared on earth in human form, Christ the Lord.
Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Herod awaited, with anxiety, the return of the Magi. At last, realizing that he waited in vain, he became furious, and gave orders that all male children in Bethlehem, and its neighbourhood, of two years old and under that age, should be killed. He thought that, in this way, the child Jesus would certainly perish [Mark 3:6] [Luke 2:34].
Satan and his enemies fought against Jesus. The mission of Christ is plainly set forth. Jesus, having been baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan, is declared to be the Son of God by none other than the voice of the Father from Heaven. This is accompanied by the visible descent of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus, the anointing He needed for His public ministry.
In the Hebrew Bible, Passover is a festival that commemorates the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, as narrated in the Book of Exodus. It was and continues to be the most important Jewish seasonal festival, celebrated on the first full moon after the vernal equinox. At the time when Jesus was born, the Passover had a very special significance, as the Jewish people were again under the dominance of foreign powers [namely, the Romans], Jewish pilgrims streamed into Jerusalem every year in the hope that God’s chosen people [as they believed themselves to be] would soon be liberated. On one such Passover, Jesus travelled to Jerusalem with His disciples to celebrate the festival. He entered Jerusalem in a triumphal procession and created a disturbance in the temple of Jerusalem. According to the Gospels, the Sanhedrin, an elite Council of Priestly and lay elders, arrested Jesus during the Jewish festival of Passover, deeply threatened by his teachings.
The charge brought against him was political, namely, that He had set himself up as a rival king to Caesar, but the Roman Prefect, [governor] of Judea, Pontius Pilate found this to be untrue. Nevertheless, because of the intensity of passion aroused in the crowd by the Jewish religious leaders and lay elders [whose real charge against Jesus was “blasphemy,” namely, that by claiming to be the Son of God He was making Himself equal to God], the Governor capitulated and ordered that Jesus be scourged and crucified like a common criminal.
The Jews were blamed for allowing King Herod and Caiaphas to execute Jesus.
Caiaphas, a Sadducee was the High priest who arrested Jesus, tried and convicted Him on a religious charge that carried the death penalty. He was an organizer of the plot to kill Jesus. At Caiaphas’s house, Jesus was mocked and beaten. [Luke 22:63]
Judas Iscariot was one of the Twelve Apostles who betrayed Jesus by disclosing Jesus’ whereabouts for 30 pieces of silver. Judas brought men to arrest Jesus and identified Him with a kiss. [Matthew 26:15]. Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus five times. Once he betrayed Jesus and saw that Jesus was condemned, he was filled with remorse, and losing all hope, he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple. He lost his moral bearings and in despair, went and hanged himself.
Following the arrest of Jesus, Peter denied knowing Him three times, but after the third denial, he heard the cock crow and recalled the prediction as Jesus turned to look at him. Peter then began to cry bitterly. This final incident is known as the Repentance of Peter. [John 13:31-38]
Marcus was the soldier who nailed Jesus to the Cross. He is changed by Jesus looking at him without fear as he hammers in the rough nails. But Marcus does not understand why Jesus has no fear. He also ends up with his soldiers guarding Jesus’ tomb.
Pontius Pilate [Latin: Pontius Pilatus; Greek Pontios Pilatos] was the fifth Governor of the Roman Province of Judea, serving under Emperor Tiberius from 26/27 to 36/37 C.E.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Pontius Pilate washed his hands before the multitude, saying, “I am innocent of the blood of this just person.” This was to show the crowd he did not want Jesus dead, but ordered His death because that is what the people wanted. He was washing his hands of the responsibility. Pontius Pilate was ordered back to Rome to stand trial for cruelty and oppression, particularly on the charge that he had executed men without proper trial. According to Eusebius Ecclesiastical History, Pilate killed himself on orders from Emperor Caligula. By other accounts, Pilate was sent into exile and committed suicide of his own accord and his body was thrown in the Tiber river. Sejanus, supporter of Pontius Pilate was murdered.
King Herod died in Jericho in 4 BCE, after an excruciatingly mental and physical illness of uncertain cause known as “Herod’s Evil” including attempted suicide.
Longinus is the name of the soldier who stabbed the crucified Christ in the side with a lance to check whether he was dead. Since Christ had already died, water and blood came out of His wound. [John 19:33-34] An avowed pagan in the Roman Praetorian, Longinus was converted by two events. The first event is recorded in St. Matthew and St. Mark’s Gospels where it seems that that the darkness and earthquake caused him to believe. The second event has it that Longinus had poor eyesight. When he thrust the lance into Jesus’ side, the Sacred Blood and Water trickled into his eyes, immediately curing him of his blindness.
Saint Longinus left the Roman guard, sought instruction from the Apostles and retreated to Caesarea of Cappadocia to become a monk who preached and converted many. It was here that he lived until times of persecution intensified.
Saint Longinus was called before the governor, ordered to make sacrifices to idols, but stubbornly refused. The governor had his teeth and tongue cut out. He was then beheaded and martyred.
The immense sacrificing love of God for all His children of the human race was made concrete by the utter obedience of Jesus Christ to the saving plan of the Father [John 3:16]. Death was not the end, Jesus rose on the third day, thus conquering sin and death for ever.