Words that comfort – God loves His enemies!
Rom 5:6-11
Every day that the sun rises, we are
reminded that God loves His enemies. He sends His sunshine on the evil and the
good. Each time the rain falls, we remember that He waters the lawns and the
fields of both the just and the unjust.
Words that challenge – We are to love our
enemies! Matt 5:43-48
It’s easy to love those who resemble us,
those who favor us, and those who greet us. But what about those who don’t? The
scribes cared only about their “neighbor,” as they defined the term. Then they
added the flip side – “and hate your enemy.” Jesus declared, though, that one
essential key to the kingdom is the God-like love we offer our adversaries.
To be notified of future posts, on the
bottom left of this page, enter your email where you see, "FOLLOW BY
EMAIL." Click "Submit," and check the "I am not a
robot" box.
You will receive an email from
"Feedburner" that says,
Activate your Email Subscription to:
CoryHCollins
You must open that email and click
the link in
order to confirm your subscription. Then, whenever there is a new post on the
blog, you will receive an email notification.
Please forward this message to anyone that
you think would benefit from the blog. They will not be added unless they
personally follow the steps above.
---------------------------------------------------------
Do you have any enemies? Who are they? In
your family – in-laws or even siblings or spouses! In your work. In the church.
Why do they hate you? What’s the problem? And what are you going to do about
it?
Reading:
Matt 5:43-48
Greater Righteousness: 6 Contrasts
Murder – Adultery – Divorce – Oaths – Retaliation
– Love
Not to abolish, but to fulfill.
“You have heard, but I say …”
Scripture (mis)quoted.
From the heart to the hand.
From “Do not!” to “Do!”
No one can stand in your way!
In each case we have discovered something
remarkable. No one can make you hate or kill them. No one can make you lust or
commit adultery. No one can make you destroy your marriage. No one can make you
break a promise. No one can make you respond to evil with more evil.
And now
… No one can force you to be their enemy. No one can stop you from loving them.
As Augustine put it, ‘Many have learned how to offer the other cheek, but do not know how to
love him by whom they were struck.’ For we are to go beyond forbearance to
service, beyond the refusal to repay evil to the resolve to overcome evil with
good.
Alfred
Plummer: ‘To return evil for good is devilish; to return good for good is
human; to return good for evil is divine.’
Your attitude and your behavior demonstrate
that you have been with Jesus on the mountain and that you are building your
life on solid rock by putting into practice what you have heard.
By the way, if all the people of the world
would do that very thing, there would be no wars, no crime, no divorce, no
issues with guns, no “me-too” movement, no abortion, etc. Spiritual cancers
cannot be treated with purely political, man-made laws and decisions.
At the same time, we should not be surprised
that the worldly-minded people do not follow Jesus’ teachings. Why? We all act
based on what we believe. If – and to what extent – we believe in the cross and
the tomb, we also believe in the message of the One who died and rose. That’s
the reason that, like the wise builder, we strive to put into practice what we
have heard on the mountain.
“Love
Your Neighbor.”
Mt
5:43 “You have heard that it was
said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
"Love your neighbor." What could be wrong with that?
The words were true, quoted from Lev 19:18.
But the scribes omitted “as yourself.” They
lowered the high standard God gave.
And they added “and hate your enemy.” They
narrowed the objects of love.
How could they be so blatant and obvious?
Based on Lev 19.
Le 19:1 Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying:
2 “Speak to all the congregation
of the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord
your God am holy.
Le 19:17 ‘You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart;
you may surely reprove your neighbor,
but shall not incur sin because of him. 18 ‘You shall not take
vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons
of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.
So
what’s wrong with what they did?
Did they intentionally overlook Lev 19:34?
“You shall love the stranger as yourself.”
They
apparently ignored, from the same chapter, Lev 19:
Le 19:10 ‘Nor shall you glean your vineyard,
nor shall you gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them
for the needy and for the stranger.
I am the Lord your God.
Le 19:33 ‘When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.
34 ‘The stranger who resides with
you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as
yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.
Also:
Ex 12:48 “But if a stranger sojourns with
you, and celebrates the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised,
and then let him come near to celebrate it; and he shall be like a native of
the land. But no uncircumcised person may eat of it. 49 “The same law shall apply to the native as
to the stranger who sojourns among you.”
