The date was June 28, 1997. Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson had gathered in Las Vegas for a heavyweight boxing match to see who was the best. This was their rematch, and it drew lots of attention. During the match, Tyson kept complaining because Holyfield was giving head butts which had given Tyson cuts, but the referee wasn't calling anything. Tyson resorted to biting Holyfield's ear. After a warning from the referee, the boxing continued with a still frustrated Tyson. Finally, he spit out his mouthpiece again and bit Holyfield on the other ear, this time removing part of his ear which he spit out on the boxing mat. Mayhem resulted from this action as people were watching all of this drama unfold. Do you think Holyfield was viewig Tyson as an enemy at that point?
Last week I preached on resisting the urge to retaliate from Matthew 5:38-42. Do you think Holyfield was thinking about the "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" scripture, or in his case, ear for an ear? In fact, I used this illustration to introduce the concept of tough love. Jesus made it clear that loving our enemies is tough, but we are called as followers of His to display the type of loving actions toward those who are in opposition to us. The duty of tough love demands loving action toward our enemies. The difficulty of tough love challenges us to rise above the standards of the world where it's easy to love those who are lovable, but it's difficult to love those who seem unlovable. The demonstration of tough love was already shown by our heavenly Father (Rom. 5:8), and it comes with the expectations that we are to show that kind of love in return (1 Jn. 4:11).
To whom do you need to show some tough love?
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