How To Love Your Enemies (Part 2)

Matthew 5:43-48

 Jesus has told us ways we can practically forgive our enemies. Next, he will give us two reasons why we should do this. The benefits, if you like of forgiving and blessing those who persecute us. Look at verse 45 

45 that you may be his children/son 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”.

(Matthew 5:45)

The argument here is that God benefits everybody Sinners and Saints alike, believers and blasphemers he just blesses everybody. He does not provide sunlight and rain based on the merits of people but only on a desire to do what’s best for their welfare of all people even though they’ve broken his law and broken his heart, God blesses everybody.

The point is you should do the same thing and here’s the reason why you should do the same thing. Answer, that you may be the Sons/Children of your father in heaven.  That sounds strange doesn’t it, saying that you’ve got to love your enemies in order to be a child of God. There are a couple reasons we might want to question this, here is one. 1 John 1:12 says’ 

“But as many as received him to them gave he the power to become the sons of God even to them that believe in his name”.

(1 John 1: 12)

So elsewhere in the writings of the New Testament we can see that those who embrace and believe in Jesus and already become a child. Some people get hung up on the word receive in that verse, like it’s about praying a prayer to ask Jesus to come into you r heart. Now of course that is a right and proper thing to do, but that is not what that verse is saying. The previous prior verse 11 says,  “he came into his own and his own received him not he came to the Jewish people, and they did not welcome him”.  but as many as welcome him to them gave you the power to become the sons of God even to believe in his name”.

How do you become a child of God, by trusting Jesus Christ for the gift of eternal life right. So, this verse is not saying it, you have got to do this to be a child of God.  

It is by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves it is a gift of God is not of works lest any man should boast.

If this Matthew verse is saying you’ve got to love your enemies to go to heaven, then you go to heaven by love not by faith. But salvation is by faith the Bible makes that explicitly clear un multiple occasions. In fact, a whole book in the Bible is written to clarify that truth. It is called the gospel of John where the word believe occurs in 99 times.  

Then what does this, Sermon on the Mount, verse mean. Look at the verse it plainly says that you may be the sons, of your father the verse acknowledges that God’s already is your father. If he is your father and if you're already his son, how do you become a son. Well obviously, this is not saying that you have to do this in order to become his son but in order to become like his son. To clarify this mean two things firstly this is referring to inheritance, a son is intitled to receive the blessing, the natural inheritance of a son of God and it is also talking about you becoming like him. To become a son of God by faith you become like your father by imitating his son and he will bless you. It continues, “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous”.

Everybody sinners and Saints believers and  non-believers, he blesses everyone with the general blessing of creation, but this is talking about the additional blessings of the birth right of God’s children. By being forgiving and being peacemakers, we demonstrate our parentage by our moral resemblance to God, the God who is love. You do not love your enemies in order to become a child of God but because you are a child of God you are then able to love your enemies.

In Hebrew a son of peace, is a peaceful man, so a son of God, means we are God like. In other words, by going around blessing people they way we are told here, we are a chip off the old block, so to speak. We are like Jesus, and we are being like and becoming like our father in heaven. So, the first reason you should go around blessing people and loving your enemies is because by blessing them doing good and praying for them, it will that makes you more like God in our nature and some people will be pointed towards God by our example.

There’s a secondary reason, look at verse 46.

If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

(Matthew 5: 46-47)

What’s he saying he’s saying is if you go around and love just your fellow believers and your children of your own people then what kind of reward can you expect for that.  Then he takes the most despised people in that society, the tax collector, and he uses them as an example. He says, why even tax collectors  love their family,  even they go around and say Shalom to everyone. By using the tax collector that that doesn’t create an image in our mind of a reviled person as much as it did in Jesus’s day. The tax collectors of Jesus times, where the instrument of a occupying military force. So if we were to try and say something like this today we might say something like even a gangster loves his family The big reward comes from loving your enemies. As a matter of fact, earlier in the sermon on the mount chapter 5 verse 12 he said, “great is your reward in heaven if you do these things “.  4th century theologian, Augustine of Hippo, said.

To love those who love you is human. To hate those who love you is demonic, but to love those who hate you is divine

Did you get that to love those who love you already is human, that’s what he’s saying everybody does that tax collectors despots gangsters do that, that’s just human nature. If you take it to the other extreme and you hate those who love you that’s demonic, but if you love those who hate you, then you flip it and that is divine. 

God rewards those who return evil with good and if you know that God specially rewards you for that, it should be a powerful motivation to love other people, even you enemies. One further the little point it’s very brief it’s the conclusion that Jesus draws from all this passage, look at verse 48. Therefore, you shall.

