Will You Love Jahar Tsarnaev?

Coty Pinckney April 21, 2013

On Monday, they were just terrorists.

I ran Boston in 1979. I lived in Massachusetts for 12 years. For me, Boston, rather than the Masters, is “a tradition like no other.”

Monday I watched the last hour of the elite race online. I enjoyed it, but turned off the computer after the top 10 finished.

So when a friend called me at 4 and said, offhandedly, “I guess you know about the bombs in Boston,” I was floored. Bombs? At the marathon? Who would do something like this?

Terrorists. Only terrorists.

Friday morning, I wrote about the bombing for the blog. By that time, we knew something about the terrorists. They now had names. A nationality. They were brothers. They were athletes. The younger brother was an excellent student.

We also got a glimpse of the alienation of the older brother, Tamerlan. Several years ago, he wrote: “I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them.”

That resonated with me. Three weeks ago, the Saturday before Easter, I met a Nepali man who had been in the US for almost four years. During that time he had only cursory interactions with Americans. He had never been in an American’s home. I asked him if he knew why he had Good Friday off of work. He said, “I think it has something to do with eggs and rabbits.” The name “Jesus” was vaguely familiar, but he didn’t know who He was. He had no inkling about the Gospel – until that day.

It sounds like Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s experience was similar.

At lunchtime on Friday I turned on the radio, and heard program host and Boston resident Robin Young say, “Some of us have found out that we know these boys.” I was intrigued, and kept listening. It turns out the younger brother, called Jahar by his friends, wrestled on a high school team with Robin Young’s nephew. They were good friends. Jahar had been the life of a party that Robin held for her nephew in her home.

As information streamed in over the internet, I noticed their birthdays. Jahar is 11 months younger than my son Matthew. Sixteen months older than Joel. Tamerlan was a few months younger than my son Jonathan.

That Friday afternoon something clicked in my head. These two were no longer defined by the word “terrorist.” They were no longer abstractions. They were people. They were individuals. They were persons with birthdays and high school friends. They were the life of the party or the quiet kid in the corner.

All that – yet of greater importance:

Tamerlan and Jahar Tsarnaev were made in the image of God.

And: they murdered and maimed others made in the image of God. They committed an act of terrorism. By so doing they had made themselves my enemies, your enemies, our country’s enemies.

Enemies, yes.

And Jesus said:

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:43-45)

Yesterday evening, I was praying about whether to preach this sermon or the one I had planned. Driving home from a meeting about 8, flipping through radio stations, I heard a host reading emails from listeners. Each was suggesting what should be done to Jahar when he is convicted. One wrote: “Remember the end of Braveheart, when Mel Gibson is disemboweled?” I can’t even repeat some of the others.

We need to hear God’s Word on this issue.

How do we wrap our minds around this?

How do we love those who have committed such heinous acts?

What is the relationship between such love and love for the victims of their crimes?

What is the relationship between such love and a longing for justice?

Loving Your Enemy: Eight Propositions

1) If we are to love our enemies, surely we are to love those who are NOT our enemies but resemble our enemies.

In this case: Who resembles Tamerlan and Jahar?

The foreigners around us. International students. Refugees. Especially: The Muslims around us.

No one is your enemy BECAUSE HE IS A MUSLIM
No one is your enemy BECAUSE HE IS A FOREIGNER
No one is your enemy because of language or ethnicity or dress or skin color

We must never treat anyone as an enemy because he looks like or talks like someone who is our enemy.

Rather: Can we love and care for and show hospitality to those who resemble our enemies?

Scripture is quite clear on this:

You must regard the foreigner who lives with you as the native-born among you. You are to love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 19:34)

Love those who resemble your enemies.

2) To love your enemies is not to deny that they are your enemies

Jesus does NOT say: “No one is your enemy. We’re all just one big happy family.”

Jesus had enemies. They tortured Him. They killed Him.

We have enemies. Indeed, Jesus prophesied:

Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. (Matthew 24:9)

Once Tamerlan and Jahar decided to commit an act of terror, they became our enemies. Nothing is accomplished by denying that.

More broadly: A small number of Muslims from around the world has become radicalized. These few want to do all they can to wreak murder and mayhem. Those who are taking steps in this direction are our enemies.

Government is charged with helping us to live peaceful and quiet lives, and thus to protect us from enemies. We are charged to pray for government leaders and officials as they take on this difficult task.

We do have enemies.

3) To love your enemies is not to hope against justice

We must long for justice. We must long for every sin to be paid for, for every wrong to be righted.

God is a just God. He is the moral authority in the universe. He guarantees that the right punishment will be rendered for every sin.

In Revelation 6:9-10, John sees “under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”

God doesn’t tell them: “O, don’t long for justice; love your enemies!”

They are right to long for justice – EVEN as they love their enemies.

So in Jahar’s case, love does not imply that we must hope for a lenient sentence, or no sentence at all. We hope for justice – not against it.

4) To love your enemies is perfectly consistent with loving your enemies’ victims

Sometimes in our politics we become advocates, on the one hand, of victims rights, and advocates, on the other hand, of rights of the accused.

Jesus tells us to be advocates for both.

