Redemptive Relationships
“Loving Your Enemies”
Matthew 5:43-48
Matthew 5:43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, 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;
I. The Mistaken Assumption
a. Conventional wisdom of Jesus day
Barnes Notes on Matthew 5:43
“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy…” - The command to love our neighbor (which Jews took to mean Jews only) was a law of God, Lev_19:18. That we must therefore hate our enemy was an inference drawn from it by the Jews. They supposed that if we loved the one, we must of course hate the other. They were total strangers to that great, special law of religion which requires us to love both.
Conventional wisdom is often convenient but it is also often in conflict with the commands given to us in God’s Word. Even many within the fellowship of the church find it convenient to ignore this great truth concerning how we are to treat our enemies.
A reporter was interviewing an old man on his 100th birthday. "What are you most proud of?" he asked. "Well,” said the man, "I don't have an enemy in the world." "What a beautiful thought! How inspirational!" said the reporter. "Yep," added the centenarian, "outlived every last one of them."
Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah.
"To put the general feeling in the words of Tacitus, the Jews kept close together, and were ever most liberal to one another; but they were filled with bitter hatred of all others. They would neither eat nor sleep with strangers; and the first thing which they taught their proselytes was to despise the gods, to renounce their own country, and to rend the bonds which had bound them to parents, children or kindred...",
"To begin with, every Gentile child, so soon as born, was to be regarded as unclean. Those [Gentiles] who actually worshipped mountains, hills, bushes, etc, idolaters, should be cut down with the sword. But as it was impossible to exterminate heathenism, rabbinic legislation kept certain definite objects in view, which may be summarized:
To prevent Jews from being inadvertently led into idolatry
To avoid all participation in idolatry
Not to do anything which might aid the heathen in their worship; and, beyond all this...?
Not to give pleasure, or even help, to heathens. The latter involved a most dangerous principle, capable of almost indefinite application by fanaticism."
From the Talmudic Tractate Abhodah Zarah, on the subject of idolatry, paraphrased
Even the Mishnah (the first written document after the Bible produced about 130 years after the destruction of the second Temple) goes so far as to forbid aid to a mother in the hour of her need, or nourishment to her babe, in order not to bring up a child for idolatry. But this is not all. Heathens were, indeed, not to be forced into danger, but yet not to be delivered from it. "The best among the Gentiles, Kill; the best among serpents, crush its head."
Still more terrible was the fanaticism which directed that heretics and those who had left the Jewish faith should be thrown into actual danger, or, if they were already in it, to remove any chance for them to escape. No contact of any kind was to be had with such - not even to call medical aid in case of danger to life, since it was deemed, that he who had to do with heretics was in imminent peril of becoming one himself, and that, if a heretic returned to the true faith, he should die at once - partly to pay for his sin, and partly from fear of relapse.
The Jew had a low estimate of the Gentile's character. The most vile and unnatural crimes were imputed to Gentiles. They considered it not safe to leave cattle in their charge, to allow their women to nurse infants, or their physicians to attend the sick, nor to walk in their company, without taking precautions against sudden attacks.
The Gentiles should, as far as possible, be altogether avoided, except in cases of necessity or for the sake of business. They and theirs were defiled; their houses unclean, as containing idols or things dedicated to idols. Their feasts and their joyous occasions were polluted by idolatry. You could not leave the room if a Gentile was in it because he might, carelessly or on purpose, defile the wine or food on the table, or the oil and wheat in the cupboard.
Under such circumstances, everything must be regarded as unclean. Three days before a heathen festival, and three days after, all business or contact with heathen was avoided, for fear of giving help or pleasure. Jews were to avoid passing through a city where there was an idolatrous feast - nay, they were not even to sit down within the shadow of a tree dedicated to idol-worship. Such a tree's wood was polluted; if it was used in cooking, the bread was unclean; if a shuttle of a loom had been made from it, all the cloth woven on it was forbidden. In addition, if such cloth had been mixed with other pieces of cloth, or if a garment made with it had been placed with other garments, all of the garments became unclean.
