“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your
neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In
that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and
the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love
only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If
you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else?
Even pagans do that. But you are
to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. Matthew 5:43-48(NLT)
Assume for a moment that you and I are living two thousand years ago in
a land far away. Everybody we know is
talking about a guy who is on all the news channels with his weird ideas about
how to live. So we Google his website
and find out he’s going to be teaching on the hillside that faces Galilee’s Sea
near Tabgha. So we find him on this
little mountainside where he is seated, and he begins to say a lot of stuff
about how to be really happy in life. Most
of it sounds pretty doable; that is until he gets to that stuff about loving
your enemies. What?
“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your
enemy. But I say, love your enemies!
Pray for those who persecute you!
Matthew 5:43-44(NLT)
Ask the teacher the hard question
Allow me to ask the collective hard question that was probably on
everyone’s mind on the hillside that day:
Uh, Jesus, are you kidding? I mean…love your enemies?
Have you seen those Samaritans and those low-life Philistines?
Fast-forward about twenty centuries, and Scripture plows right into today’s
hard questions. A case in point:
Who in the world is our neighbor, and what enemies are we supposed to
love? On the one hand we’ve got bunches
of people saying those illegals crashing the borders have got to be kept
out. They may be just on the other side
of the wall that’s gonna be built, but they’re not like us at all! Others are saying everyone is our neighbor; we
should throw-open the borders.
And somewhere deep on the inside, for those of us who have committed our
lives to following Jesus – not just attending church or checking the evangelical
born-again box on surveys, but really following Jesus – there is a
stinging uneasiness that refuses to turn our backs on anyone. But we can’t quite manage to drop our guard
and trust either the radical border builders, or the fruitcakes who just sit idly-by
singing kumbaya, while enemies pour through the gates to rape,
pillage and destroy!
These uneasy ones are we; we are the ones in the vast middle of all
that rhetoric, so cautious because we know this is not simple, and it has a lot
of issues, very complex issues we must work-through.
Radical Right, Radical Left, and in the middle, Radically-Overwhelmed
and Indecisive. Take your pick; like it
or not, you’re in one of those three columns.
And if you’re having a truly schizophrenic experience about all this
(perhaps like me – at least a little), where you’re in one column – say Radical
Right one day, and then the next day confused Radically-Overwhelmed, bordering
on Radical Left (oh my!); where in the world do you go for a little
compass-resetting? How do you stay sane
in a sea of voices tearing at you from the left and right?
Or, if you’re firmly planted on the left or right, how do
you keep your soul when you consider the claim that the other side is populated
by human brothers and sisters?
Well, like a pilot and co-pilot getting ready for takeoff, you return
to the pre-flight checklist and decide if you’re going to let the crosswinds
blow your plane all around, or if you’re going to position the plane to use
those winds to lift your plane into the wild blue yonder.
Now with metaphors fading into the dust back at the airport….for a
follower of Jesus Christ, the pre-flight checklist before you take off in any
direction begins with what Jesus said and did. It does not begin with what news channel you
prefer to watch, what strong views a co-worker managed to bring up at the water
cooler or post on FaceBook; nor does your checklist have to start with what
your sociology professor spouted off in Political Science 101 after the
election.
Your checklist for living begins with sitting at the feet of the One to
whom you have chosen to place your life’s allegiance. The apostle Paul did that and he called that
process of following Jesus being a living sacrifice:
And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your
bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the
kind he will find acceptable. This is
truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy
the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new
person by changing the way you think. Then
you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and
perfect. Romans 12:1-2(NLT
Beloved, this is different from a 21st century culture that
wants more and more rights, privileges and wealth. Following Christ is being different from
that, and being different from this world is only possible when God transforms
who you are from inside-out!
Doing good to others, no matter if they are perceived as enemy or
friend is God’s kind of love. The
special word used to describe that is agape’.
Agape’ love is a determination of the mind that responds with good, no
matter the provocation, response, or consequence.
This kind of love is chosen, rather than felt.
Some reminders on choosing to love
1. CHOOSE
TO LOVE ON THE BASIS THAT YOU ARE LOVED
For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends
rain on the just and the unjust alike. Matthew 5:45b(NLT)
Both you AND your enemy persecuted Jesus. Scripture declares there is not a single
person who has ever lived who never sinned, with the exception of Jesus
Christ. The fact is that He chose to
love you by dying for you. So, if you
will follow Him you cannot rely on your emotions or the strong feelings others
may have about people, rights and national pride; your only course of action
compels you to love because you are loved.
