Be Loving

Matthew 5:43-48

You have heard it said…

Love Your Neighbor

The Summary of the Law

The Narrow use by the Pharisees

Defining who your neighbor is - neighbor they understood those only of their own country, nation, and religion; and those only that they were pleased to look upon as their friends

Love those who love you, welcome those who welcome you, be good to those who are good to you, or who can do you good

Hate Your Enemy

Hate in the OT - never a command

Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? (Psalm 139:21) - Those in open revolt against God, public enemies, not personal.

The Pharisee Interpretation

If the law is true, then the opposite of the law is also true - love your neighbor and hate your enemy…

They thought they were honoring God by despising everyone who was not one of God’s people.

What have you done?

If you love those who love you, greet those who belong to you… what reward do you have, have great thing have you done? Tax collectors and gentiles do this.

Tax collectors were Jews who collaborated with Rome, helping to fund the Roman occupation of Israel, Gentiles neither believed in God nor obeyed his law.

Shouldn’t residents of the Kingdom, the disciples of Christ do more?

But I say to you…

Love your enemy -

Those who persecute you, who make your life miserable, who you want to avoid when you see them coming down the street, you are to love them.

A radical departure from what comes naturally

Martin Lloyd Jones: “Our lives are too often governed by other people and by what they do to us and think about us. You must get out of that condition. Your love must become such that you will no longer be governed and controlled by what people say. Your life must be governed by a new principle in yourself, a principle of love.”

We are not asked to love the enemies' character or deeds or teachings or anything else about them; we are asked only to love the enemies themselves. 

Love is a choice, not a feeling

Augustine said that God’s love is incomprehensible and unchangeable in that he began to love us before we were reconciled to him through the blood of his Son. Our sin made us his enemies. Yet because our iniquity had not entirely consumed his handiwork, “He knew … how … to hate what we had done, and to love what he had done [in creating us].”

Agape - The divine love - loving that which is unlovely, that which does not love in return, love for no reason other than it is your nature.

A Christian’s love is not determined by the loveliness of the object of his love, nor conditional upon being loved first. A Christian’s love is not directed only towards those whose love he can rely on in return. His love is controlled by the knowledge that when he was God’s enemy and a sinner, the Father first loved Him.

You are a new creation, resident of the Heavenly Kingdom

We are to operate under a different system -God’s people should be different from the rest of the world. The principles of the kingdom of this world, love those who love you, ignore the rest; The principles of the Kingdom, Love, even as God has love you…

Pray for those who persecute you

Prayer changes our hearts towards our enemies

You cannot genuinely pray for someone without hoping for their good, for their salvation - any hatred will wash away, replaced by compassion and mercy

Get on your knees and pray for those who are against you

We are to pray, and to pray some more, until we feel something of God's love for problem people.

By this you become the sons of God

The Christian is not like the rest of the world; the Christian is growing as a son of our heavenly Father

Believers’ lifestyles clearly reveal whose family they belong to: God’s or Satan’s. Children will act like their fathers.

If God is your Father you must be special, you cannot help it. If the divine nature is in you, and has entered into you through the Holy Spirit, you cannot be like anybody else; you must be different.

The Christian is called to go above and beyond – to love with a strange and supernatural love – with the love that God has shown to us

What makes the Christian different - he has seen himself as utterly hopeless and condemned; he has seen himself as a man who is utterly guilty before God and who has no claim whatsoever on His love. And then he has seen and understood something about the free grace of God in Jesus Christ. He has seen God sending His only begotten son into the world, and not only that, sending Him even to the death of the cross for him, the rebel, the vile and guilty sinner. God did not turn his back on him, he went beyond that. The Christian knows all this happened for him, and it has changed his whole attitude towards God and to his fellow men.  He has been forgiven when he did not deserve it.

Be Loving

How did God love his enemy?

God gives graciously to the wicked and the righteous

God sends the sun and rain on the evil and the good – general grace. The idea that God sends his general blessing on all, the good and the bad, demonstrates how we are to love, even our enemies.

God gives his Son for the salvation of his enemies

Rom 5:8 -

God upholds his righteousness, while making us righteous in Christ

Just because God is loving, don’t think that God will not also judge those who are still in their sin. God calls us to repent, or face His righteous wrath.

In love and mercy, God makes a way out of wrath, by giving His Son, so that all who believe in him should not perish but have eternal life.

How can I love my enemy?

Give and serve with grace and love

Romans 12:20 “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink…”

Paul says: “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” (Eph. 4:32–5:2)

The Good Samaritan - went out of his way, and great personal expense, to save someone who would not have done the same for him…

Show and share Christ with those who hate you

The greatest blessing, the greatest good, is that they would come to know the grace and mercy of God in Jesus Christ.

You are the closest some men and women will ever get to Jesus Christ. If they do not see Christ’s love in you, they will never see it.

Call to repentance, while walking with them in humility

Loving the sinner does not mean we approve of wickedness. It means we pray for our enemies and long for their salvation

Stephen - Father forgive them…

The Necessity of the Gospel

The standard is a love of which only God is capable

If you fall short of this love, do not despair:

But repent and believe

But do not lay aside the command - this is only for final glory

Christ has given His Spirit, that in His love, we may love one another, love our enemy, and show we are the sons and daughters of God.