Date:
Text: Matthew 5:43-48
Title: Loving Our Enemy
Theme: Since our heavenly father loves all of his creation with his common grace, as followers of Jesus Christ, we are to love our neighbors, including our enemies.
Pastor Hsueh
Introduction:
Several years ago someone said to me as he was leaving the sanctuary, “Pastor, I don’t understand why ever since I became a Christians, I have been sick a lot.” If you were in my place, how would you have responded? We may have made similar remarks. It could be about our job, visa application, health and family issues. Underneath such statement is the presupposition that when I follow Jesus Christ, he will make my life much easier and smoother. He will help me get what I have wanted in life: wealth, health and prosperity. So when things don’t go my way, my faith in him starts to waver.
Since last October, we have been studying what it means to follow Jesus Christ. What we have learned has certainly made us feel somewhat uncomfortable. It clearly tells us that God is in the business of changing lives. He wants to change us inside out. He wants us to have a humble, loving and peaceful heart like his. His expectation of those who follow him on the issues of murder, adultery, honesty and revenge go beyond the mere external appearances. He aims at our heart. No wonder someone made a comment in the midst of this series of sermon, “No one can keep up to these standards”.
I wish the bar could be lowered. I also feel that the passage before us is probably one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult one for us to submit. In this passage, we see a simple yet hard truth that “Since our heavenly father loves all of his creation with his common grace, as followers of Jesus Christ, we are to love our neighbors, including our enemies.”
I. Who is our neighbor?
In
this section, Jesus begins with these words, Matthew 5:43, “You have heard that
it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” It appears
that this phrase was taken out of the Old Testament. However, in the OT,
Lev.19:18, “love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord” there is nothing on ‘hate
your enemy’. What happened was that down through the years, the Jewish teachers
had corrupted and distorted the original text. Love your neighbor had become
restrictive and exclusive; leading to: Love only your neighbor. By the time of
Jesus, there was this community near
In Jesus' days, the question they had been asking was: Who is my neighbor? According to the parable of the good Samaritan, a neighbor was a fellow human being in need; whose needs we know and are in a position to help. Thus, the neighbor included Jews and non-Jews, people that the Jews despised. This definitely included one’s enemies.
So, who is your enemy? Most of the time, an enemy is someone you know. And to make things worse, it is often someone you know quite well. Then this person mistreated you, disclosed something you share with him/her in private; betraying your trust. You used to be buddies, but now you don’t even talk to each other anymore. An enemy is someone who stepped on you so he/she can get ahead in the corporate ladder. An enemy is someone who persecutes you because you are a Christian. This person could be a member of your own family. Now, do you have an enemy?
II. Our duty to our neighbors.
You have identified who your enemy is. Now, what do you do? We know what to do with friends. We invite each other for meals. We go to trips together. We pray for each other. But how about our enemy? Depending on the degree we have been hurt, our reaction and attitude may be different. Sometime we could be so angry that we say, “go to hell”, or “if I have a gun……”, “I’ll never talk to you again.” “I don’t ever want to be in the same room with you again.”
After 911, many of
the Al Qaeda suspects were sent to the
What does Jesus
teach?
In a parallel passage in Luke 6:27-28, it is even more detailed, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” Jesus clearly spelled out not only are we to love our enemies, but also how.
1. Love with deeds.
Lk 6:27a, “do good to those who hate you..” We are to love, to do good to our enemies. You see, biblical understanding of love is not merely a sentimental emotion, but a service. It is practical. When we see a need, we offer to help, to take care of the need. This love is also humble and sacrificial. To do good to our enemy requires us to put down our own ego and help the one who has hurt us. An enemy seeks to harm us, but we seek to do good to the enemy.
To some of us, it may mean to cook for our enemy when he is sick; offering him help when he has problems with his assignment or project. Even though they have harmed us physically, emotionally or spiritually, we do good to them. There is more to this.
2. Love with words.
6:28a, “….bless those who curse you…” This implies spoken words to the enemy. Yes, we have to talk to him/her. Moreover, bless means to wish somebody well. It is the opposite of curse. When our enemy curses us, it means, they speak words to wish the worse of us. Such as, I wish you fail this test or project. I wish you’ll get sick. I wish the worst will come to you and your family. You’ll never be able to work again. But bless is just the opposite. I wish God's goodness be with you all the time. I wish you success in what you do. I wish your life will change for the better.