2.
CHOOSE GOODNESS FOR GOODNESS SAKE
If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If
you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else?
Even pagans do that. Matthew 5:46-47(NLT)
Jamie Hayes and I had a short conversation last week after
worship. We were discussing this issue
of choosing to love, as opposed to only loving those who already love you. He said to me: You know, preacher, there’s a lot of times
when you know what’s right and you don’t really want to do it; it’s times like
that you just got to do it anyway.
The prophet Jonah learned that lesson.
He got a mission-order from God to go preach at Nineveh, a city near
modern Mosul, Iraq. Jonah was a Jew, and
when have Israel and Iraq ever had kind feelings towards one another? Jonah put his harsh feelings on a boat headed
to Spain, about 3,000 miles away from the place God told him to go. In those days it was the opposite end of the
world.
When the storm came up and Jonah got tossed out of the boat, God had a
submarine ready to take the disobedient, unloving prophet right to the city
gates of Nineveh. Jonah had no loving feelings
for Nineveh, but he learned if you’re going to be God’s person you need to
choose good for goodness’ sake.
3. REMEMBER
WHOSE YOU ARE
But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. Matthew 5:48(NLT)
We are called to be different.
It is certainly different to act in a loving way to those that hate you,
and describe themselves as your enemies!
But that is the nature of Jesus’ kind of love. It’s the kind of love that prayed from a
cross: Father, forgive them.
And so, once again the question comes to us:
Do I really want to follow Jesus? There is a cost to loving like He loved!
C.S. Lewis wrote:
To love at all
is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and
your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact,
you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and
little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or
coffin of your selfishness. But in that
casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become
unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the
risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only
place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and [perturbing
aggravations] of love is Hell.[ii]
You’ve heard of tough love, where a parent
will do the best thing for his or her child, even if it means a harsh wake-up
call. A toddler wants to play in traffic
and screams bloody murder when the parent snatches her away from a Buick the
size of Cleveland. The parent would do
it a hundred times over to save the child, even though the child objects.
This is what Jesus said on the hillside overlooking the Sea of Galilee
that day: Be perfect…just like your
Heavenly Father.
It isn’t a matter of perfection, as in bowling a 300 game, or pitching
a no-hitter, or never messing up in any way.
“Perfect” in the
language of the New Testament is teleios, and it means mature.
It has to do with function rather than feeling. It means you do that for which you were
created; you fulfil your purpose in life.
To restate Jesus’ words – be purposeful, useful; help fulfil the lives
of your neighbors, just like your Heavenly Father.
Chuck Swindoll tells of the young man who fell in love with an opera
star. He hardly knew her, since his only
view of her was from the third-floor balcony at the opera house. But he was convinced he could live happily
ever after married to anyone who sang like she did. He scarcely noticed that she was much older;
he never noticed her limp. Her angel-like
voice would carry them through anything!
After a whirlwind romance and a hurry-up ceremony they were off for the
honeymoon. As she began to prepare for
their first night together, his chin dropped to the floor when she plucked-out
her glass
eye, and plopped it into a container on the nightstand. She pulled off her wig, ripped off
her false
eyelashes, yanked out her dentures, unstrapped her artificial
leg, and smiled at him as she slipped off the glasses that hid her
two hearing
aids.
He was stunned and horrified.
But he managed to blurt out:
Sing, woman, Sing!
For goodness sake, SING!"
This is not a perfect world, and life as we know it will never approach
being fair. Some folks without a green
card will scramble over the border, terrorists will plot their mayhem, and you will
never see a perfect, loving society until Jesus comes back to clean up the
mess.
But, for now...if you’re bound to follow this teacher who said to love
your enemies, when it comes to the brother or sister in your church
that you have a hard time with, sing, Christian, sing! You sing the song of love.
When your unbelieving neighbor upsets you, sing, Christian, sing
the song of lovingkindness!
And when the last thing on your mind is reconciling, or denying self,
or keeping your vows sacred, or forbearing, or any of those attitudes that are
critically necessary to following Jesus...sing, Christian.....Just sing the
song of really tough love!
Notes
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