The Sermon on the Plain (2) Love and Enemies (Luke 6:27-30)

After the blessings and woes—the dividing humanity into those who want to walk with God and those who want to do their own thing—Jesus begins to describe what walking with God looks like. It looks like love. However, not any love as people understand it. God’s love, and the love of God’s people must be radically different from the world’s idea of love. Four increasingly demanding statements describe this love:

“Love your enemies.”

It would be one thing for Jesus to demand that His followers love each other, or love those who are a part of their community. Jesus says that His people will be people who love the people set against them. Enemies are against you. Jesus’s enemies are against Him and His people. This is who Jesus wants you to love.

“Do Good to those who hate you.”

It is not enough to say that you love your enemies. Nor even is it good enough to develop warm feelings of benevolence for them. Jesus wants to see love in action. We are supposed to do good to the people who hate us when we are Jesus’s followers. There are plenty examples in the world of people who claim to be Christians who seem to hate the world. These are not Jesus’s followers. However, there are people who really do try to follow Jesus’s command and do good to people, even those who hate them.

“Bless those who curse you.”

It just keeps getting harder. You can’t just do good to your enemies, perhaps in the sense of spiting them with good. You have to bless them. Jesus just pronounced “blessing” on His followers. We are, in turn, to bless those who would curse us and try to destroy us. We are to wish them happiness and blessing from God!

“Pray for those who abuse you.”

Finally, Jesus says we are to actively pray for the people who do us harm. We are to hope for and ask for their salvation. This is the radical love Jesus describes.

He lists four pictures of what this kind of love could look like. These are not commands or rules. It is worse. They are examples that we are supposed to apply in our lives as principles:

As I love those around me—even my enemies—they are going to insult me. A slap on the cheek. I continue to try to love them and open myself up to further insults. If the take something from me—take advantage of my attempts to do good—I keep doing good and open myself up to being taken advantage of again. If someone asks me for help, I give it. If someone robs form me, and does me harm, I do not seek recompense nor revenge.

This is a radical, divine, not-of-this-world, love. We are not capable of it. However, we have divine power to help us aspire to it.