Through many stories the scriptures remind us that when as persons or as a society we fail to put God s will into action, there are consequences. But just as the discipline administered by the ideal parent is an expression of that parent s love, so is the judgment of God an expression of God s love. God s love is a tough love as well as a tender love, and that tough and tender love revealed in Christ is the kind of love we are to offer our neighbors. By the way, this is why in the light of God s love there is a place for prisons. But the prisons should be more than warehouses where criminals are dehumanized and learn more from each other about how to commit more crime than they do about how to change their living so that they can become constructive citizens.
Tough love is never merely punishment or revenge.
It always has to do with consequences for the sake of transforming persons not merely making them suffer for a set period of time. The goal of God is redemption not revenge. In the passage we read today, Jesus was telling his disciples, and he is telling us, that trying to get even with those who have hurt us is neither the way to wholeness for ourselves nor the way to healing and hope for the world. As God in Christ gave of himself for our good, so we are to give of ourselves for the good of others, even those who are our enemies just as Jesus did. Help us so that we will live our lives loving others, even our enemies, as you in Christ have loved us even when we have been your enemy.