"Love Your Enemies" part 2
Matthew 5:43–48 43 “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 and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may [a]be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not eventhe taxcollectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 Therefore [b]you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
We have been studying what the Bible has to say about our commandment to love all summer. We began by saying that all of the obligation of a believer is broken down by the Lord into love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus tells us that our neighbor is the person near to us in need. And that can be further specified with some other commands in Scripture like love your parents, children, spouses, brothers and sisters in Christ, and now we have come to love your enemies as our final emphasis. So we’ve been really harping on love. In fact I’ve already used the word love eleven times in just this introduction.
And I’ve really enjoyed this, this emphasis. But here’s a little secret. I’ve found something to be true through the years in the pulpit. It seems that I, whatever I preach on, in the time before or after I preach it, God presents me with opportunities to obey whatever I’m preaching. And that has been the case this summer. I have been presented personally with multiple opportunities to show love for someone by my actions people in crisis people in need people just needing a friend. It’s as though, I preach something, and then God says “let’s see if he’s serious about that.” Maybe that’s because I pray during sermons for God to give us these opportunities. So I pray for it and he answers that prayer. Well that’s just a warning if you ask God to teach you to love he will.
prayer
Well, last week, we went through two points; The first was the radical command to love your enemies. Remembered that that command did not originate in the New Testament. We remembered that Exodus 23 commanded that if your enemy’s ox or donkey wandered away you were to return it to its owner if their donkey was helpless under its load you were to help with that circumstance. Proverbs 24 admonished us that if our enemy fell we weren’t to be glad about it and proverbs 25 told us that if our enemy was hungry we were to give him food to eat and if he’s thirsty we were to give him something to drink. That was point number one.
In point number two we described what loving our enemies looked like. And there we simply looked at First Corinthians 13, love is patient love is kind is not jealous doesn’t brag is not puffed up and so on and applied each of those phrases to our relationship with an enemy.
Well today, we will continue unfolding this commandment by answering some questions. Who are my enemies? Why must I love my enemies? How do I love my enemies? And I want to conclude these messages either today or next week with what does it mean to love the world?
So today we start with…
III. Who Are My Enemies?
When Jesus said this in the Gospel of Matthew he had opponents who were actively trying to have him arrested and eventually they would try and succeed with having him put to death. Well, most of us don’t have enemies of that caliber in our lives. So who are my enemies That I am commanded to love?
Well, your enemies would be first off those that you consider your enemies. And that might be those who oppose you or oppose your values. They would be people who seek to do you harm. They might also be individuals that, if you saw them falter or fall in some way you would be openly or secretly happy about it. But they can also be people who oppose you in a more generic sense. Those who seek to do something that you think Shouldn’t be done. They are those whose actions cause negative results in my life. Enemies are people I struggle to get along with or who struggled to get along with me. Enemies are people who irritate me like tailgaters.
Scripture identifies enemies as either personal or impersonal:
Personal enemies
Matthew 5:44 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,(Those who persecute believers)
When you couple this passage with Matthew 5:10, 10 Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
We understand that personal enemies are those who are trying to harm us or persecute us simply because we are doing that which is right. They simply don’t like you because of what you stand for.
Psalm 120 verse 7 Says this, Too long has my soul had its dwelling With those who hate peace. 7 I am for peace, but when I speak, They are for war.
They are simply those who hate you. As Luke 6: 27 “But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, (They hate you.)
Luke 6:28 further defines who our enemies are; they are those who purposely do us harm, they hate us. And it goes on to say..
28 bless those who curse you, (They curse you.)
Now again, we may have very little experience with people who curse us, at least not personally. There are those who would pronounce a curse on those who call themselves Christian. That group existed in the first century as well. In the early years of the church, some Jewish synagogues incorporated a new curse into their service benediction.
“May the apostates have no hope … and may the Nazarenes and the heretics perish…”
The terminology is significant. Notzrim (נוצרים) means “Nazarenes” and became a Jewish designation for Christians, derived from Jesus the Nazarene.
So, first century Christians actually had people regularly pronouncing a curse on them. So those would be called enemies. Luke goes on…
prayfor those who disparage you.(They disparage you.) They cast coarse insults at you. They insult you. They slander you. They make false accusations against you. That would be an enemy.
29 Whoever hits you on the cheek, (They hit you.) offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your garment, (They take what belongs to you.) do not withhold your [i]tunic from him either.
