The Commands of Christ
Sermon # 9
“Love Your Enemies”
Matthew 5:43-48
The ninth command in our
series “The Commands of
Christ” is a very
difficult one indeed. This command is found in Matt. 5:44, were we are told that you are
to “love your enemies and bless (imperative
command) those who curse you.”
If we have learned anything
in the days since the terrorist attack of Sept 11, 2000 it is that it is easy to hate. It
is not hard to hate the people responsible for the deaths of all those innocent people in
the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. What is hard is to love them. How can we
“love” Ossama Bin Ladin? How can we “love” a murderer or a thief who
has permanently altered your family? How can you “love” a person who has
swindled you out or your money or your possessions?
“A story
… about a professor of psychology illustrates how difficult it is to love others.
Although he had no children of his own, whenever he saw a neighbor scolding a child for
some wrongdoing, he would say, "You should love your boy, not punish him." One
hot summer afternoon the professor was doing some repair work on a concrete driveway
leading to his garage. Tired out after several hours of work, he laid down the towel,
wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and started toward the house. Just then out of
the corner of his eye he saw a mischievous little boy putting his foot into the fresh
cement. He rushed over, grabbed him, and was about to spank him severely when a neighbor
leaned from a window and said, "Watch it, Professor! Don’t you remember? You
must ’love’ the child!" At this, he yelled back furiously, "I do love
him in the abstract but not in the concrete!"
[Frank
Walker. “Jesus You Gotta Be Kidding” Sermon on Matt. 5:43-48 www.sermoncentral.com/ContributorID=6641&SermonID=41176]
But factually it is always
easier to talk about loving everyone, as opposed to actually doing it.
"You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your
neighbor and hate your enemy.' (44) But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who
curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and
persecute you. (45) that you may be sons of your
Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on
the just and on the unjust. (46) For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?
Do not even the tax collectors do the same? (47) And if you greet your brethren only, what
do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? (48) Therefore you shall
be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
How the Truth
Was Perverted. The religious teachers of the day had taken the word of God and
attempted to make it more palpable. The teaching of the Old Testament was clear, Deut.
19:18, ”You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children
of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”
This teaching is
clear enough. The problem was that over time it had become twisted. The religious leaders
had distorted the truth in order to make it possible to keep this command. Notice in verse
forty-three, what Jesus said they were now teaching, "You have heard that
it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”
Seriously, I am
not kidding, that is really what they were teaching. They did not completely abandon
God’s word they just tried to make it more workable. Satan’s perversion of
God’s word almost always is built on a partial truth. (Satan’s deception of
Eve).
As we look at
their teaching and compare it with God’s
word we see that they left something out, they added something, and they
redefined the term, neighbor.
First of the
all, perversion by omission, they left
something out, God’s original said, ”you shall love your neighbor as
yourself.” They left out the “as yourself” part. This was a very difficult thing for the
proud Pharisees, how could they love anyone as much as they loved themselves, no one else
was as good as they were. And since it was inconceivable that they should care for anyone
as must as they cared for themselves, they simply changed the standard.
Secondly, perversion
by addition, they added something, you will notice that they perverted the truth about
love by adding the phrase, ”… and hate your enemy.” Now that obviously
goes against everything in the heart of God as revealed by the word of God.
Finally, the religious leadership had narrowed the meaning of “neighbor”
to include only those people they preferred and approved of – and that amounted to
people just like themselves. They narrowed the term “neighbor” to apply only to
Jews, they were in effect advocating open and deliberate racism on the grounds of national
origin. But it went further than that, they limited the term “neighbor” not just
to Jews, but people like themselves, not the common ordinary riffraff of the streets.
In five ascending statements in verses 44 and 45, Jesus introduces his new
standard, "You have heard ….
(44) But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do
good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute
you. (45) that you may be sons of your Father in
heaven;
1.
Love Your Enemies. (v.
44)
But who are our enemies? Our enemies, of
course often are just ordinary
people who are mean, impatient, judgmental, self-righteous and spiteful – or
sometimes just happen to disagree with us. Sadly, there are people who don’t like me,
as hard as that is for me to understand. There are people who have decided to be my enemy.
These people would hurt me or even ruin me if they could. That is just a sad fact of life.
But Jesus teaches me that I am to control my response to my enemies. I cannot help
that I have enemies, but I can refuse to be their enemy.
“In 1567 King Philip II of
Spain appointed the Duke of Alba as governor of the lower part of Spain. …He was a
bitter enemy of the … Protestant Reformation. His rule was called “The Reign of
Terror” and his council called ”The Bloody Council,” because it ordered the
slaughter of so many Protestants.
