It sounds like a strange word: "enmity." Whenever I ask Catechism students what it means, mostly I get blank looks. It seems that we don't talk about enmity so much nowadays. When I tell them it means "hostility" and shares the same root word as "enemy," they start to get the picture. If a person feels enmity toward someone else, then they regard him as an enemy. There is hatred between them. Enemies are on opposite sides of a battle.

But what battle? And why talk about enmity? Shouldn't Christians have open arms for everyone? Doesn't God command us to love our neighbour and to do good even to our enemies? Yes, he does, but he also talks about waging a spiritual battle (Eph 6:10) which in­volves opposition from people (2 Tim 4:14). And the call of the gospel must go out to everyone but there comes a time when we must hold at arm's length those who clearly reject it, at least as long as they do (Acts 8:9-24; Matt 18:15-20). The Lord Jesus personally urges us to understand and be aware of just how close our human enemies can be (Matt 10:34-39) and to always remember the enmity between them and us. In fact, it is God who put that enmity in place!

Enmity's start⤒🔗

When did God do this? Back in the Garden of Eden, on the very same day our first parents fell into sin. As part of the curse placed over the devil (who had used the serpent), the Lord said to him, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel" (Gen 3:15). These are vitally important words, often described as the mother promise of the gospel. They speak of a most perilous conflict but one which ends with good news for God's people.

The victor promised here refers ultimately to Jesus Christ. Eve (the "woman") had many children through the generations, but eventually the LORD brought forth one special child to fulfill this prophecy. Think of the en­mity he faced. The devil certainly hated Christ and tried from the beginning to kill him by the hands of Herod. When that failed, Satan later tempted him in the desert for forty days and nights. Later, he sent an arsenal of demons to plague God's people. Together with the priests and the Pharisees, they hounded Christ in his ministry, but God's promise held good. As the promised offspring of the woman, the Lord Jesus willingly suffered a bruis­ing at the hands of the devil but in the end, through his death and resurrection, he dealt a crushing blow to the head of the evil one (cf. Heb 2:14)!

Enmity between whom?←⤒🔗

But this enmity was not limited to Jesus and Satan. God's words in Paradise set the stage for an ages-long conflict between two groups of people: the "offspring" or "children" of the devil over against the children of the woman. And who exactly are these two groups? How do we identify them? The following chapters in Genesis and the rest of the Bible show that a portion of the human race, in generation after generation, consistently hates God and takes it out on God's people. These are Satan's children — people like Cain, Lamech, Ham, Esau and later whole nations such as the Canaanites, Philistines, Egyp­tians, Edomites, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Romans. On the whole, these peoples lived in rebellion against the LORD and expressed hatred, disdain, and a desire to destroy those who love the LORD (e.g. see the summary in Ps 83).

The other group, then, are those who follow the example of mother Eve (and Adam) and place their faith in the LORD God, be­lieving in that special promised "offspring." They strive to love God and their neighbour and do good even to their enemies (e.g. Ps 109:1-5). It's people like Abel, Noah, Seth, Abram, and later the nation of Israel. To be clear, the existence of such individuals and whole generations of believers is entirely due to the grace of God. Every human by nature is inclined to follow in Cain's footsteps, but God in his love for his people would not allow that. He saved some and brought them back into his family.

Why enmity?←⤒🔗

This helps explain why God would put enmity be­tween two people groups, for at first it sounds strange. You might expect the LORD to want peace among all hu­mans. Doesn't the Bible say that God is love? So how could he initiate hatred of any kind between people?

The problem was and is that ever since we humans committed that first sin, we showed our hatred for God and became friends with the devil, who himself was the arch-enemy of God. We believed Satan's lie that to dis­obey God would make us as wise as God, and in that mo­ment we crossed from God's side over to the devil's side and became his allies. Our nature was now so corrupt we had no desire or ability to cross back over to the LORD, and so we were stuck in a rut, bonded to Satan as natural sinners and God-haters!

It was us (Satan and mankind) against God — and of course, that meant we were all in for eternal destruc­tion. The holy God could never tolerate sin, so judgement would have to come. Right then, the only way for any human being to be saved from condemnation was to be snatched away from that satanic alliance and brought back into friendship with God!