These are very personal things. These are not just distant enemies , people in a distant land, or even people within your own country , who may do things to hurt you in some impersonal way . These are very personal enemies . They express their dislike and disdain for you to your face . Characterization or compassionate Wednesday Adams in technology she is in the village she’s kind of she’s let me show how to make your iphone brand new aren’t people keep using it for full storage and live photos making even worse In some ways they describe a different society than what we live in. personal violence was more accepted as the norm in the first century.
In the first-century Roman world, personal violence was widely accepted as a normal means of exercising authority, maintaining order, and enforcing discipline in ways that would be considered criminal in many societies today. Roman fathers (patresfamilias) held extraordinary legal power over their households, including the right to physically discipline their children—even adult sons—and, in earlier Roman law, they possessed the theoretical power of life and death over their children, including the authority to expose unwanted infants. Husbands often exercised physical control over their wives with little legal consequence, while masters routinely beat and punished their slaves, who were regarded as property rather than persons. The Roman historian Tacitus records that after the prefect Pedanius Secundus was murdered by one slave in AD 61, all 400 slaves in his household were executed under Roman law, despite most having no involvement in the crime. Physical coercion also extended into economic and civil life. Jesus' parable of the unforgiving servant reflects the common practice of violent debt collection when the servant "seized him and began to choke him" over an unpaid debt (Matthew 18:28). Roman magistrates and local authorities regularly ordered beatings, floggings, and imprisonment without due process, as seen when Paul and Silas were publicly beaten with rods before being thrown into prison (Acts 16:22–23), despite Paul's Roman citizenship. Roman soldiers likewise possessed broad authority to intimidate civilians, compel forced labor, and extort money, explaining Jesus' reference to being forced to carry a soldier's load for one mile (Matthew 5:41) and John the Baptist's warning to soldiers not to extort people through threats (Luke 3:14). Even education reflected this acceptance of violence, as teachers commonly disciplined students with rods, canes, and straps. Against this backdrop, the New Testament's repeated commands for fathers to avoid provoking their children (Ephesians 6:4), husbands to love their wives sacrificially (Ephesians 5:25), masters to treat slaves justly (Colossians 4:1), and believers to reject retaliation and instead practice gentleness and self-control represented a profound challenge to the prevailing culture of coercion and physical domination.
These Enemies could be within our Family. Jesus said this.
Matthew 10:34–39 34 “Do not think that I came to [a]bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 36 and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.
We all know that even within a family there can develop such divergent lifestyles and beliefs, that the members constantly find themselves clashing and at odds.
Enemies at our job
1 Peter 2: 18 Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are [u]crooked.
A boss may be abusive toward his employees. And it can go the opposite way as well. A boss may be abused, insulted, or hated by his employees. Well who else might our enemies be?
People who annoy us are often treated as enemies; Telemarketers. In our world, many of those people who are calling on the phone to sell us something can be at best, overly coercive, and at worse, purposely trying to steal from us.
And the Bible also describes impersonal enemies. One of the biggest groups of these are.
Enemies with authority over us. In the first century, of course, governmental authorities could classify an entire group as persona non grata. They could with the stroke of a pen write a death sentence for all Christians in the kingdom. That kind of governmental enemy is not our struggle in America today. But we can have governmental authorities at the national and local level who pass policies that affect us personally or affect a group we are part of personally and it can feel very personal. We also have those who abuse their authority. These are also those that would be counted as enemies. Of course we are to be subject to them as Romans 13 says.
Romans 13: Every [a]person is to be in subjectionto the governing authorities. For there is no authority except [b]from God, and those which exist have been appointed by God.
Paul here is speaking of governing authorities. These may not be people that we ever meet. But notice that he talks about those who would resist these authorities. That resistance can, of course involve not paying taxes, or disobeying the law, but it can also involve our attitudes. Look verse 7
7 Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor. 8 Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves [e]his neighbor has fulfilled the law.
What other kind of impersonal enemies might we have?
Enemies who are teaching religious error
Sometimes we think about different religions as enemies. Whether it be Muslim, Catholic, Mormon, or even churches who are teaching liberal theology, Christianity lite. We have to be careful here. Because we should firmly stand against error. Paul did. Paul talked about the Jewish religious establishment as enemies.
Romans 11: 25 For I do not want you, brothers, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in;
28 [h]From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but [i]from the standpoint of God’s choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers;
As far as the gospel is concerned they are enemies, but we love them and desire them to come to the knowledge of the truth. And we can have religious enemies.
Cultists coming to your door. They are teaching error. They are presenting themselves as Christian but they aren’t. They are deceived and deceivers. And our temptation is to fling open our front door point our finger at them and say get off of my porch.
