Love Your Enemies

Matthew 5:43–48 NIV

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Introduction & Context

The last “you have heard, but I say…” The religious leaders again narrow the law

The OT makes no mention of hating your enemy

The leaders view “neighbor” as a limiter (cf. Good Samaritan)

Jesus again expands the implications of the law to the heart

Love Your Enemies

Matthew 5:43–45 NIV

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Very often who and how we love tells us how we see other people.

Not my type

Dating crisis in America

This is reality and not necessarily wrong (Jesus isn’t calling us to marry our enemies), but it is incomplete.

Jesus idea of love is expansive – it includes those who we find most unlovable.

Jesus calls us to love people not based on who they are but based on who we are

Because we are children of a loving father, we love like he does

Romans 5:8–9 NIV

8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!

Love When It’s Difficult

Now that sounds hard doesn’t it? Jesus knows it’s hard!

Matthew 5:46–47 NIV

46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

Loving our friends is easy and even the worst people do it.

Everybody does easy things. Jesus is calling us to hard things.

Loving the unlovable requires us to be anchored in the gospel love that Christ has for us

The Misuse of “Love your enemies”

Perhaps you are lacking in enemies? Love annoying people too.

However, some people truly have enemies – those who are destroying and damaging them.

Careless use of these verses can give cover for evil in a way which dishonors God

Abuse investigation

Case study

A woman who has watched her husband do violence to her and her children

Properly understood, these verse can help us to see a path towards just, holy love for those who do evil.

We see this path by emphasizing a key idea of this text – love like God loves.

Matthew 5:45 “45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”

Matthew 5:48 “48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Understanding the Love of God

God’s love is complex and varied. We must be careful of flattening its depths or it will lead us to all manner of trouble.

A misunderstanding of the love of God actually causes one of most common objections to Christianity, “How could a loving God do…”

5 Types of God’s Love (Carson)

Love between the Father, Son, and Spirit

John 3:35 “35 The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.”

Providential love over all God has made

Matthew 6:2 “25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”

Matthew 5:45 “45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”

Saving love for the fallen world

John 3:16 “16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

God’s discriminating love for those who are his

Deuteronomy 7:7–8 “7 The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. 8 But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”

Ephesians 5:25 “25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her”

God’s conditional love for those in right relationship with him

John 15:9 “9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.”

Jude 21 “21 keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.”

Each of these must be considered rightly. None can be the only way we think of God’s love.

Love and Anger in God

With an understanding of the complexity of God’s love, we also need to consider the tension found in God’s love – this loving God is also a fearsome judge who pours out his wrath against sinners.

Attribute vs. action

Love is an attribute of God that is eternally true of him

Wrath is an action that God takes as a function of his holiness

In itself, wrath, unlike love, is not one of the intrinsic perfections of God. Rather, it is a function of God’s holiness against sin. Where there is no sin, there is no wrath—but there will always be love in God. (Carson)

So God is not angry like he is loving, but he does still show anger on sinners because he is holy

Psalm 7:11 “11 God is a righteous judge, a God who displays his wrath every day.”

Psalm 5:4–6 “4 For you are not a God who is pleased with wickedness; with you, evil people are not welcome. 5 The arrogant cannot stand in your presence. You hate all who do wrong; 6 you destroy those who tell lies. The bloodthirsty and deceitful you, Lord, detest.”

Psalm 26:5 “5 I abhor the assembly of evildoers and refuse to sit with the wicked.”

Psalm 139:22 “22 I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.”

Reasons for God’s Wrath

Judgment – God’s holiness demands wrath

Genesis 9:6 “6 “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.”

Wrath is a property of God in relation to his creation rather than within himself. Even in his wrath, God is love.

Purification

Achan

Defense

Psalm 18:6–15 NIV

6 In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears. 7 The earth trembled and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains shook; they trembled because he was angry. 8 Smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it. 9 He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet. 10 He mounted the cherubim and flew; he soared on the wings of the wind. 11 He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him— the dark rain clouds of the sky. 12 Out of the brightness of his presence clouds advanced, with hailstones and bolts of lightning. 13 The Lord thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded. 14 He shot his arrows and scattered the enemy, with great bolts of lightning he routed them. 15 The valleys of the sea were exposed and the foundations of the earth laid bare at your rebuke, Lord, at the blast of breath from your nostrils.

How then do we love true enemies like God does?

Love the guilty but with a desire to defend the innocent

Do not neglect love for the victimized in favor of love for the enemy

Matthew 18:6 “6 “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

Love the guilty with a desire to stop them from adding more guilt to themselves by continuing in sin

Hatred of a person’s evil is equivalent to love of his good. Hence also this perfect hatred belongs to love. (Aquinas)

Love with an understanding that justice and judgement are in God’s hands (and the lesser authorities he has commissioned) not yours

Church and state

The church speaking on unrepentant sin is eternally powerful and more serious than the tools the state wields

The state’s authority primarily restrains evil in this life and is therefore particularly important for defending innocents

Practically

The justice and judgement offered by earthly authorities is good and should be pursued

Vindictiveness should be avoided

Love with longing for, praying for, and working for repentance

Repentance does not necessarily involve the removal of consequences and so called repentance for the the sake of having consequences removed is not true repentance at all