How To Love Your Enemies - Matthew 5:44-48 Series

Matthew 5:43 You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Introduction

For all those people knew it would be a day just like any other day. There is a man in His early thirties, standing on a hillside and preaching a sermon to His disciples. But just about half-way through this sermon He uttered a sentence that rattled the whole world. This sentence was so powerful and called for an ethic so high and so far above what any other religion ever taught that it has kept the attention of the world and amazed humanity for two thousand years.

Matthew 5:43 You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Right at the very moment I was typing that last sentence on Thursday morning I got an email asking for prayer for a pastor near the area where Dave and Carolyn are working in Russia. His enemies had been publicly slandering him for months through the media, and finally last Thursday, as he was leaving a prayer meeting, they shot him in the head. And if that pastor survived Jesus’ word to him would have been to love those people who did that.

Selfless love

That is a shock and a jolt to this world because this love runs so counter to the very nature of their kind of love. Their love is based mainly on selfishness. Put yourself first, then worry about loving others. But putting yourself first and then loving others runs into a brick wall when someone slaps you on the cheek. Jesus calls for a kind of love that requires crucifying self. This kind of love is utterly impossible for the world. And at first glance it seems impossible for us. How do you obey a command like that?

Who is your enemy?

Before we talk about how, let’s make sure we know what Jesus means by the word enemy. Jesus defines that word here with a very wide range – everything from those who are persecuting you to those you do not feel like greeting. Someone shoots you in the head – that is an enemy. You see someone coming and you don’t really feel like smiling at them or giving them a warm, happy greeting – that is an enemy. And everything in between. It is anybody with whom you have any kind of hard relations.

It might be someone close who has hurt you, or it might be someone you never met. There are Democrats who cannot even say the name “George W. Bush” without clenching their teeth. And Republicans who would throw a party if President Obama fell down into a bottomless pit somewhere. But if we are going to obey Christ we had better love George Bush and Barak Obama.

The Motivation

How do we obey a command like this? It seems impossible for us just to squeeze out a warm, friendly greeting to certain people, much less love someone who smears you with lies in the media and then shoots you in the head. So how do we do this?

What kind of motivation would be powerful enough to move the heart to love like this? Ted Engstrom tells the story of an American tourist who was passing by a leprosarium, and saw a lovely young missionary cleaning the putrid sores of a leprous beggar prior to his entering the leprosarium. It was so revolting and disgusting to the man that he could not even take any pictures. And in his disgust he said, “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars.” To which the young woman responded, “Neither would I.” She was doing it because she had a motivation more compelling than a million dollars. Loving like God loves requires an incredibly high and powerful motivation.

There might be someone who is causing you so much pain right now that even if someone paid you a million dollars you would not be able to love them. But Jesus gives us a motive that is so much more compelling than a million dollars that it is enough to move us to love anyone. Actually He gives us two motivations. The first one is in verse 45.