All this tells us that there are all kinds of enemies both personal and impersonal. So, think for a moment. Who are your enemies?
Ask: Who do I avoid? Who avoids me? Who do I resent? Who resents me? Who do I secretly hope fails? Who secretly or openly hopes I fail? What are we to do with them? Love them. Our next point is…
IV. Why Must I Love My Enemies?
First, You are commanded to. Do it because God says to do it.
Second, Because God Loved His Enemies
Look at Romans 5:8
Romans 5:8–10 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified [a]by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved [b]by His life.
We love our enemies because God loved his enemies. And more than that guess who his enemies were? We were his enemies. Before you came to Christ you were a condemned sinner and verse 10 says you were an enemy of God.
Colossians 1: 21 And although you were formerly alienated and enemies in mind and in evil deeds, 22 but now He reconciled you in the body of His flesh through death,
You say, preacher, before I became a Christian, I don’t think I was God’s enemy. I didn’t even think about God. How was I His enemy. My friend, everything in this created world was created for one purpose; to bring glory to God. And all of humanity rejected that. We revolted against our maker.
Romans 8:7 7 because the mind set on the flesh is at enmity toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8 and those who are in the flesh are not able to please God.
Before Christ we were estranged children. So, God chose to love His enemies, and that gave us a pathway back to reconciliation with God.
Ephesians 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children,
The Gospel begins with God's love toward His enemies.
B. Because We Reflect Our Father when we do
We demonstrate God’s love when we love our enemies.
1 Peter 1: 15 but [n]like the Holy One who called you, [o]be holy yourselves also in all your conduct; 16 because it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
Matthew 5:44-45 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may [a]be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
The sense is that the sun and rain are good things. God sends the early and the latter reign to every one. Rain for crops falls on both good people and evil people. The sun shines its warmth on the evil and the good. And the implication is that if God so chose he could give good only two good people and bad only to the bad people. And he could do so perfectly. Just think about that. If God so chose he could immediately punish all evil in the world. He could make it so that if an abusive person said foul words and struck someone in their family as they left for work in the morning boom now their car doesn’t start and their tire is flat. He could strike them with lightning on the spot. But he doesn’t do that. He is long suffering and patient not desiring that any one be condemned but that all come to repentance. And so since God gives blessings to the evil so should we.
When believers love enemies, they imitate God.
Ephesians 5:1–2 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2 and walk in love, just as Christ also loved [a]us and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God [b]as a fragrant aroma.
1 Peter 2:21–24 For to this you have been called, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps, 22 who didnosin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; 23 who being reviled, was not reviling in return; while suffering, He was uttering no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously. 24 Who Himself [a]bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that having died to [b]sin, we might live to righteousness; by His [c]wounds you were healed.
Christ loved us first. 1 John 4:19 We love, because He first loved us.
Only those transformed by God's love can genuinely love those who hate them.
Why else should we love our enemies?
C. Because Christians Are to be Different than the world
Matthew 5:46–47 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not eventhe taxcollectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
Even unbelievers: love friends, love family, and love those who benefit them . In fact, people in the world can have an extreme loyalty to their own and they can have an extreme animosity against any one that slights them or those that they consider their own. You know this is true. The old saying goes that there is honor among thieves. They will take care of their own. In the Mafia they say don’t go against the family. So loving your own is normal and typical in this world.
But Jesus says His followers must exceed worldly love With a radical love, even for our enemies.
On October 2, 2006, a gunman entered a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. He ordered the adults and boys to leave and held ten young girls inside. Before taking his own life, he shot all ten girls. Five of them died.
The Amish community was devastated. Parents who had sent their daughters to school that morning were suddenly preparing to bury their children.
But in the midst of that unimaginable grief, something remarkable happened. Almost immediately, members of the Amish community began speaking about forgiveness.
And they didn't merely talk about it.
The gunman had left behind a wife and children of his own. They had done nothing wrong, yet they too were suddenly suffering because of what he had done. Rather than directing their anger toward his family, members of the Amish community reached out to them. They visited the gunman's family and expressed compassion toward his widow. Members of the Amish community even attended the gunman's funeral, and support was extended to his family while Amish families were still grieving and burying their own daughters.
They did not pretend that what happened wasn't evil. They didn't minimize their grief or the terrible wrong that had been committed against their children.
But they refused to answer hatred with hatred.
In one of the darkest moments their community had ever experienced, while burying their own children, they still found room to show compassion toward the family of the man who had taken those children from them.