27 But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
28 Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
29 And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also.
30 Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.
31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
32 For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.
33 And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same.
34 And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again.
35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
36 Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
37 Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:
38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
Introduction
Sometime ago Salman Rushdie, a British author from India, wrote a book, The Satanic Verses. The book created quite a stir. It infuriated Muslims the world over and the ayatollah of Iran said that the book so insulted Mohammad and Islamic people around the world that the author of this book deserved to die. And he offered to anyone who would kill him an enormous award. About this same time, there was a movie entitled The Last Temptation of Christ that many people felt insulted Christ and Christians everywhere. But in stark contrast to the way the Islamic leaders responded to their critics and those who insulted them, there were no threats made to my knowledge on the life of the producer. He did not have to go into hiding. To the contrary, he appeared quite often on talk shows to defend his work. And none of the films were pulled from the theaters. Eventually they were shown in every theater that they intended to show them on. And I think perhaps these two events help us to see as well as anything the stark contrast between the high moral standards and ethics of Christianity and the standards of the Muslim faith. Christian people do not seek to eliminate or to assassinate or to exterminate their enemies. Rather they seek to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ that say explicitly that you are to love your enemies. And no passage of scripture in all the Bible sets out our responsibility to other people quite as clearly and quite as vividly as the one that this sermon addresses. Jesus is saying to us that our responsibility to our enemies, to those who try to hurt us, to those who criticize us, to those who insult us, is to love them in return, to be like our heavenly Father who loves those who do not love him.
As I have thought about this passage before us and what it says to us about Christian love and Christian responsibility, to those who oftentimes try to hurt us, I have discovered three truths that we need to know about Christian love.
First of all, the passage suggests to us that Christian love is positive. I think in particular verse 31, where our Lord says, “As you would that men should do to you, do ye also to them.” There is that very positive statement that is sandwiched in between two clear commands from Jesus that we are to love our enemies. And it suggests to us that Christian love is positive.
Second, the passage suggests to us that Christian love is excessive. If you will look carefully at verses 32-34, he keeps talking about doing more than other people do. Doing more than is expected of you. Doing more than other people would expect you to do, Christian love is not only positive, Christian love is excessive.
Third, he suggests to us that Christian love is transforming. As we love other people, our enemies, those who hurt us and those who say bad things about us--we become like our Father in heaven for that’s the way he treats his enemies, that’s the way he treats his critics. And thus, we by loving become more and more like him. So Christian love is positive, it is excessive, it is transforming, and as you know it is desperately needed in our world today.
I want us to think about those three ideas as we think about our Lord’s command, as we would that others should do unto us, we should do also unto them, and we are to love our enemies. I don’t suppose there is any command from Jesus that has been discussed more and debated more than this clear simple command that we are to love our enemies. I must confess to you that I do not understand all that Jesus meant in all that he said in this passage of scripture. There are many of his statements that I have grappled with for thirty-five years. I wonder how do you put them into practice in your daily life. If a man smites you on your cheek, you are to turn the other cheek to him also. If a man takes away your cloak, then you are to give him your coat also. If a man wants to borrow from you, you are to loan it to him expecting nothing in return. And I grapple in my own life and in my own relationships and in my preaching to understand what Jesus meant by all of that.
Let me tell you in the midst of all that Jesus said that I do not understand, there is enough that I do understand that will keep me busy the rest of my life. Jesus said, “You are to love your enemies.” If we are to obey that command, then we must understand what it means and the meaning of all of this is bound up in the meaning of the word love that Jesus uses here. You know in the Greek language that there is more than one word for love. In the English language there is just one word. And when you say I love you, it may mean that a young man is saying to his sweetheart, that you are the dearest thing in all the world to me and I want to marry you and I want you to be my companion for life.
You may be talking about a romantic, a passionate kind of love. Or it may be the kind of love that a parent has for a child or a brother has for a brother—that warm feeling that we have for those that are near and dear unto us. Or it may mean the kind of love that God has for the world. We have one word for love, but in the Greek language there were three words.