One man
who was sentenced to die for his biblical faith managed to escape in the dead of winter.
He was being chased by a lone soldier, and he came to a lake that was covered with a thin,
cracked sheet of ice. He managed to get across, but as soon as he reached the other side
he heard the soldier screaming. The man had fallen through the ice and was going to drown.
So at the risk of being captured, tortured, and killed – or maybe even drowned –
the man went back across the lake and saved his enemy. He did it because of His love for
Christ. He knew that he had no other choice if he was going to be faithful to his
Lord.” [Elon Foster. New Cylopedia of Prose
Illustrations. Second Series. (New York: T.Y. Crowell, 1877) p. 296. - as quoted by John
Mac Arthur. The MacArthur New Testament Commentary – Matthew 1-7 (Moody Bible
Institute, 1985), p. 346.]
We miss the point of these verses entirely if we
fail to note that the standard of love that is being set is one that only God is capable
of. The fact that this is a divine standard and not a human one is clear in that the word (agape) occurs in this passage.
The
“love” of which Jesus spoke is a particular kind of love. The Greek language has
four distinct words for love and the word that is used here is (agape). This is
often called the “God-kind” of love, because it is the word used to translate,
John 3:16, which says, “for
God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whosoever believes in him should
have eternal life.” The type of love that we are to have for our enemy is
not the same type that we have for our spouse or our children, but it is to be the same
type of love that God has for us. We do not deserve God’s love and our enemies do not
deserve our love.
Before
leaving the subject of love let me just say that there can be a distinction drawn between
loving someone and liking someone. To like someone is to have a certain emotional
attraction to that person, and while it is not possible to find ourselves emotionally
drawn to everyone it is possible to love everyone. That is, “I
don’t have to like you, to love you.” We may not ever get to the point
that we want to share my deepest feeling with everyone, I can desire God’s best for
their lives.
At this point a person may be saying, “Well, if that is the standard, I may as well
admit it right now and quit, because I can’t do it.” If that is what you think then congratulations you
have got the point.
Love Your Enemies and…
2. Pray For
Those Who Persecute You.
(v.44c) “… pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.”
Our natural human reaction is, “Yea, sure I will pray for them, pray that they
get run over by a truck!” That
is not what the Lord meant.
One of the reasons that we are to pray for our enemies is that it is the most
powerful weapon we have to change them and their attitude toward us. It is also impossible
to pray for someone without have a change of attitude toward the person for whom we are
praying.
Pray For Those
Who Persecute You and
3. Prove
Who’s Children You Are (v. 45)
“that you may be sons of your Father in heaven;
for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on
the unjust.”
Often we see children and we say “they are the spitting image of their
mom/dad.” They look so much like their parents that there can be no doubt who they
belong to. In the text (v. 45) says that ”that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.” The verb translated
here as “may
be” is (aorist tense) and indicates a once for all time established fact.
But beware, loving as God does not make us sons of the Father, but gives evidence
that we already are His children. Anyone can hate. Anyone can be bitter. Anyone can lash
out and attack. But as sons …children of the king… we are to show a different
kind of reaction. It is what set us apart. It shows whose family you are a member of…
and it makes people notice, and maybe even desire to know more about this Jesus.
Manifest
Your Sonship and….
4. Exceed the
Expectations of the World
(vv. 46-47)
“For if you love those who love you, what
reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? (47) And if you greet your
brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do
so?”
If the scribes and the Pharisees were certain of any one thing it was that they
were better than most anyone else. But Jesus cuts through their masks of hypocrisy and
shows them their type of self-centered love is nothing more than is common in the life of
any unbeliever, even tax collectors and Gentiles. Wow, what a slam. This was a real insult
to the religious leaders who thought that they were undeniably superior to almost
everyone.
Even unbelievers are capable of love. They love
their children, they love their wives/husbands they love their families. But all such
human love is on some level corrupted by self-interest.
The
quintessential question Jesus asks in verse forty-seven is, “… what do you do
more than others?” It is not enough to just equal
what unbelievers are doing in the area of love, it is essential that outstrip them.
Exceed the
Expectations of the World and…
5. Be Like
Your Heavenly Father (v. 48)
“Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
When Jesus
uses the word “perfect” here it is not in the sense of being without flaw or
blemish. This is not teaching that we can ascend to a level of sin-less perfection in this
life. The word translated “perfect”
here is (teleios)
basically means to reach an intended end or a completion and is often translated
“mature.”
In his letter to the church at
Ephesus (4:13) he is even more adamant, “till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of
the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of
Christ.”
We Are Called Then
To….
Be Like Your Heavenly Father
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