What Does It Mean To Be Perfect?

Matthew 5:43-48 (NIV)

Love for Enemies

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[i] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children 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 own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

What is love? If you were to ask the “Average Joe” on the street, what would their answer be? If you were to ask 100 people, you would probably get about 100 different answers, about 100 different definitions of what love is.

In today’s world, in today’s society, you might get answers that sound like love. You might get someone to tell you being nice to other people. You might have someone tell you that love is all about physical attraction, sexual desire. Someone might say that love is when you really like someone else.

But I’m not interested in what the world has to say about love. As a follower of Christ, I want to know what God has to say about love.

I think most of us are familiar with John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

I think less of us are familiar with 1 John 3:16, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”

Still further, in Romans 5:8, it says, “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” While we were still sinners, while we were enemies of God, while we were diametrically opposed to the things of God, he still died for us.

Jesus begins this passage in a way that will become familiar to us as we read through the Gospels, “You have heard that it was said.” The people of Israel were following the teachings of their religious leaders, who were, at the time, primarily the Pharisees and Sadducees. What many of these leaders did was to take the commands of God from the Torah, what we know today as the Old Testament, and take them and follow them as closely as they possibly could.

They would take one of the commandments of God and stretch it out to its most logical conclusion, so that they could make sure they were following the laws of God as best as possible.

So here we have a law, from Leviticus 19, to Love your neighbor. So, they took this law, and the thought to themselves, “How can we follow this law to it’s fullest?” Well if you try to spread this law, or this command to its logical conclusion, the opposite of love, so it is thought is hate, and the opposite of your neighbor is your enemy. So, the logical way to fulfil this law is to love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Seems to make sense.

The problem is, this is never what God intended. God has never called us to hate our enemy.

Jesus came, in part, to let us know how God wants us to live. Jesus came as an example of the best way to live.

Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

This was a hard teaching for the Jewish people to hear. You see the enemy for them, at this time in their history, was Rome. It was Rome that stood in the way of the Jewish Nation. It was Rome that stood in the way of practicing religion the way that they believed. It was Rome that oppressed them. It was Rome that took their money. All problems could be traced back to Rome.

And, if it were possible, the people who were hated worse that the Romans? It was the Samaritans. You see, the Samaritans were the descendants of the people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, after it feel to the Persian Empire. While the people of the Southern Kingdom of Judah, had kept themselves pure, the Northerners had intermarried with the occupying forces. Therefore, while they Samaritans claimed a Jewish heritage, they were seen by the “real Jews” of the South, as “half-breeds,” half-Jewish, half-Gentile. To the devout Jew these people were less thank human.