There is the word eros, which describes a romantic, passionate kind of love, the kind of love that a young man would have for his sweetheart. That is not the word that Jesus uses here when he says you are to love your enemies. There is another Greek word, phileo, which describes a warm, affection of the heart—a brotherly kind of love, the kind of love that we have for our nearest and for our dearest, a deep and warm feeling. But that is not the word that Jesus uses here.
There is a third word that is used in scripture for God’s kind of love. It is the word agape that describes an active good will toward another person. It describes the kind of action that is always seeking the well-being of someone else. That is the word Jesus uses when he says, “You are to love your enemies.” It means that we will deliberately go out of our way to be kind to another person. No matter how they may treat us, no matter what they may do to us, even though they may insult us and injure us and ill treat us that we still always try to do that which is the highest and the best for them.
Jesus did not tell us that we were to have warm feeling for every person. He did not tell us that we were to have romantic feelings for everybody else because that wouId be impossible. But he did say we were to always actively seek that which was best and is best for other people. And in so doing, we are loving them as God loves us. Oftentimes the love that we bear for other people is the love that we cannot help. We talk about falling in love with someone else as though it is something that is almost beyond our control. Sometimes a young man and a young lady, a man and a woman fall in love and they say we did not intend for it to happen, we did not plan for it to happen. It is not something we (or you) intended it to be. And there is that kind of love that just happens to us.
But the kind of love that Jesus is talking about here is not something of the heart, it is something of the will. It is not an emotion that wells up within us. It is something that we by the grace of God are determined to do; it is something that by God’s grace we can do. We cannot always have warm feelings toward everybody—especially toward those who curse us and who injure us and who would harm us in other ways. But though we may not have warm feelings toward them, by the grace of God we can always act in such a way that we are seeking what is highest and best for them. That’s the way God treats us. That’s the way God treats all people. That’s his kind of love and that’s the kind of love that we are to have.
One of the wonderful things about scripture is that it teaches us that God’s grace operating in our lives can enable us to rise above those around us so that we treat them in a godly sort of way—not as our old nature would treat them. I think in particular about the apostle Paul when he was locked up in the Roman prison. He says in the book of 2 Timothy chapter four, “At my first answer, [having reference to his trial when he was called before the Roman emperor to give a defense for his faith], no man stood with me, all men forsook me.”
Paul is talking about Christian people who knew about his imprisonment, who knew about his trial, and who knew about his charges. They could have stood beside him as character witnesses; they could have testified in his behalf, but Paul said at that time, “When I stood trial, no man stood with me, all men forsook me.”
And then he makes this most remarkable statement, “I pray God it shall not be laid to their charge.” Paul talks about those people who let him down in a time of desperate need, in a time when they should have stood by him, they let him down, but rather than having bitterness and anger and resentment and a desire to get even, he prays, “I pray God it shall not be laid to their charge.”
That prayer was not original with the apostle Paul because he had heard that same prayer prayed in his own behalf years before. He had been present at the stoning of Stephen. He had not participated in the stoning himself. He had not thrown any rocks but he held the coats of those who did, and he saw this godly man Stephen as he died, pray this very same prayer for those who stoned him to death, “I pray God this shall not be laid to their charge.” But that prayer that Paul prayed and the prayer that Stephen prayed did not originate with them. It goes all the way back to Calvary. Jesus, while dying on the old rugged cross, prays for those who had nailed him to that cross, for those who had shoved the spear in his side and the crown of thorns on his head, prayed for them, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” And the love of God that flowed through Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary flowed to and through his servant Stephen. It eventually flowed to and through the apostle Paul so that all of these men could pray essentially the same thing, “God be merciful to those who are punishing me and hurting me.” And we can pray that same prayer also. With the apostle Paul we can pray for those who let us down. With Stephen we can pray for those who knock us down. With Jesus we can pray for those who nail us down. The grace of God that flowed in and through those servants of God in days gone by is still operative in our world today. And it is possible for us to seek what is best, the highest and the noblest are our enemies, for those who curse us, for those who hurt us, for those who would despitefully use us.
