Leadership of Dr. King

Matthew 5:43–45 ESV

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 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.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. became the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, AL in 1954. He was a young man, only 25 years old. That may seem old to many of you in this room, but 25 years old is a young age to become the senior pastor of a church.

In his first message to his new congregation, he said that he was not trying to become a great preacher. He was not trying to become a profound scholar. He said this to them, “I come to you with only the claim of being a servant of Christ, and a feeling of dependence on his grace for my leadership.”

There are three things I want to tell you this morning about great leaders from the life of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The first thing is this. Great leaders are not trying to become great. What leaders want is to be faithful to Jesus. Leaders know that they are dependent on the grace and kindness of God. That’s what Dr. King said. My only claim is being a servant of Christ and dependent on his grace for my leadership. Great leaders don’t worry about being great because they know that’s not up to them. That’s up to God. Dr. King became one of the most important leaders in the history of this country by seeking to serve Jesus Christ.

And, in seeking to serve Jesus Christ, there were some extremely important truths drawn from the Bible that guided Dr. King and those who followed him. Here’s one. The first thing that God says in the Bible about humanity is found in Genesis 1:26-27

Genesis 1:26–27 ESV

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

This means that every person, male or female, young or old, in every part of the world, of every culture, ethnicity, and language is made in God’s image. And that that means everyone is to be treated with love and respect and dignity and kindness, not matter who they are and where they are from.

Now, you and I know that people don’t always treat everyone they meet with love and kindness and respect. If we are honest, we have to say that we don’t always treat everyone that way. Are you always kind to your brother, or your sister, or your cousins, or your parents, or your friends? Imagine if the law of our land said that you did not have to treat someone with dignity or respect if they were African American.

That’s what life was like for my parents and grandparents in this country. That’s what life was like for Dr. King and for millions of African Americans in the United States. And because he knew, as a servant of Jesus Christ, that every person is worthy of dignity and respect, he helped to lead the Civil Rights Movement. It was a fight for equality. It was a fight to change the laws in the United States to enable African Americans to have equal treatment under the law; to have equal opportunities for education and jobs and the freedoms that white Americans had access to.

And this is the second thing I want you to know about great leaders from the life of Dr. King. The first thing was that great leaders aren’t trying to be great. They want to be faithful to Jesus Christ. The second thing is this. Great leaders fight for what is right and good and true. They fight for justice. They see what the Bible says about what is right, just, and good. And they fight for that.

What you need to know about the fight, however, is that it’s not fought with fists or knives or guns. The fight for justice that Dr. King led was a non-violent fight. He led the fight, and he fought the fight with love. In 1958 Dr. King said this about the Civil Rights Movement, “From the beginning…the phrase most often heard was ‘Christian love.’… It was the Sermon on the Mount…that initially inspired the Negroes of Montgomery to dignified social action. It was Jesus of Nazareth that stirred the Negroes to protest with the creative weapon of love.”

Dr. King is referring to the Scripture I read from Matthew 5:43-45

Matthew 5:43–45 ESV

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 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.

That is the love Dr. King was fighting with. A love that wasn’t only for people whom he liked or who liked him. It was a love for the people who would beat them up. It was a love for the people who threw bombs at his house. It was a love for the police who arrested him. It was a love for the the people who wrote nasty and evil things about him.

“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says “Love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies– or else?” - The Strength to Love

In a sermon on this passage, Dr. King said,

“We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. And so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Burn our homes and threaten our children and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Yes, send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hours and drag us out on some wayside road and beat us and leave us half dead, and as difficult as it is, we will still love you. But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and your conscience that we will win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory.”

“Love is the only answer. And so this morning, as I look into your eyes, as I lift my eyes beyond you and look into the eyes of the peoples of the world, I love you. I would rather die than hate you. (Amen) And I believe that my spirit can meet your spirit, and your spirit, through this process, will meet my spirit; and through this collision of spirits, the kingdom of God will finally emerge. (Amen) There is still a voice crying even this day, saying, “Love your enemies. (Yes) Bless them that curse you. (Yes) Do good to them that hate you. Pray for them that despitefully use you.”

And that’s the third lesson. Great leaders lead with love, fight with love, and fight for love. Do you know why? It’s because that’s what God did for us. That is what Jesus did for us. We were his enemies. Separated from life with God because of our sin. But, as John 3:16 says,

John 3:16 ESV

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

And because of that, you don’t have to wait until you’re 25 to start living like a leader. You can say right now, “I’m not trying to become great. I am a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by his grace I want grow in faithfulness to him.” You don’t have to wait. You can say right now, “I will pay attention to what the Bible says about what is right and just and good, and I will speak up about those things.” And right now you can say, “I will fight with the creative weapon of love.” That’s what Dr. King did, and that’s what great leaders do.