Avinatan Or was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on October 7 and spent 738 days as their hostage. The Free Press is now publishing excerpts from his memoir of the horrifying experience. For anyone who doubts the cruelty of Hamas, his record is essential reading. For the rest of us, it is a testimony to the power of the human will.
Reading his words translated from the Hebrew, my thoughts turned instantly to my many friends in Israel. I have been privileged to lead over thirty study tours to the Holy Land, along the way building relationships with some of the finest people I have ever known. Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, they share a love for their land and a passion for its people.
And they are all victims of Hamas. None was captured or killed on October 7, though most knew someone who was. But all are living in the aftermath of the invasion. Some are tour guides who have seen their ability to support their families decimated. Others work in tourist areas and have seen their businesses shrivel or close.
One of them lives in Jerusalem and told me that he is never more than thirty seconds from a bomb shelter, knowing that it takes that long from the time alarms go off until missiles land. Can you imagine living in such tension and fear?
I feel their grief and share their suffering as I can. I pray for them every day. But what I am learning is that I must do so out of solidarity not only with them but also with their enemies. Not because Hamas’ barbarities can ever be justified, but because the worst perpetrators of the worst crimes are people my Father loves.
I’ll explain.
“The love with which you have loved me”
When I became a Christian at the age of fifteen, I somehow acquired the sense that God now loved me as he did not before. This is logical, in a way: Those who refuse faith in Christ will be consigned to hell (cf. Revelation 20:15), so it stands to reason that God must not love them or he would not permit them such a horrific eternity. If they reject his love, he would be justified in refusing to love them in turn, or so we might think.
Then I discovered Romans 5:8: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Jesus loved us before we loved him. In fact, he loved us twenty centuries before we were even born.
This makes sense in light of 1 John 4:8, “God is love.” This is his eternal, unchanging character. He loves us, not because we deserve his love, but because it is his nature to love us. This would mean that he loved us just as much before we trusted in Christ as after. And it would mean that he loves the lost as much as he loves the saved.
This concept was further reinforced a few years ago while reflecting on John 17:23, where Jesus prayed, “I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (my emphasis). The italicized words in the Greek mean literally, “to the same degree that you loved me.”
Jesus reinforces the thought a few sentences later: “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them” (v. 26, my emphasis). The italicized words are translated literally, “the same love with which you have loved me.”
Both statements show us that the Father loves you and me as much as he loves his own perfect, sinless Son. Again, because “God is love,” this is how his love for us must be.
When I am most like Christ
With this background, I was reading Ezekiel 33 today and came upon this stirring statement by God: “As I live, declares the Lord Gᴏᴅ, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (v. 11). A loving father loves his children regardless of what they do. It is the same with our heavenly Father.
Now comes the practical implication: I am to love those who mistreat me just as my Father loves me when I mistreat him. Jesus was clear on this point: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:44–45). I knew the words prior to the comma, but had not considered those that follow. It is when I love those who hate me that I demonstrate my identity as a child of the Father who does the same.
In other words, I am most like Christ when I am as unconditional in love as he is.
This is an impossible standard for humans, of course. This is why “love” as the first “fruit” of the Spirit is so important (Galatians 5:22). I cannot love someone who does not love me apart from the love of the God who loves us both.
But the moment I ask him to express his love through me, he answers my prayer.
A Holocaust survivor and her Nazi guard
Corrie ten Boom is an example. She was a Holocaust survivor; the Nazis murdered everyone else in her family, including her sister Betsie, who died of starvation in the same camp where Corrie was imprisoned. She herself was released through a clerical error and lived to tell the story.
Some years later, she was speaking in a church on the topic of forgiveness. After the service, a man came up to her whom she recognized as one of the guards at her prison camp. He told her, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well.” Then he asked her, “Will you forgive me?”
Corrie wrote:
I stood there—I whose sins had every day to be forgiven—and I could not. Betsie had died that place—could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?
It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.
For I had to do it—I knew that. . . . I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality. Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple as that.
And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion—I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.
“Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.”
And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.
“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”
Is God waiting for you to pray what Corrie prayed?
