Only a genuine baptism of the Spirit, the Pentecostal Spirit, empowers us to be what the Sermon on the Mount calls us to be. In 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed I state that loving your enemies — an important command of Jesus in his radical Sermon on the Mount — is what the Jesus Creed calls us to do.
What do I mean? I draw here on Miroslav Volf’s The End of Memory to make these points:
1. Enemy love means we have enemy.
2. Enemy love means we have wounds in our memory.
3. Enemy love means we welcome the humanity — Eikon-ness — of the enemy.
4. Enemy love means we pray for and bless our enemy.
Enemy love is the Jesus Creed at its extreme limit; enemy love happens when we are empowered by the Spirit.