The Christian and his Enemies
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Identifying Our Enemies
Identifying Our Enemies
The first question I think we all may want answered in this text is, “who is my enemy?” Seeings as Christ identified who our neighbour is in the parable of the good Samaritan, we now ask the reverse question. Who is my enemy?
Most of you probably don’t think you have enemies, but you probably do. We don’t want to call them our enemies, maybe they aren’t always enemies or enemies in every way, but
Who were the enemies in Jesus’ day? They were Romans, Gentiles, Samaritans, Tax Collectors, Ethnic Traitors. On top of that are personal enemies. Family members. Rivals, and any other kind of enemy.
The word used for enemy comes from the word for hostility or conflict. In the broad sense, this is a command to love those that we have a hostile relationship towards.
Why doesn’t Jesus just say, “have no enemies and love everybody?”
Our sin still exists and helps create conflict. However, the way the Blessed Ones will react to conflict will be obviously different, characterized by love and gentleness.
Sin on our part isn’t always the cause of conflict, but when conflict exists the Blessed Ones, who are characterized by meekness and mourning over sin, will be careful to search out and see if their sin has any part in the conflict. If it does, the Disciple must confess this sin quickly and engage in remaining conflict will gentleness and not with anger.
So there are two kinds of conflict and therefore two kinds of enemies. Both are addressed here assuming all sin has been repented of on the part of the Disciple.
Our faith will cause conflict and create enemies. These we have no ill will for, as we don’t have ill will for anyone, but conflict exists nonetheless. Jesus will be address by Jesus in Matt 10:34
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
And in John 15:18-19
“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.
Conflict is to be avoided by Christians, as Paul instructs in Romans 12:18
If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
Those we are expected to hate. One of the core themes of Jesus’ teaching about the Christian life is that love triumphs in the believer’s life. As this last verse says, our disposition is to be peaceful in situations in which worldly people will not be. So Jesus command here also extends to unfair prejudice, racism, political rivalries, and even disputes in the home between family members. Your enemy is anyone with whom you are in a state of conflict.
Two Different Ways to Love
Two Different Ways to Love
Self-centred. We could call this the sinner’s love. That is, it is the kind of love that someone in that world, still lost and in their sin, is able to show. This worldly love is captured in the phrase “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” Interestingly, the last part of this command is not found in Scripture and probably developed from a certain understanding of the imprecatory Psalms. In these Psalms, the author wishes harm and death on those who defy God. Apparently, the Pharisees had taken these Psalms out of their context and used it as not only an excuse but a command to hate the enemies of God, who also happened to be their own personal enemies. The enemies these Jews likely have in mind is are Gentiles. To them, all the non-Jewish nations of the earth were a sea of calamity which God would destroy as his enemies. So it was reasonable to hate these enemies of God and wish for their destruction. Such an attitude naturally turns to our own natural enemies and soon the line between our will and God’s will becomes blurred.
Obviously, hate and love are incompatible. So to the Jewish teachers, the command to love your neighbour as yourself extended only to other Jews. When you see your enemies as God’s enemies, you will never be able to love them. This is what makes Jesus’ command, “Love your enemies” so astonishing. It essentially means to love those that you currently believe God hates because God doesn’t hate them, he loves them.
It’s not like God hadn’t communicated this to the Jews in the OT. This was the point of the entire book of Jonah. God’s mercy is not based on race, but on their heart towards God. God spared Nineveh, the capital city of the enemies of God’s people, because they truly repented. God’s love is not based on race, nor by specific creed or denomination, nor by location, nor by language, nor by social-economic status, nor by morality, but only by this: do they love the Lord their God? Do they fear him? Are they repentant? This is how God distinguishes between those that we should love as he does, and those that we should hate as he does.
I say “hate” not in a personal or angry sense, but in a sense that you see the hardened heart within that person as an enemy to be destroyed.
With this departure from God’s love and hate, they were actually disobeying the command the love your neighbour as yourself, since some who were their enemies were actually the objects of God’s love. God does not give us the right to decide who we are going to love and who we are going to hate. That is completely his domain.
Jesus points the listening people to the way the Pharisaical love mirrors the kind of love that exists even among the lowest and most wretched in society. As a rule, people are nice to those who are nice to them. This is because human love is selfish, it requires a return of investment. High divorce and abortion rates are a natural indicator that our society as a whole views love this way. If this person improves my life, I will love them. If I get to enjoy the return of love than I will love. This is also the source of fornication, which is really a love that seeks to exploit the love of the other without giving a true commitment of love to them.