Ex 23:3 nor shall you be partial to a poor
man in his dispute. 4 “If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey
wandering away, you shall surely return it to him.
Same
as for a brother: Dt 22:1-4
Also,
as we have already seen:
Pr 25:21 If your enemy is hungry, give him
food to eat; And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; 22 For you
will heap burning coals on his head, And the Lord will reward you.
How
could the scribes justify hating your enemy?
Based
on the “Holy Wars” against the Canaanites?
These wars were commanded by God as the just
judgment for the nations that worshiped idols and practiced abominations before
the Lord.
Based
on the “imprecatory psalms,” in which David spoke of hating God’s enemies?
Ps 139:19 O that You would slay the wicked, O
God; Depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed. 20 For they speak
against You wickedly, And Your enemies take Your name in vain. 21 Do I
not hate those who hate You, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up
against You? 22 I hate them with the utmost hatred; They have become my
enemies.
This “utmost hatred” relates to God’s
enemies, not one’s own enemies.
Note the very next prayer, that one’s heart
may be right with God.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me
and know my anxious thoughts; 24 And see if there be any hurtful way in
me, And lead me in the everlasting way.
Stott:
So
there is such a thing as perfect hatred, just as there is such a thing as
righteous anger. But it is a hatred for God’s
enemies, not our own enemies. It is entirely free of all spite, rancour and
vindictiveness, and is fired only by love for God’s honour and glory. It finds
expression now in the prayer of the martyrs who have been killed for the word
of God and for their witness. And it will be expressed on the last day by the
whole company of God’s redeemed people who, seeing God’s judgment come upon the
wicked, will concur in its perfect justice and will say in unison, ‘Hallelujah!
Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for his judgments are true and
just … Amen. Hallelujah!’
So they twisted, even reversed, God’s Law.
Jesus would fulfill it.
How
Do You Define “Neighbor?”
Stott:
Easy
enough for ethical casuists (consciously or unconsciously anxious to ease the
burden of this command) to twist it to their own convenience. ‘My neighbour’,
they argued, ‘is one of my own people, a fellow Jew, my own kith and kin, who
belongs to my race and my religion. The law says nothing about strangers or
enemies. So, since the command is to love only my neighbour, it must be taken
as a permission, even an injunction, to hate my enemy. For he is not my
neighbour that I should love him.’ The reasoning is rational enough to convince
those who wanted to be convinced, and to confirm them in their own racial
prejudice.
Luke
10:25-37
Luke 10 - Good Samaritan. We become a
neighbor to our enemy when we see him in the ditch, we feel compassion, and we
give what we have to serve and heal him.
Got
Enemies? Give it to ‘Em!
44 “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for
those who persecute you,
To God, “Love your neighbor” means “love
your enemy.”
Love, pray for, and do good to your enemies.
Our
enemy is seeking our harm; we must seek his good.
Not,
“Ignore your enemy.” Not, “Refuse to harm your enemy.”
But,
“Find a way to help, to bless, to encourage your enemy!”
Which
enemies?
Even
those who persecute you! διωκόντων
Who
malign, beat, injure, attack, torture, and even kill you.
Stott:
So
Jesus contradicted their addition as a gross distortion of the law: But I say to you, Love your enemies
(44). For our neighbour, as he later illustrated so plainly in the parable of
the good Samaritan, is not necessarily a member of our own race, rank or
religion. He may not even have any connection with us. He may be our enemy, who
is after us with a knife or a gun. Our ‘neighbour’ in the vocabulary of God
includes our enemy. What constitutes him our neighbour is simply that he is a
fellow human being in need, whose need we know and are in a position in some
measure to relieve.
What, then, is our duty to our neighbour,
whether he be friend or foe? We are to love him. Moreover, if we add the
clauses in Luke’s account of the Sermon, our love for him will be expressed in
our deeds, our words and our prayers.
Lk 6:27-36 Love, do good, bless, and pray.
Richard M.
Nixon, 37th president of US (1913 - 1994), in his White House
farewell:
“Always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.”
“Always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.”
When we hate our
enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites,
our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with
joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us, and getting
even with us! Our hate is not hurting them at all, but our hate is turning our
own days and nights into a hellish turmoil.
Not self-conscious and patronizing
philanthropy.
Not sentiment but service—practical, humble,
sacrificial service.