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

(Matthew 5: 48)

If I had a pound for every time somebody tried to excuse themselves from doing something inexcusable, by saying, I'm not perfect, I have money enough to ???? Well, it says here that God said you ought to be perfect like he is. I’m amazed at how often people use this as an excuse. That’s just me, that’s just my personality. Now I know I’m far from perfect myself, but that doesn’t mean I have the right to lower the standards and say it OK, we may fall short but the standard must remain, for it is God who sets the standard and God standard is that we should, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”. God said you are to be like him, not like you, so you need to stop being like you and be more like God.

Before I get carried away, I need to elaborate, the Greek word that’s translated “perfect” here means having reached its completion, sometimes it is translated, “mature”. This particular word was used when the thing that was made was perfect for doing what it was made for. The Greek idea of perfection is functional. A thing is perfect if it fully realizes the purpose for which it was planned, and designed, and made. A Christian also should aim to be perfect but only in that he or she fully realizes the purpose for which God created them and sent them into the world. The word was used of a student who had reached a mature knowledge of the subject as compared to a beginner or of a person who was full grown instead of someone who was still a child. So, we are to be perfect by being spiritually mature. But I have to say that this is about being mature in love within the context of this passage. In this passage we are told that love is truly expressed by loving your enemies. Therefore, being perfect is being perfect in love by being perfectly loving 

if you want to know from a biblical point of view what a loving person is like well it is the same as what a spiritually mature person is like because they both love their enemies, and they blesse those that do them good but also bless those that don’t. That’s the ultimate folks we’re now at the top of Mount Everest it doesn’t get any higher or better than that when it comes to living the Christian life, but like Everest it probably doesn’t get any harder than the climb to get there.

Notice how we should model our lives, the model should not be you, we should model Jesus himself. I also hear people constantly comparing themselves with somebody else, the Bible flat out says that doesn’t matter. The point is you should compare yourself to God , God the father who blesses not curses. The God who blesses us even when we sin against Him. We are to compare ourselves to his son Jesus he is our role model. Someone cleverer than me once wrote the best way to destroy an enemy to make him a friend, and better still a friend of Jesus. Alright let me summarize the whole thing and then I’ll close by tell you a story, a parable if you wish. Jesus is saying in this passage don’t hate your enemies love them and by blessing them and choosing to do what is best for them is how you love them. And doing that is how you become God like, Christ like, and that’s the basis by which God rewards us.

Alfred Lord Tennyson once wrote about Archbishop Thomas Kramer, and he said of him to do him a wrong was to initiate a kindness from him his heart was so rich that if you held any seed of hate in your heart in transformed and blossomed into something beautiful (I paraphrase) 

Let me tell you a story that I think says all that has to be said about this.

Once Upon a time there were two brothers who lived on adjoining farms next to each other. When the father died ,because the brothers  were married, he divided the farmland fairly between them and they co-operated together, and they thrived for many years. But they fell into a conflict with each other about something. It was the first serious rift that had in 40 years of working and farming side-by-side. They had shared their machinery they traded labour and goods they did everything for each other. Then following a minor disagreement everything fell apart between them.

It with a small misunderstanding but it grew into a major difference and finally it exploded into an exchange of bitter words that were followed by months and months of acrimony, where neither would even look never mind talk to each other.

Early one morning there was a knock at the older brothers door, he opened it to find a man with long hair he looked like a Carpenter and had a carpenter’s toolbox with him. The stranger said I’m passing through and I’m looking for a few days of work perhaps you have some small jobs here and there could I be of service, and I could help with. The older brother said yeah, I have a job for you look across the stream that divides the land, that farm over there that’s my neighbour in fact it’s my younger brother. Last year there was just a meadow between us but last week he took his tractor and diverted the main river that bypasses our land and made a wide stream between us. He did it to spite me but I’m going to go one better than him, see that pile of wood over by the barn I want you to build a fence 8 feet high so that I won’t have to look at him anymore.  The Carpenter went quiet for a minute than said, “I think I understand the situation, show me the wood and I’ll be able to do the job that is required for you”,

The older brother had to go away for the day, so he gave the Carpenter get the materials and he took off for the day. At the end of the day around  sunset the older brother returned the Carpenter had just finished his job. The older brother eyes were wide open, and his jaw dropped there was no fence there at all, the Carpenter had built a bridge stretching across from one side of the stream to the other. Before he could react, he looked up and say his younger brother was coming across the bridge with outstretched arms saying thank you brother for building that bridge especially after all I have done to you.

The two brothers hugged then looked up to see the in the far-off distance heading down the road was the carpenter.

We all have a lot of bridges to build in life, between us and other people and between us and God. Why not invite the carpenter to come and stay with you and help you build those bridges.