If Your Enemy Is Hungry, Give Him Bread to Eat

If Your Enemy Is Hungry, Give Him Bread to Eat

“Rejoice not when your enemy falls.”

“If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat;

and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.” Proverbs 24:17; Proverbs 25:21.

The whole earthly life of Jesus was a manifestation of this principle.

It was to bring the bread of life to His enemies that our Saviour left His home in heaven. Though calumny and persecution were heaped upon Him from the cradle to the grave,

they called forth from Him only the ｅxpression of forgiving love. 

Through the prophet Isaiah He says,

“I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that plucked off the hair:

I hid not My face from shame and spitting.” 

“He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth:

He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb,

so He openeth not His mouth.” Isaiah 50:6; 53:7. 

And from the cross of Calvary there come down through the ages

His prayer for His murderers and the message of hope to the dying thief.

The Father’s presence encircled Christ, and nothing befell Him

but that which infinite love permitted for the blessing of the world.

Here was His source of comfort, and it is for us. 

He who is imbued with the Spirit of Christ abides in Christ.

The blow that is aimed at him falls upon the Saviour,

who surrounds him with His presence. 

Whatever comes to him comes from Christ.

He has no need to resist evil, for Christ is his defense.

Nothing can touch him except by our Lord’s permission,

and “all things” that are permitted “work together for good to them that love God.”

Romans 8:28.      

– Thoughts from the Mount of Blessings, 71.