Words can also express our love, however,
both words addressed to our enemies themselves and words addressed to God on
their behalf. ‘Bless those who curse you.’ If they call down disaster and
catastrophe upon our heads, expressing in words their wish for our downfall, we
must retaliate by calling down heaven’s blessing upon them, declaring in words
that we wish them nothing but good. Finally, we direct our words to God. Both
evangelists record this command of Jesus: ‘Pray for those who persecute (or
abuse) you.’
Chrysostom saw this responsibility to pray
for our enemies as ‘the very highest summit of self-control’. Indeed, looking
back over the requirements of these last two antitheses, he traces nine
ascending steps, with intercession as the topmost one.
Nine
Ascending Steps
First, we are not to take any evil
initiative ourselves.
Secondly, we are not to avenge another’s
evil.
Thirdly, we are to be quiet, and
fourthly, to suffer wrongfully.
Fifthly, we are to surrender to the evildoer
even more than he demands.
Sixthly, we are not to hate him, but
(steps 7 and 8) to love him and do him good.
As our ninth duty, we are ‘to entreat God
Himself on his behalf’.
Such intercession is the summit of Christian
love. ‘This is the supreme command,’ wrote Bonhoeffer. ‘Through the medium of
prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God.’2
Moreover, if intercessory prayer is an
expression of what love we have, it is a means to increase our love as well. It
is impossible to pray for someone without loving him, and impossible to go on
praying for him without discovering that our love for him grows and matures. We
must not, therefore, wait before praying for an enemy until we feel some love
for him in our heart. We must begin to pray for him before we are conscious of
loving him, and we shall find our love break first into bud, then into blossom.
Jesus seems to have prayed for his tormentors actually while the iron spikes
were being driven through his hands and feet; indeed the imperfect tense
suggests that he kept praying, kept repeating his entreaty ‘Father, forgive
them; for they know not what they do’. If
the cruel torture of crucifixion could not silence our Lord’s prayer for his enemies,
what pain, pride, prejudice or sloth could justify the silencing of ours?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote his exposition
before the outbreak of war. He could see where Nazism was leading, and he died
for his Christian testimony against it.
He quoted a certain A. F. C. Villmar of
1880, but his words sound almost prophetic of Bonhoeffer’s own day: ‘This
commandment, that we should love our enemies and forgo revenge, will grow even
more urgent in the holy struggle which lies before us … The Christians will be
hounded from place to place, subjected to physical assault, maltreatment and
death of every kind. We are approaching an age of wide-spread persecution …
Soon the time will come when we shall pray … It will be a prayer of earnest
love for these very sons of perdition who stand around and gaze at us with eyes
aflame with hatred, and who have perhaps already raised their hands to kill us
… Yes, the Church which is really waiting for its Lord, and which discerns the
signs of the times of decision, must fling itself with its utmost power and
with the panoply of its holy life, into this prayer of love.’
Because
that’s what proves your sonship.
45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in
heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain
on the righteous and the unrighteous.
As I saw the sun rise today, I knew that God
loves His enemies.
God loves His enemies. That’s reassuring!
We must love our enemies. That’s
challenging!
It’s
one thing to pray that God will change our enemies to make them easier to love.
It’s quite another thing to pray that God will change us so we will love our
enemies whether they change or not.
Be thankful for your
enemies! Here are four reasons:
1. They may help you
see your faults – as friends may not – so that you may correct them.
2. If they are your
enemies purely because you are doing what’s right, your enemies will cause God
to bless you.
3. Your enemies give
you an opportunity that your friends cannot – to act like God!
4. Your enemies are
the very ones you may win to Christ through love.
Only by loving our enemies shall we prove
conclusively whose sons we are, for only then shall we be exhibiting a love
like the love of our heavenly Father’s. For
he makes his sun rise (notice, in passing, to whom the sun belongs!) on the evil and on the good, and sends rain
on the just and on the unjust (45). Divine love is indiscriminate love,
shown equally to good men and bad.
“Common grace,” not “saving grace:” rain and
sunshine. Food, drink, family, pleasure.
Not “so that they may leave you alone,”
though they may.
Not “so that they may become your friends,”
though they may.
Not “so that you may kill them with
kindness,” though you may.
But “so that you may be sons of your Father
in heaven!”