So when Jesus said, “You are to love your enemies,” he was not talking about having some warm feeling for them. He was talking about always seeking that which is highest and best for them. That is the Christian ethic, that is the Christian standard, and it is a challenge to every one of us. And he comes to sum that up in the most positive way in verse 31, when he says, “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”
1. Positive.
Great teachers down through the years have said essentially the same thing that Jesus said. Jewish teachers, Greek philosophers, and people from other parts of the world have communicated something similar. But almost invariably when they speak words similar to the Golden Rule, they couch them in negative language. They say in essence that what you do not want men to do to you, then do not do to them. They couch their teachings in the negative. But Jesus came to say to us in a very positive way, “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” The essence of Christianity does not consist in not doing bad things. The heart of Christianity is actively doing good things. We do not simply not do things to other people that we do not want them to do to us. We rather take the initiative, we take the positive, and we seek to do to them and for them what we want them to do to us and for us. Jesus then is saying that his love—Christian love—is essentially positive.
2. Excessive.
Second, it is excessive. I want you to notice that in verses 32-34, he asked that same question three times, “What thank have you? If you love them that love you, then what thank have you? If you do good to them that do good to you, what thank have you? If you lend to them and you hope to receive from them, what thank have you?” That is to say, “What is commendable about that? What is praiseworthy about that? The unbelieving world, the godless world, the non-Christian world acts like that.”
But he is suggesting that the Christian is excessive in his love and in his relationship to other people by doing more than is required or expected. We do more than other people do. So very often people make the claim seeking to justify their behavior, “I am just as good as my neighbor is.” That may be true, but whoever said that your neighbor’s conduct is the standard for the Christian? You might phrase that another way. Instead of saying, “I am just as good as my neighbor is,” say, “I’m just as bad as my neighbor is.” Your neighbor’s conduct is never the standard of righteousness for the Christian. Rather, our standard is the standard of God himself. If we simply do good to other people who do good to us, if we speak well of people who speak well of us, if we are kind to people who are kind to us, then there is nothing commendable or praiseworthy about that. The unbelieving world, the godless world, the non-Christian world is just like that. The Christian standard is always higher, it is always better. It is always more excessive than the unbelieving world. Jesus is saying that God’s kind of love is excessive. It does more than is required, more than is necessary, more than is expected, more than other people do.
3. Transforming.
Then Jesus says that his love is transforming. I want you to notice the latter part of verse 35. As he talks about loving our enemies, doing good, lending to people, and not hoping to receive anything in return, he says, “And ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.”
You see God loves all people, even those who don’t love him in return. He is kind to those who are not kind to him. He is gentle to those who would be abusive to him. He is always reaching out to saint and sinner alike. Jesus expressed it this way in Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount: “He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). God does not have favorites among us so that he loves those who love him and he helps those who help him, but rather God is benevolent and kind and gracious to all people. He is simply saying that if we want to be like our heavenly Father, then we must take that extra step. We must go beyond the ordinary, beyond the obvious, beyond the expected, and love even those who do not love us. In this way we become like our heavenly Father, like God himself.
He reminds us also that ultimately we shall be judged as we judge other people, we will be forgiven as we forgive other people, and we shall be condemned as we condemn other people. He simply reminds us that the standards that we use, the measures that we apply to others shall in eternity be applied to us. If we want God to be gracious to us in judgment, we need to be gracious to others in judgment. If we want God to forgive us abundantly, we must be willing to forgive other people abundantly. It is the Christian way. It is without a doubt the highest ethical standard the world has ever known. It is not an eye for an eye, it is not a tooth for a tooth, it is not kill your enemy, it is not to assassinate and eliminate those who insult you or insult your religion. It is rather going above and beyond anything anyone ever would imagine or respect. It is loving your enemies and doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Some of you have seen the movie about Goldie Meir. I saw it, but I missed an important line and Bill McCarter reminded me of it later. Someone asked her, “Will there ever be peace between the Arabs and the Jews?” And she replied, “Yes, when the Arabs love their children as much as they hate us.” Only the grace of God in a person’s life can turn hate into love and can enable us in our daily lives, in the workplace, on the schoolyard, in the home, even in the church, to love our enemies and to do good to those who would hurt us. May we come to the Savior whose grace is always positive in its working in our lives, always excessive in leading us to do more and more, and always making us more like the heavenly Father.