Enmity's blessing←⤒🔗

And this is the blessing of that divinely-imposed en­mity! God desired to save some of the human race but first he had to break up that unholy alliance. The LORD used that enmity to place a wedge between Satan's fol­lowers and God's followers, to keep them apart. Where there used to be a partnership among all humans in league with the devil, now some humans were taken out of that relationship, placed into a covenant with God, and protected there in part by the enmity! The enmity, the hatred of Satan and his people, was a tool used by the LORD to keep his people from falling back into demonic partnership!

In fact, it's when God's people forgot the enmity and tried to erase it that we see them going back over to the devil's side and paying a terrible price. In the days of Noah, when the "sons of God" intermarried with the "daughters of man" then the line of faithful believers was nearly wiped out. The whole human race, except Noah and his family, had rejoined Satan's camp — and so the LORD punished them with the devastating flood (Gen 6). Or think of Lot who moved into worldly Sodom and lost everything (Gen 18-19). Or take the Israel­ites who turned away from God's commands by bowing down to the golden calf (Gen 32) or intermarrying with the Moabites (Num 25). Because they aligned themselves with the rebellious children of Satan, God very nearly destroyed his own people. Only his unfathomable mercy prevented that — and their full punishment was suffered later by the Lord Jesus.

Enmity in the NT←⤒🔗

This enmity did not stop at the coming of Christ. Not only did Christ face it head-on but he warned his follow­ers to expect it in their lives too. He described his people as being distinct from the "world" — a way of referring to the children of the devil. Followers of Christ are "in" the world but are not "of" the world (John 17:14-16). Chris­tians have every reason to expect that the world will do to them what they did to Christ: "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you" (John 15:18-19).

Maintain the enmity←⤒🔗

We Christians need to remember this enmity and why it's there: to keep us from falling back under Satan's way. That hostility is an aid to preserve us as faithful children of God who love him and show that by obey­ing his commandments. The dividing line between God's children and Satan's children is the same as it was since the Garden of Eden: obedience to God's will: "By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righ­teousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother" (1 John 3:10).

In love with the world?←⤒🔗

As we become more affluent in our western society and more comfortable with western culture, we need to ask ourselves: are we slowly falling in love with the world? Do we as Christians still see ourselves as separate from the world, with a call from God to keep from being joined with people who are allied with Satan? This is the clear call of Scripture: "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world — the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions — is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever" (1 John 2:15-17).

Or take what James writes to Christians who were blurring the line: "You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." Do we give thought to this warning? Do we speak with our children about being "in" the world but not "of" the world? And do we know how to restrain ourselves from taking on a friendship with the world so that we don't slip back into enmity with God?

Culture and evangelism←⤒🔗

It seems to me that we need to carefully think through and discuss the Lord's call to keep separate from the world particularly in the areas of engaging our cul­ture and practicing evangelism. We know that we are not to abandon the world and cluster together in colonies. We are to be a salt and a light within our society — yet our salt must not lose its saltiness! The cultural mandate to exercise dominion over the world still stands and with Christ on the throne we may have confidence in our la­bours. But then our labours must not ape the world but show the world that Christ is King! Do our co-workers and neighbours see this difference in us? Or do we blend in and become unnoticeable?

We also know that Christ commands us to take the gospel to all nations, near and far. We live and work among unbelievers. We socialize and converse with such people in the hopes that the Holy Spirit will open their hearts to believe in Jesus Christ. Yet, how close do we get to them? And where do we draw the line in what we will do to "go along with" our unbelieving neighbour? Do we take seriously the risk that believers can be drawn away from the faith by a growing friendship with the world (see also the parable of the sower, Luke 8:4-15)? Do we keep in mind that not all who hear the gospel will con­vert? Some will remain permanent enemies of God — are we prepared to deal with that eventuality too?

Keep salty←⤒🔗

So the goal must be for us to influence the world for the good, that is, for the glory of the Lord and the salva­tion of his chosen ones. But then we must take the warn­ings of the Bible seriously too, that we not get caught up in the desires and ways of Satan's children and become like them. To do that, we need to be keenly aware of the dividing line. If we never discuss amongst ourselves the opposition between the devil's people and Christ's people, if we never speak with our children about the God-given enmity and its protective blessing, are we not setting ourselves up for disaster?

It's natural for our sinful hearts to want to merge with the ways of our worldly neighbours. We don't need to teach our kids to enjoy the sinful pleasures of the world — that's everyone's default. Can we, then, take pre­cautions to avoid this? Let's remember the enmity which God himself placed between the world and us and let's keep ourselves salty.