Human charity also falls under this kind of love. Whether it is for a cathartic sense of fulfillment and pride, monetary gain, social status, or religious exultation, doing good deed, the love of sinners is proven to be a sham by the fact that their love extends only to those who are rewarding to love.
Love with faith.
But the love of a true Disciple is a true love, that is it is love with faith. Faithful love is the kind of love God shows to those he has intentionally set his affections upon. This love is very different from worldly love:
It is founded on the love of God. Loving your neighbour is not founded on the neighbour themselves, whether they are worthy of that love, able to return it, or willing to pay kindness back in kind. As slaves of God, Christians are called to love those that God loves, not merely those we find easy or safe to love.
It expects no reciprocation. Of course, a loving relationship can only exist when love is reciprocated, and God does expect his creatures to love him in return. However, God is patient in his love and continues to show kindness to his enemies in this age. As his children, we are called to follow his example in this. This is nowhere more clear than in verse 45
so that you may be sons of your Father who is 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.
It has a heavenly goal. Worldly love exists to realize worldly goals. Someone may get married because their spouse makes them feel safe and secure, because it fulfills relational and sexual needs, because they want children, because of family pressure, because they have romantic feelings they want to pursue, or because they are lonely. Every love has an outcome, an end to which it strives.
The end of worldly love is self-preservation and happiness in this life. When this is not achieved, the love grows stale and eventually dies.
The end of God’s love is the eternal glory of saving wretched sinners and making them into saints. The purpose is make clear in Eph 2:7
so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
so that means purpose. God’s love is not aimless or based on emotion, it is realistic and victorious and brings him glory.
Godly love is the imitation of God’s love by loving for the end of glory, not the end of personal fulfillment.
When it comes to loving our enemies, then, the purpose is clear. God is glorified in the present loving of all people, sinners, evildoers, enemies, and persecutors. God’s mercy is open to all, and this must reflected not only in how we act towards our enemies, but also what our disposition towards them is. The Blessed Ones let all feelings of anger, bitterness, and injustice fall on the shoulders of Christ, knowing all sin against us will either be paid by him or avenged by him. Any hostility that exists does not come from their heart, but from the heart of their adversary.
Loving our enemies is a key evidence that we have seen the glory of the love of Christ. Only a truly Blessed One who has been humbled by their sin and leans wholeheartedly on the gracious love of God can love their enemies in the way described in our text.
Perfect Christianity
Perfect Christianity
To summarize this comparison between the outward standards of the law and the inward standards of the heart before God, Jesus gives us a final and most impossible command, “you therefore must be perfect, as you heavenly Father is perfect.” This sentence is used by Jesus to close this part of the sermon. It parallels Matt 5:20
For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Not only must your righteousness exceed that of the most religious and holy people in the land, but you must be perfect even as God is perfect. How can Jesus seriously put forth such a standard?
Perfect here is specifically in relation to the content of this part of the sermon. When this is taken into account, its clear that perfect does not mean never ever falls into sin, but rather it is saying that the way the Blessed Ones view the law is the way God views it. The Blessed Ones do not merely execute an outward display of devotion to God, they understand God’s instructions in their internal intention. “You shall not commit adultery” always meant “you shall not have an adulterous heart.” Adultery is always committed by an adulterous heart, but an adulterous heart is not always expressed in literal adultery. The same holds true for murder, blasphemy, and every other violation of God’s commands. To understand God’s Word truly means not only do what it says, but to believe in it. I can tell my son to clean his room and he can obey me in two ways. He can do it but inside is not happy about the task. He would avoid it if he could. Or he can obey me, believing that my desire to see a clean room is a desire worth pursuing. He sees the room the same way I see it and he agree with me and eagerly obeys.
To be perfect means to be like God and follow his instructions, not only in our actions but in our entire being. It means to have true love for God and for your neighbour, to truly value the glory of God and the benefit of our fellow human being as of higher priority than working for ourselves. To be perfect means to see how imperfect the ways of the world are, how unfulfilling they are in their attempts to attain true righteousness, and how far they fall short of God’s loving heart.
Strive for perfection
Perfection begins with recognition of imperfection.
Conclusion
Conclusion