Matt 5:43-48

The Right Side up Life  / Matthew 5:43–48

Matthew six passage on loving your enemies is one of my favorite in the sermon on the mountain. One because it is incredibly challenging. But that too is what makes it beautiful. It is the particularity of this passage that marks Christianity apart from any other organization or any other Form of religion in the known world right now. The Christians are to be a people who love their enemies. And not only that who pray for those who persecute us.

Matthew 5:43–44 ESV

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

Hatred feels easier 

Hatred, at its core is a rejection of another person, a resistance of them.  So to hate someone you are creating a sort of friction between you and the other person and whatever it is they are associated with. And what does friction do? It utilizes more energy.  If there is friction between two objects, it will take much more energy to move one of the objects.  Anger is friction.  Some of us are living with a lot of friction between others and we are called, as Christians, to release that hatred and love others. 

English Standard Version Chapter 5:45

45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.

Love looks like God 

This is an interesting turn of phrase Jesus gives us. Love your enemy so that you may be sons (and daughters) of heaven. There is a direct connection that is made between how we love and our understanding of being a child of God. That when we love our enemy, not that we become God’s children, but rather, that we look like God’s children. We reflect His nature. 

English Standard Version Chapter 5:45

For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46

What we are forced to look at here it’s not what God can do or how God exactly works through precipitation, but rather and much more importantly, what is God like. What we have to contend with that is much more important than what God can do is what kind of God do we have?

Matthew 5:46–47 ESV

For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

To do so is the invitation into a better kingdom. It is the invitation into something more and better.

Be Perfect 

Matthew 5:48 ESV

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

The church must be the more peculiar ones in this culture.  That we do become more and more unconditional as the world becomes more conditional.  That we show grace and we show love unconditionally.  That we grapple with why it is we have enemies in the first place.

The church is Called to love her enemies.  No one else is.  But that means that we have to go first.  We have got to cross lines first.  That we have to embrace first, welcome first, invite in first.

When we feel lost, or slighted, or defensive, we often feel like we have to fight for some part of lost ground. Or grapple with something that we don’t have. But for the Christian, we cannot be lost, we have everything that we could need in Christ. If you have everything you need, and there’s no need to fight for anything. If you can’t get lost, then you don’t have to grapple with someone in order to feel found.

The church is in the perfect place to love her enemy. Because the church has been given everything that the human condition needs to not have to fight any longer.