S.O.T.M. Love Your Enemy [Matthew 5:43-48]

Sometimes God shows us He is in control of all things. Before Christmas I had wanted to get through chapter 5 so we’d could pick up the first of the year in chapter 6, but the Lord pressed on me to spend 3 weeks in verses 38-42 on going the extra mile, which leaves us with this section in verses 43-48 on loving your enemy. As I studied this text this week I couldn’t help but notice how timely this message is, and then the events of Wed. Jan. 6 happened at our nations capital and the days of animosity since and it hit me even more how important this message is to Christians that our Lord Jesus Christ expects us to love even those whom we view as enemy. It’s my prayer this morning that the Lord would speak to each of us and convict us of where we fail Him.

Stand for the reading of the word of God [Matthew 5:43-48]

We come to the last of six illustrations which our Lord used to explain and display the meaning of God’s holy law for man in contrast to the perverted teaching of the scribes and Pharisees. We’ve used the same formula in looking at each of these illustrations… what was taught in the OT, what the scribes and Pharisees taught, and what our Lord taught. We use that same formula today, with a little variation.

The teaching of the scribes and Pharisees

Jesus once again starts of with the similar pattern in verse 43 of you have heard it said. This statement refers to the twisted belief of the religious leaders and not what the scriptures taught. The scribes and Pharisees were good at taking a section of scripture out of context and using it to serve their purpose. They said, “you shall not murder” but they didn’t taking it far enough to not hate, they said, ‘you shall not commit adultery’ but ignored their lustful hearts. They said, ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ but took God’s perfect system of justice and used it for personal revenge. Here they say ‘love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’

The question that arises at once is, where did they find this in the OT? Is there any place in the OT that makes a statement to that effect? And the answer is of course no. But this is how the religious leaders interpreted it, love your neighbor, hate your enemy. Like always they took a section of scripture and twisted it to fit their desires. In Leviticus 19:18 it says, You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. You’ll notice the religious leaders taught love your neighbor…but notice what they omitted…don’t take vengeance, don’t bear grudges…love your neighbor as yourself. As yourself. The religious leaders would ask, one did ask Jesus at on point… ‘who’s your neighbor?”

They said that the ‘neighbor’ meant only an Israelite; so they taught the Jews to love the Jews, but they told them at the same time to regard everybody else not only as an alien but as an enemy. Indeed they went so far as to suggest that it was their business, almost their right and their duty, to hate all such people. We know from secular history of the hatred and the bitterness which divided the ancient world. The Jews regarded all others as dogs and many Gentiles despised the Jews. There was this terrible ‘middle wall of partition’ dividing the world and causing intense animosity in that way. There were some zealous Pharisees and scribes who thought they were honouring God by despising everybody who was not a Jew.

While this is completely wrong, It is not surprising in a sense that they taught what they did and tried to claim justification for it from the Scriptures. This point has often caused, and still causes, considerable difficulty in the minds of many Christian people. Nowhere in the Old Testament, I repeat, do we find ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy’; but we do find many statements that may have encouraged people to hate their enemies. Take for example.

When the Jews entered the Promised Land of Canaan, they were commanded by God, you will remember, to exterminate the Canaanites. They were literally told to exterminate them, and though they did not in fact do this, they should have done so. Then they were told that the Amorites, the Moabites and the Midianites were not to be treated with kindness. That was a specific command from God. Later we read that the memory of the Amalekites was to be blotted out from under heaven because of certain things they had done.

Not only that, it was part of God’s law that if any man murdered another, the relative of the murdered man was allowed to kill the murderer if he could catch him before he had entered one of the cities of refuge. That was part of the law. But perhaps the main difficulty which people encounter as they face this subject is the whole problem of the so-called imprecatory Psalms in which curses are called down upon certain people.

Perhaps one of the most famous examples of this is Psalm 69 in which the Psalmist says: ‘Let their eyes be darkened, that they see not; and make their loins continually to shake. Pour out thine indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them. Let their habitation be desolate; and let none dwell in their tents,’ and so on. There can be little question but that it was Old Testament teaching of that type and order that seemed to the Pharisees and scribes to justify their injunction to the people that, while they were to love their neighbours, they must hate their enemies.

What is the answer to this problem? Surely there is only one way of facing it and that is to regard all these various injunctions, including the imprecatory Psalms, as always being judicial of God and never something individual. In writing his Psalms, the Psalmist is not so much writing about himself as about the Church; and his Psalms, you will find, are concerned in every single instance, in every imprecatory Psalm, with the glory of God. As he talks about the things that are being done to him, he is speaking of things that are being done to God’s people and to God’s Church. It is the honour of God that he is concerned about, it is his zeal for the house of God and for the Church of God that moves him to write these things. There is a judicial principle that we must accept from God’s word, God will judge whom He will and have mercy on whom He will. We may not like that, but God is the sovereign.