We are to love our enemies AND we are to love EVERY neighbor as we love ourselves. That surely includes our neighbors who are victims.

And so: pray for the families and friends of Lu Lingzi, Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell, Sean Collier. Pray for the seriously wounded, including Richard Donohue, the officer critically injured in the Thursday night shootout.

Love the victims.

In propositions five to eight, we turn to how we should see our enemies – in particular, how we see Jahar Tsarnaev today.

5) To love your enemies is to see them as fundamentally like yourself.

What is true of you fundamentally?

What is true of Jahar Tsarnaev fundamentally?

What does Scripture say?

You and Jahar are made in the image of God
You and Jahar are made to glorify Him
You and Jahar have rebelled against God
You and Jahar deserve His judgment
You and Jahar can do NOTHING to make up for your sins, to pay the penalty for your sins
And God so loved you and Jahar – that He sent His one and only Son to die so that you might be forgiven by grace through faith

If you have not turned to God in repentance, with faith in Christ, you stand before God in exactly the same way as Jahar Tsarnaev. For as James tells us, “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it” (James 2:10).

Should Jahar turn to Christ, he will stand before God FULLY cleansed – just as clean as anyone in this room, despite the enormity of His sins. For the blood of Jesus is able to wash clean even the vilest of sins.

And if that should happen – JUSTICE WILL HAVE BEEN DONE. For the penalty that Jesus paid – the beatings and whippings and overwhelming flood of God’s wrath that Jesus endured on the cross – is sufficient to satisfy the requirements of justice.

At root, Jahar and you stand before God in exactly the same way:

Apart from the blood of Christ: Without hope
Covered with the blood of Christ: Completely forgiven

6) To love your enemies is to be like God in showing mercy and kindness to the undeserving, because God showed mercy and kindness to you, the undeserving

Jahar does not deserve mercy. He certainly showed no mercy to his victims.

And our government, our court system, is under no obligation to show mercy. Rather, government is set up by God as His “servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4).

But what about you and me?

Acts like the bombing can lead to righteous anger on our part: An anger at the undermining of what is right and good; a steady, certain, deliberate intention to exercise justice. Such anger is consistent with loving our enemies.

But when that anger morphs into hatred, into a desire for personal vengeance, into the sorts of expressions I heard on the radio last night, we have sinned. We are not loving our enemies.

To love is to desire what is good AND TO DO GOOD for our enemies.

Remember what Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:45, immediately after telling us to love our enemies, and thus to be sons of our heavenly Father: “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”

Consider: God gives sun and rain and life and breath every minute of every day to people who hate Him!

God gave YOU sun and rain and life and breath every minute of every day to YOU WHILE you were under His condemnation – when you deserved death!

We are to be LIKE GOD in DOING AND DESIRING GOOD for our enemies.

Specifically, we are to desire the good Paul speaks of in 2 Timothy 2:25-26: We are to pray that God might “grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.”

You have received God’s undeserved mercy and kindness when you were His enemy.

Be like Him!

Show undeserved mercy and kindness to your enemies

We’ll consider the last two propositions together:

7) To love your enemies is to see them as potential kings, potential heirs of the earth

8) To love your enemies is to see them as a potential part of the bride of Christ

Jahar Tsarnaev is made in the image of God. He has polluted that image by his sin and rebellion. By God’s grace, that image can shine forth in majesty and beauty.

Jahar Tsarnaev is potentially an heir of the earth (Matthew 5:5).

Jahar Tsarnaev is potentially part of the Bride of Christ (Ephesians 5:25-27), dearly loved by Him, indeed, dearly loved by YOU. As John Newton writes, those who are our enemies now who truly follow Christ will one day be, “Dearer to you than the nearest friend you have upon earth is to you now.”

Could that be true of Jahar?

Love Your enemies.

Pray for Those Who Persecute You

As we’ve said, we must pray for justice.

But also: Pray for Jahar.

Pray that God would grant him repentance
Pray that God would shatter the walls he has built to shield himself from the Gospel
Pray that God would protect him from the even greater hardening that could easily occur in custody
Pray that our Lord might open His eyes

And who else hates you? Who persecutes you? “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.”

Remember our text Matthew 5:43-48: If we claim to be followers of Christ, if we say to Him “Lord, Lord,” we are to be different. We are to do more than others. We are to take on a family resemblance to Christ. Indeed, we are to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. We are to be agents of God’s mercy.

So: List your enemies.

Some might be abstractions, anonymous groups. But be sure to include individuals: Those who would do you harm if they could. List them. Pray for them.

As for the Boston Bombings:

Pray for justice. By all means.
Pray for information about contacts with foreign terrorists, if any.
Pray for those whom they so cruelly injured.
Pray for the families who have lost loved ones
And pray for Jahar.

That You May Be Sons of Your Father

God in His mercy has invited you to be His child

He has covered your guilt with the blood of Jesus
He has invited you into His Family
He will wipe every tear from your eyes
He will love you with an everlasting love
You can call Him Daddy
He will never leave you nor forsake you

And He enables you to look like Him. He empowers you to display His image. Indeed, He commands you by His power to treat your enemies as He treated you when you were His enemy.