Stand StrongSample

Minister of Reconciliation

 As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached on a Sunday morning in 1957, he fought the temptation to retaliate against a society steeped in racism.

“How do you go about loving your enemies?” he asked the Dexter Avenue Baptist congregation in Montgomery, Alabama. “Begin with yourself. . . . When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it.”

Quoting from the words of Jesus, King said: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you” (Matthew 5:44-45 KJV).

As we consider those who harm us, we are wise to remember our former status as enemies of God (see Romans 5:10). But “[God] reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation,” wrote Paul (2 Corinthians 5:18). Now we have a holy obligation. “He has committed to us the message of reconciliation” (v. 19).

Ours is a “ministry of reconciliation” that imitates the selfless servant-heart of Jesus. Tim Gustafson