Jewish workmen were not to help in building basilicas, stadiums, or places where judicial sentences were pronounced by the heathen. If was not lawful to rent houses or sell cattle to Gentiles. Milk drawn by a heathen, if a Jew had not been present to watch it, bread and oil prepared by them, were unlawful. Their wine was wholly forbidden; the mere touch of a heathen polluted a whole cask of wine. Even to smell of heathen wine was forbidden! If wine had been dedicated to an idol, it defiled a man to carry on a stick even an olive's weight of it. Other wine, if prepared by a heathen, was prohibited for personal use and for trading. Wine prepared by a Jew, however, which had been deposited in the custody of a Gentile, was prohibited for personal use, but it was permitted to sell it.
II. The Master’s Assertion
a. Jesus contradicts the Rabbinic teaching
b. Jesus defines the conduct that is required
Of Matthew 5:44 Adam Clarke writes:
Love your enemies - This is the most sublime piece of morality ever given to man. Has it appeared unreasonable and absurd to some? It has. And why? Because it is natural to man to avenge himself, and plague those who plague him; and he will ever find abundant excuse for his conduct, in the repeated evils he receives from others; for men are naturally hostile to each other. Jesus Christ design’s to make men happy. Now he is necessarily miserable who hates another. Our Lord prohibits that only which, from its nature, is opposed to man’s happiness. This is therefore one of the most reasonable precepts in the universe. But who can obey it? None but he who has the mind of Christ. But I have it not. Seek it from God; it is that kingdom of heaven which Christ came to establish upon earth. See on Mat_3:2 (note). This one precept is a sufficient proof of the holiness of the Gospel, and of the truth of the Christian religion. Every false religion flatters man, and accommodates itself to his pride and his passions. None but God could have imposed a yoke so contrary to self-love; and nothing but the supreme eternal love can enable men to practice a precept so insupportable to corrupt nature. Sentiments like this are found among Asiatic writers, and in select cases were strongly applied; but as a general command this was never given by them, or any other people. It is not an absolute command in any of the books which they consider to be Divinely inspired. Sir William Jones lays by far too much stress on the casual introduction of such sentiments as this in the Asiatic writers. See his Works, vol. i. p. 168, where the sentiment is connected with circumstances both extravagant and unnatural; and thus it is nullified by the pretended recommendation.
Bless them that curse you - Åõëïãåéôå, give them good words for their bad words. See the note on Gen_2:3.
Do good to them that hate you - Give your enemy every proof that you love him. We must not love in tongue, but in deed and in truth.
Pray for them which despitefully use you - Åðçñåáæïíôùí from åðé against, and Áñçò Mars, the heathen god of war. Those who are making continual war upon you, and constantly harassing and calumniating you. Pray for them - This is another exquisitely reasonable precept. I cannot change that wicked man’s heart; and while it is unchanged he will continue to harass me: God alone can change it: then I must implore him to do that which will at once secure the poor man’s salvation, and contribute so much to my own peace.
And persecute you - Äéùêïíôùí, those who press hard on and pursue you with hatred and malice accompanied with repeated acts of enmity.
In this verse our Lord shows us that a man may be our enemy in three different ways.
First, in his heart, by hatred.
Secondly, in his words by cursing or using direful imprecations (êáôáñùìåíïõò) against us.
Thirdly, in his actions, by continually harassing and abusing us.
He shows us also how we are to behave to those.
The hatred of the first we are to meet with love.
In The Grace of Giving, Stephen Olford tells of a Baptist pastor during the American Revolution, Peter Miller, who lived in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, and enjoyed the friendship of George Washington. In Ephrata also lived Michael Wittman, an evil-minded sort who did all he could to oppose and humiliate the pastor. One day Michael Wittman was arrested for treason and sentenced to die. Peter Miller traveled seventy miles on foot to Philadelphia to plead for the life of the traitor. "No, Peter," General Washington said. "I cannot grant you the life of your friend." "My friend!" exclaimed the old preacher. "He's the bitterest enemy I have." "What?" cried Washington? "You've walked seventy miles to save the life of an enemy? That puts the matter in different light. I'll grant your pardon." And he did. Peter Miller took Michael Wittman back home to Ephrata--no longer an enemy but a friend.