You see, it’s difficult to open our mouth to some one we hate, to our enemies. It’s easier to say curse words to them. But it is almost impossible to say words of blessing to them. But Jesus' teaching is quite clear, isn’t it? Not only have we to talk to them, but to also “…bless those who curse you…”
3. Love with prayers.
If you think loving with deeds and words are difficult, how about praying for your enemies? 6:28b, “pray for those who abuse you….” Deeds and words are directed to the enemy. Prayer is directed to God. To pray for someone means asking God to grant him what is good for him. Asking God for protection, provision for him and his family, persevering him in his daily walk with God. It’s easy to pray for friends, but for enemies; for the one who has hurt us?
If you don’t like someone, it is hard to come to God and pretend everything is OK and pray for him. It is even more difficult to come to God and pray for our enemy. An early church father, Chrysostom, said, “praying for our enemies is the highest summit of self-control.” So he developed 9 steps that can help us to pray for our enemies. Here are the 9 steps. 1, don’t take evil initiatives. 2, not to revenge, 3. be quiet, 4. suffer wrong, 5. surrender to the evil doers, 6. not to hate, 7 and 8. love and do him good and 9. pray for him. Bonhoeffer wrote that to pray for your enemy is the supreme command.
How we wish this is a typo. But it is clear, right? Love your enemies, pray for those who abuse you……Do we remember one of the first words Jesus uttered on the cross? “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” He was praying, asking forgiveness for those who put him on the cross. He was praying for his enemies. He was walking his talk.
III. Loving our enemies reflects that we are children of God.
Having clearly expressed such high standards towards one’s enemies, Jesus then continues and tell us why. Biblical instructions are never given in a vacuum. There is always a reason.
1. God's common grace to all.
5:45, “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.”
When we see a prodigy child entering college at 12, or a youth committing some hideous crimes, we wonder what the parents are like. Children’s behavior often reflect the parents’.
How does loving our enemies reflect we are children of our heavenly father? “…he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” This tells us that God's love is for all. He sends rain and sun to the good and evil. He gives health to all. He enables love in the families, whether or not they are believers. Not just Christians know how to love. We have seen non-Christians being very loving and generous, sometimes even more so than the Christians. This is what we call God's common grace. God is good to all.
This common grace is different from the special or the saving grace. To some, God gives us that special grace. It is this special grace that enables us to see our worthlessness, vile, and sinfulness. It is this special grace that causes us to see that we have no eyes to see God, no ears to hear him, no taste to enjoy his joy, and no intelligence to know Him. It is this special grace that enables us to be repentant of our sins and be saved by him from God's wrath and the control of Sin.
In this passage, Jesus is talking about God's common grace, the grace enables man to experience God's love and goodness. This grace enables the sinners, God's enemies to experience his goodness.
So when we love and pray for our enemies, wishing them well, we are actually doing what God is doing through his common grace. This is how we reflect and demonstrate that we are the children of our Heavenly Father. Our behaviors demonstrate who we belong to.
2. Be perfect as the Heavenly Father.
Loving our enemy is a very high standard and expectation. It is also telling us that as God's children, we are different from the world. We must do more than the social norm. In the ancient and present society, it is easy to love and pray for our friends, those we love. Friends invite friends over dinner. Friends care for friends. Friends greet friends. Jesus says that even the tax collectors and the gentiles can do that. In that society, the tax collectors were those despised by others. No one wanted to associate with the tax collectors and the gentiles. But even the gentiles and tax collectors know how to love and greet their own brothers and friends. Therefore the children of God must have standards and expectations much higher than the social norm.
Again, Bonhoeffer writes, “What makes the Christians different from others is the peculiar, extraordinary, unusual. It is more, it is beyond all that. We rise above the social norm.
Yes, when we love and pray for our enemies, we are not only reflecting that we are the children of our heavenly father, but in vs 48 we are told that, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
This is the reason for such moral and ethical standards for God's children. Why are we different from the rest of the world? Because, we are to be perfect, complete just like our father in heaven. You see, as we obey and follow Jesus' instructions in this book, we are becoming more and more like Jesus Christ.
Conclusion:
The
play, Raisin in the Sun is about an African American family inherits $10,000
from their father’s life insurance policy. The mother sees this as the chance
to escape the ghetto of
As you may suspect, the ‘friend’ skips down and all the money gone, and so is their dream. The sister lashes into him with a barrage of ugly words, there is no end to her hatred for the brother. The mother interrupts her and says, “I thought I taught you to love him.” “Love him? There is nothing left to love.”
And the mother responds, “There is always something left to love. …I don’t mean for yourself and the family because we lost all the money. I mean for your brother: for what he’s been through and what it has done to him…..When do you think is the time to love somebody the most: when they have done good and made things easy for anyone? (NO.) It is when he is at the lowest and can’t believe in himself because the world has done whipping him and brought him great shame….”
Isn’t this how God has loved us? As we follow him, as we strife to be like him, we are also to love those who have done us wrong.