There are people who have foolishly taught that the love of God is universal absolutely, and that it does not matter whether a man sins or not. Everybody is going to heaven because God is love; because God is love He can never punish. But that is to deny the teaching of Scripture from beginning to end. God punished Cain, and the ancient world in the flood; He punished the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah; and He punished the children of Israel when they were rebellious.

Then the whole teaching of the New Testament from the lips of Christ Himself is that there is to be a final judgment, that, finally, all the impenitent are going to a lake of fire, to the place where ‘their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched’. If you do not accept this judicial principle, you must just say that there is a contradiction running right through not only the teaching of the Bible, but even through the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself; and that is an impossible position.

The way to resolve the problem, therefore, is this. We must recognize that, ultimately, there is this judicial element. While we are in this life and world, God does indeed cause His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, He blesses people who hate Him, and He does send rain upon those who defy Him. Yes, God goes on doing that. But at the same time He announces to them that, unless they repent, they shall finally be destroyed. Therefore there is no ultimate contradiction.

People like the Moabites and the Amorites and the Midianites had deliberately rejected the things of God, and God, as God and as the righteous Judge Eternal, pronounced judgment upon them. It is the prerogative of God to do that. But the difficulty with the Pharisees and scribes was that they did not draw that distinction. They took this judicial principle and put it into operation in their ordinary affairs and in their daily lives. They regarded this as a justification, on their own part, for hating their enemies, hating anybody they disliked, or anybody who was offensive to them. Thus they deliberately destroyed the principle of God’s law, which is this great principle of love. In contrast to the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees was…

Jesus teaching on loving your enemy

His own teaching, says: ‘But I say unto you, Love your enemies.’ Then, as an illustration: ‘Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.’ Once more we are dealing with exactly the same principle as we had in verses 38–42. It is a definition of what the attitude of the Christian should be towards other people and an illustrations of what it looks like. In the previous paragraph we had that in a negative form, here we have it positively. There the position was that of a Christian subjected to insults by others. They come and strike him a blow, and inflict other kinds of injury upon him. And all our Lord says in the previous paragraph is that you must not hit back.

‘You have heard that it said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil.’ That is the negative. Here, however, our Lord leaves that and goes on to the positive and it is, of course, the very climax of Christian living. Here He leads us on to one of the greatest and most glorious things that are to be found even in His own teaching. The principle that guides and governs our lives, once more, is this simple and yet profound one of our attitude towards ourselves.

It was the principle with which we expounded the previous paragraph. The only thing that enables a man not to hit back, to turn the other cheek and to go the second mile, to give his cloak as well as his coat when that is forcibly demanded, and to help others in desperate need, the vital thing is that a man should be dead to himself, dead to self-interest, dead to a concern about self. But our Lord goes very much further here. We are told we must positively love these people. We are even to love our enemies. It is not simply that we are not to strike back at them, but that we must be positive in our attitude towards them. Our Lord is at pains to have us see that our ‘neighbour’ must of necessity include even our enemy.

This really is one of the greatest principles taught in scripture. Notice how our Lord ends this section and teaching… ‘be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” It all concerns this matter of love. What we are told, therefore, is that you and I in this world of time, faced as we are by problems and difficulties and people and many things that assail us, are to behave as God behaves, are to be like Him, and to treat others as He treats them with love. Do this, says Christ, ‘that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.’ You are to be like that, He says, and to behave like that. That’s how kingdom children behave.

What does this mean? It means that our treatment of others must never depend upon what they are, or upon what they do to us. It must be entirely controlled and governed by our view of them and of their condition. Clearly that is the principle which He teaches. There are people who are evil, foul and unjust; nevertheless God sends rain upon them and causes the sun to shine upon them. Their crops benefit like the crops of the good man; they have certain benefits in life, and experience what is called ‘common grace’. God does not bless only the efforts of the Christian; no, at the same time He blesses the efforts of the unjust, the evil, the unrighteous. That is a common experience. How does He do so? The answer must be that God is not dealing with them according to what they are or according to what they do to Him. That’s a good thing.

What if God dealt with each of us according to how we respond toward Him and others? I’m glad He doesn’t deal with us accordingly. What motivated God to express His love toward us? What motivated John 3:16, For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ What made Him do it? Was it something loving, or lovely, or lovable in us or in the world? Was it something that stimulated the eternal heart of love? Nothing whatsoever. It was entirely and altogether in spite of us. What moved God was His own eternal heart of love unmoved by anything outside itself.

This is an important principle, because according to our Lord that is the kind of love that we are to have, and the love that we are to manifest with respect to others. The whole secret of living this kind of life is that man should be utterly detached to self. As long as a man is living for himself, he is sensitive, watchful and jealous; he is envious and is therefore always reacting immediately to what others do to him. But Christ says, kingdom people are different, they are no longer of this world, nor behave like people of this world because they are of a different kingdom. they are a new creation, therefore they no longer walk according to the old pattern. Kingdom principles guide and determine kingdom people’s conduct and behavior.

