Dallas Willard #2

Out of the 10 commandments found in Matthew 5, two of the most important are these:
1. If you are angry with someone, get right with them before sacrificing to God.
2. Love all of your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

If you are angry with a brother or sister then your heart is not right. God's biggest command was to first love him with our entire being and to love our neighbors as ourselves. If we love God, the second part of that command will happen out of our love for him. If we try to sacrifice something to God while we are angry with someone, our heart is in the wrong place. God wants us to love him so much that our relationships with other people are important to us. If we do not straighten our feelings towards a person out, we will likely be distracted while trying to interact with God. I'm scared that we would even be acting the role instead of being genuine.

We are called to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Doing so will show our love for others. I feel like this commandment implies that we need to be genuine about the prayers and the love. That means we should be so close to God that our love for others should match his love for them. We need to love them like Christ and really care about our enemies and persecutors. If we don't love and pray for them, then we are shown that our anger is triumphing God's love when ultimately it should be the other way around. We would miss out in the blessing of seeing their relationship with God grow and we would be robbing them of a blessing.