Love (Matthew 5:43-48)

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers,9 what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Here we get a change in Jesus’ pattern. He does not explicitly quote a part of the law. The law, in fact, does not command God’s people to hate their enemies. On the contrary the Old Testament frequently gives examples of, or even commands us, to show love to our enemies (Joseph and his brothers, David and Saul, Elisha and the Syrians). Consider Exodus 23:4-5. What God did do is lead His people to wage war against the idolater who occupied the land, lest they be led astray by them. In the end, they failed both to conquer the nations and to resist the temptation to idolatry. However, as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, we no longer face the world this way. Jesus, ushering in the Kingdom initiated the era where we resist and overcome the world with grace and love.

Who is our enemy? A different question was posed to Jesus in Luke, when He was asked “Who is my neighbor?” But the answer, it turns out, is the same. Our fellow man is our neighbor, and should receive from us love, mercy, and grace, regardless to what grouping (religious, racial, political, etc.) they may belong. Bonhoeffer clarifies it so:

“In the New Testament our enemies are those who harbor hostility against us, not those against whom we cherish hostility, for Jesus refuses to reckon with such a possibility. The Christian must treat his enemy as a brother, and requite his hostility with love. His behavior must be determined not by the way others treat him, but by the treatment he himself receives from Jesus; it has only one source, and that is the will of Jesus.” –Bonhoeffer, Dietrich (1937). The Cost of Discipleship

The Law that Christ is clarifying and demanding is that we love others… all others. And, since it is only natural to love those who love us, the challenge is to love the rest as well. Just as God blesses all humanity with life equally, so we too are to treat others equally, regardless of how they treat us.

This is a message that is not well received today. Many western “believers” even take the opposite tack. We are told by our leaders to hate the “other,” the Muslim and the Atheist, the immigrant or the criminal, even the Christian with a theology or the person who struggles with a different sin than us. That runs counter to what Jesus says. In fact, one imagines many believers would reject Jesus’ words if presented with them uncredited.

Instead, Schaeffer put it this way:

"Christians are not to love their believing brothers to the exclusion of their non-believing fellowmen. That is ugly. We are to have the example of the good Samaritan consciously in mind at all times." –Schaeffer, Francis (1970). The Mark of the Christian

So, how are we doing on this front today?

This is where the rubber meets the road. It is the theme of Matthew 5. With this command to love our enemies, Jesus returns to the thought on verse 20. There He said our righteousness had to exceed that of the Pharisees. Here, in verse 47, he uses the word again. We exceed when we show love, not just to those who are like us and love us, but when we love the “other.”