Love is a decision to will and to act in the
best interest of another person.
Because
that’s what makes you different.
46 “For if you love those who love you, what reward do
you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 “If you greet
only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the
Gentiles do the same?
For if
you love those who love you, what reward have you? Or what credit is that
to you? ‘Even sinners love those who love them.’
No Calvinistic “total depravity” here. Man
is not born in sin, without the capacity to love or to do good.
Stott:
Unredeemed
sinners can love. Parental love, filial love, conjugal love, the love of
friends—all these, as we know very well, are the regular experience of men and
women outside Christ. Even the tax
collectors (the petty customs officials who because of their extortion had
a reputation for greed) love those who love them. Even the Gentiles (those ‘dogs’, as the Jews called them, those
outsiders who loathed the Jews and would look the other way when they passed
one in the street), even they salute each other. None of this is in dispute.
But all human love, even the highest, the
noblest and the best, is contaminated to some degree by the impurities of
self-interest. We Christians are specifically called to love our enemies (in
which love there is no self-interest), and this is impossible without the
supernatural grace of God.
If we love only those who love us, we are no
better than swindlers. If we greet only our brothers and sisters, our fellow
Christians, we are no better than pagans; they too greet one another.
Jesus asked: What more are you doing than others? (47). This simple word more is the quintessence of what he is
saying. It is not enough for Christians to resemble
non-Christians; our calling is to outstrip them in virtue. Our righteousness is
to exceed (perisseusē … pleion) that of the Pharisees (20) and
our love is to surpass, to be more than (perisson)
that of the Gentiles (47).
Bonhoeffer puts it well: ‘What makes the
Christian different from other men is the “peculiar”, the perisson, the “extraordinary”, the “unusual”, that which is not “a
matter of course” … It is “the more”, the “beyond-all-that”. The natural is to auto (one and the same) for heathen
and Christian, the distinctive quality of the Christian life begins with the perisson … For him (sc. Jesus) the hallmark of the Christian is the “extraordinary”.’
And what is this perisson, this ‘plus’ or ‘extra’ which Christians must display?
Bonhoeffer’s reply was: ‘It is the love of Jesus Christ himself, who went
patiently and obediently to the cross … The cross is the differential of the
Christian religion.’
What he writes is true. Yet, to be more
precise, the way Jesus put it was to say that this ‘super-love’ is not the love
of men, but the love of God, which in common grace gives sun and rain to the
wicked.
Because
that’s what aims for His perfection.
48 “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly
Father is perfect.
Luke 6:35 “But love your enemies, and do good,
and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you
will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil
men. 36 “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Stott:
(John
Wesley and) some holiness teachers have taught the possibility of reaching in
this life a state of sinless perfection. But the words of Jesus cannot be
pressed into meaning this without causing discord in the Sermon. For he has
already indicated in the beatitudes that a hunger and thirst after
righteousness is a perpetual characteristic of his disciples, and in the next
chapter he will teach us to pray constantly, ‘Forgive us our debts.’
The “perfection” he means relates to love,
that perfect love of God which is shown even to those who do not return it.
Indeed, scholars tell us that the Aramaic word which Jesus may well have used
meant ‘all-embracing’. The parallel verse in Luke’s account of the Sermon
confirms this: ‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.’2 We
are called to be perfect in love, that is, to love even our enemies with the
merciful, the inclusive love of God.
OT – God as holy called for Israel to
imitate His holiness.
NT – God as Father calls His people to
imitate His kindness.
Because
that’s what He did.
Our enemy is seeking our harm; we must seek
his good. For this is how God has treated us. It is “while we were enemies”
that Christ died for us to reconcile us to God. If he gave himself for his
enemies, we must give ourselves for ours.
DO
RIGHT. LOVE THEM ANYWAY! – author unknown
People are often unreasonable, illogical,
and self-centered;
Love them anyway.
If you are kind,
People may accuse you of selfish, ulterior
motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful,
You will win some false friends and some
true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank,
People may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building,
Someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness,
They may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today,
People will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have,
And it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you have anyway.
You
see, in the final analysis,
It is
between you and God;
It
never was between you and them anyway.
Possible hymns:
The Greatest Commands
Love Divine, All Love Excelling
The Way that He Loves
Love Lifted Me
No comments:
Post a Comment