The cursings or evil words of the second, we are to meet with good words and blessings.
And the repeated injurious acts of the third, we are to meet with continual prayer to God for the man’s salvation.
III. The Meaningful Admonition
a. The attributes of such a life
Matthew 5:45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven…” Have you ever heard anyone say that a child looks just like their father or mother, that they bear a resemblance to their parent? That’s because of the DNA, the genetic connection to the parent. When we love our enemies, it is at that point that we are more like Jesus than at any other time. 1 Peter 2:23 “Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:”
The greatest, grandest holiest phrase in the human vocabulary is “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God,” but for us this phrase holds out the most awful unspeakable terror for how can we know its meaning with our finite understanding and we often find ourselves terrified and intimidated by it’s mystery except for this one thing; “The Word was made flesh…” and the truth is we can never comprehend the meaning of the first phrase until we are introduced to the second. We can grasp this great phrase now because of Galilee, Gabbatha, Golgotha and the Garden. To quote F. W. Boreham, “And thus the most awful, the most terrible, and the incomprehensible word that human lips could frame has become the most winsome and charming in the whole vocabulary. God is Jesus, and Jesus is God! “The Word was made flesh…” have made it wonderfully plain.
John Greenleaf Whittier wrote;
The dear Lord’s best interpreters
Are humble human souls;
The gospel of a life like his,
Is more than books or scrolls.
Friend, we should love God, our brothers, one another, our neighbors, and our spouses but when we love our enemy we are doing what God has done for us, Romans 5:10 “…when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” When we love our enemy, we show that we possess the Spirit of God, who loves without distinction and sends sunshine and rain on “…the just and the unjust.”
b. The attraction of such a life
Matthew 5:48 Be ye therefore perfect ... - The Saviour concludes this part of the discourse by commanding his disciples to be “perfect.” This word commonly means “finished, complete, pure, holy.” Originally, it is applied to a piece of mechanism, as a machine that is complete in its parts. Applied to people, it refers to completeness of parts, or perfection, where no part is defective or wanting. Thus, Job 1:1 is said to be “perfect;” that is, not holy as God, or “sinless” - for fault is afterward found with him Job 9:20; Job 42:6; but his piety was “proportionate” - had a completeness of parts was consistent and regular. He exhibited his religion as a prince, a father, an individual, a benefactor of the poor. He was not merely a pious man in one place, but uniformly. He was consistent everywhere. See the notes at that passage. This is the meaning in Matthew. Be not religious merely in loving your friends and neighbors, but let your piety be shown in loving your enemies; imitate God; let your piety be “complete, proportionate, regular.” This every Christian may be; this every Christian must be.
Barnes Notes on Matthew 5:43-44
We are bound to love our enemies. This is a law of Christianity, original and unique. No system of religion but Christianity has required it, and no act of Christian piety is more difficult. None shows more the power of the grace of God; none is more ornamental to the character; none more like God; and none furnishes better evidence of piety. He that can meet a man kindly who is seeking his hurt; who can speak well of one that is perpetually slandering and cursing him; that can pray for a man that abuses, injures, and wounds him: and that can seek heaven for him that wishes his damnation, is in the way to life. This is religion, beautiful as its native skies; pure like its Source; kind like its Author; fresh like the dews of the morning; clear and diffusive like the beams of the rising sun; and holy like the feelings and words that come from the bosom of the Son of God. He that can do this need not doubt that he is a Christian. He has caught the very spirit of the Saviour, and he must inherit eternal life.
Romans 12:19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink:
21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
In Context, Mary Marty retells a parable from the Eye of the Needle newsletter:
"A holy man was engaged in his morning meditation under a tree whose roots stretched out over the riverbank. During his meditation he noticed that the river was rising, and a scorpion caught in the roots was about to drown. He crawled out on the roots and reached down to free the scorpion, but every time he did so, the scorpion struck back at him. "An observer came along and said to the holy man, 'Don't you know that's a scorpion, and it's in the nature of a scorpion to want to sting?' "To which the holy man replied, 'That may well be, but it is my nature to save, and must I change my nature because the scorpion does not change its nature?"