Now take a moment and think back on your life, try to recall a single day in your own life. Think of the unkind and cruel thoughts that have come into your mind and heart. What produced them? Somebody else! How much of our thinking and acting and behaviour is entirely governed by other people. It is one of the things that make life so difficult. You see a particular person and your spirit is upset. If you had not seen that person you would not have felt like that. Other people are controlling you. ‘Now’, says Christ in effect, ‘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 or do. Your life must be governed by a new principle in yourself, a new principle of love.’

The moment we have that, we are enabled to see people in a different way. God looks down upon this world and sees all the sin and shame, but He sees it as something that results from the activity of Satan. There is a sense in which He sees the unjust man in a different way. He is concerned about him and about his good and welfare, and He therefore causes the sun to shine upon him and sends the rain upon him. Now we must learn to do that. We must learn to look at other people and say: ‘Yes, they are doing this, that and the other to me. Why?

They are doing it because they are governed by the god of this world, the devil, and are his helpless victims. I must not be annoyed. I see them as hell-bound sinners. I must do everything I can to save them.’ That is God’s way of doing it. God looked at this sinful, arrogant, foul world, and He sent His only begotten Son into it to save it because He saw its condition. What was the explanation of that? He did it for our good and our welfare. And we must learn to do this for other people. We must have a positive concern for their good. The moment we begin to think of it like this it is not so difficult to do what He asks us to do. If we know in our hearts something of this compassion for the lost and the sinful and those who are perishing, then we shall be able to do it. Then we will be able to

Manifest the love of God toward others

Here it is: ‘Bless them that curse you’, which, in more ordinary language, we put like this: reply to the bitter words with kind words. When people say harsh and unkind things we all tend to reply in kind—‘I told him; I answered him; I gave it to him’. And so we put ourselves on their level. But our rule must be kind words instead of bitter words.

Secondly: ‘Do good to them that hate you’, which means benevolent actions for spiteful actions. When somebody has been really spiteful and cruel to us we must not be the same to them. Rather we must respond with actions of benevolence. Though that person may hate God, and is unjust, and is a sinner, and has rebelled against Him, God causes His sun to shine upon him and sends the rain to bless his efforts. Benevolent actions for cruel ones.

Lastly: ‘Pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.’ In other words, when we are being cruelly persecuted by another person, we must pray for them. We must get on our knees. Instead of being bitter and harsh, instead of reacting in these terms of self and in a desire to get our own back, we must remind ourselves that in everything we do we are under God, and before God. Then we must say: ‘Well now; why should this person be behaving like this? What is it? Is it something in me, perchance? Why do they do it? It is because of that horrible, sinful nature, a nature which is going to lead them to hell.’ Then we should go on thinking, until we see them in such a way that we become sorry for them, until we see them as going to their terrible doom, and at last become so sorry for them that we have no time to be sorry for ourselves, until we are so sorry for them, indeed, that we begin to pray for them.

In order that we may be quite clear as to what this means and involves we must understand the difference between loving and liking. Christ said: ‘Love your enemies,’ not ‘Like your enemies’. Now liking is something which is more natural than loving. We are not called upon to like everybody. We cannot do so. But we can be commanded to love. It is ridiculous to command anyone to like another person. We are not going to like every body. That does not matter. What does matter is that we pray for the man whom we do not like. That is not liking but loving him.

People have stumbled at this. ‘Do you mean to say that it is right to love and not to like?’ they ask. I do. What God commands is that we should love a man and treat him as if we do like him. Love is much more than feeling or sentiment. Love in the New Testament is very practical—‘For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.’ Love is active. Love is putting someone else’s needs over our own. The parable of the good Samaritan was not a story of a Samaritan liking a Jew, but of of a Samaritan loving a Jew and putting someone else first.

As Christians We are meant to love our enemies and to do good to them that hate us and to pray for those that despitefully use and malign us; we are meant to be like this. I go further; we can be like this. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love and joy and peace, is given to us, so that, if we are not like this, we are without excuse and we are doing great dishonour to our great and gracious Lord.

But I have a word of comfort for you. For unless I am greatly mistaken, every person confronted by these things feels at this moment condemned. God knows I feel condemned; but I have a word of comfort at this point.

I believe in a God who ‘maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust’. But the God whom I know has done more than that; He has sent His only begotten Son to the cruel cross of Calvary that I might be saved. I fail; we all fail. But, ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’

Do not feel that you are not a Christian if you are not living this kind of life fully. But, above all, having received this comfort, do not presume upon it, but rather feel that it breaks your heart still more because you are not like Christ, and not as you ought to be. If only we all might begin to love like this, and every Christian in the world were loving in this way! If we did, revival would soon come, and who knows what might happen even in the whole world.

‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you,’ and then you will be like your Father who is in heaven.