Emphasis Preaching Journal

"Jesus didn't look at her persecutors and tormentors through the eyes of an underdog, feeling himself trapped and unable to react to anything but hatred and contempt toward those enemies who wanted his life. Rather, he looked at the faithless judge, the intriguers, those who wanted to trap him, and the executioner through his Father's eyes, and sorrowed over his erring children. He looked at them as the father in the parable looked at his younger son fleeing into a far country, and as that same father later watched him coming home, disgraced, ruined, the black sheep of the family, coming to stand again before his father. Jesus didn't see the dirt in which the men [people] around him were stuck fast; he saw the pearls that lay in the dust. He didn't see the deluded, the sadists, and the plotters; instead, he saw in them what they were intended to be but had unfortunately failed to become. He could love even his enemies naturally, without striving for an effect, because he saw them in this other light.

"In his love for someone he brought out that which was peculiar to a person's life, even though it lay hidden under layers of dirt, he loved it out. Therefore, many who knew that he saw them and loved them became new persons and experienced the great transformation. His love was not simply a reaction to something lovable as our love is. His love was creative. It called a 'new creature' into existence."

(Helmut Thielicke, I Believe, translated by John W. Doberstein, H. George Anderson. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968, pp. 89-90.)