Plumb Line

Amos 7: 7-9, Matthew 5:38-48

Jesus is asking us to not retaliate and to even go as far as to offer more to an enemy, to someone attacking you.  This is a hard scripture.  Jesus asks us to pray for our enemies, and love them.  I do not believe Jesus wants us to get on our knees and propose to an enemy, nor have warm fuzzy feelings for said enemy, but He is asking us to love them, just as God loves us.  We can pray that they will change their hearts and actions and that is certainly a fine and healthy prayer, but in this context I do not believe that Jesus is even upholding the Proverbs that Paul quotes (proverbs 25: 21-22)":

If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat;
   and if they are thirsty, give them water to drink;
for you will heap coals of fire on their heads,
   and the Lord will reward you.

In the Matthew passage Jesus is asking us to pray for our enemies so we may see them in God’s eyes, and to show them love.  We actually determine our enemies generally by who is outside our group.  Be it nation, religion, clique, for it is rare that we actually have someone who is specifically attacking another, without the support direct or more likely indirect from others.  When we see someone as God seems them, it is hard for us to act as an enemy.

A great example of a man that knew he had an enemy is that of Dietrich Bonheoffer.  See Dietrich watched as his church, the German Church, began to ignore the cross of Christ, so to be able to support Hitler.  Bonheoffer knew Hitler and his followers as an enemy, and despite his Christian ethics, felt a need to participate in an assassination attempt.  Eventually Bonheoffer was jailed.  Despite being an enemy of what we, as humans, considered to be one of the most evil leaders, Dietrich treated each of his captors with respect and compassion.  They may have locked him up and may be called on to execute him at any moment, Dietrich saw them as children of God.

The plumb line is being consistent and perfect like our Heavenly Father is perfect.  To understand this, I share with you my experience of plumb lines. When I was a child we lived in a relatively new home and thus my father, the engineer, would require shelves and the like to be plumb level, that is the plumb line was based of gravity.  And it worked.  I then went in my early adult life on a mission trip to Virginia, where we were to reroof, put up siding, hang doors, replace windows, and put up a ramp to the front door.  This group tackled this project in three days, and on one of the days I was helping with the ramp.  Well the building was old and leaning some, it was not obvious to the naked eye, but when we started considering putting the ramp on the house we realized if we made it plumb to the building it would look very slanted, and if we made it plumb to gravity it would look slanted in the opposite direction.  One of the elder contractors shared his experience, that in this situation you make the plumb line the average of the two.  Sure enough that worked well, after carefully cutting the dowels in a specific order about an 1/8th of an inch different from the proceeding one.   (We may had changed the design if we had more time or was aware of the plumb line issue previously).  It worked out aesthetically wonderful, and even allowed for the water to run off well. 

Jesus tells us that our plumb line is to not retaliate, to love and pray for our enemies, and thus as Jesus says:

…so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. …Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:45 & 48)

This plumb line cannot be averaged with the world.  When we follow this line, it will be noticeably different then the world.  When we love as God Loves, we bring Heaven to Earth.