Love Your Enemies, Part 1
Matthew 5:43-44
We come this morning to a passage of scripture in Matthew Chapter 5 that deserves our greatest attention, deepest commitment for perhaps no other passage in all of the New Testament sums up the heart and attitude of a Christian as well as this one.
It expresses what I think is the most single, powerful testimony that a Christian can have in the simple statement of Jesus in verse 44, "Love your enemies." As we embark upon this passage from verse 43 to 48 this morning in our continuing study of Matthew, we come to a tremendously important part of scripture.
I think that if there is one statement made by Jesus that in the eyes of the world sums up what Christianity ought to be like, it's probably, "Love your enemies." I know Will Durant was asked what he thought of the Christian ethic, and he summed the Christian ethic up with the words "Well, basically it's love your enemies." He said, "Without question Jesus set the highest ethic ever set in the history of man, but too bad nobody ever lived up to it.
This is the supreme facet of life. If love is the greatest thing, the loving your enemies is the greatest thing that love can do. And so the sunombonum in a sense of all of our kingdom living should be found in this concept of loving our enemies.
And I want you to really think with me. We have to lay some groundwork this morning so you'll understand and then two weeks from this morning, we're going to resolve this thing wondrously as we hear how Jesus speaks. Starting with the Old Testament and moving to the fullness of the New Testament concept of loving your enemies.
But we have to begin today with a little background and some foundation and I want you to get this, because it's absolutely essentially that you understand. In all of the Sermon on the Mount, I think there are two statements that more than any others and they're very obscure at first, sum up the ethics, the standards, the requirements of the one who claims to be a member of the kingdom of heaven.
They're very simple statements. The first one I want to point your attention to is in verse 47 of Chapter 5. It says this in the middle of the verse, "what do you yet more than others?" Now there is a tremendous summary statement of what Christ is asking in this whole sermon. What does your system have more than any other human system. What makes you different?
And then in Chapter 6, verse 8, another simple statement. "Be not ye therefore like unto them." There's a second statement. Two statements that sum up the whole sermon. "What do you more than others," and "don't be like them." What Jesus is saying in both of these simple statements is this my standards are not like other standards. What I require is not what other people do.
My standard is a higher standard, and that's what He's saying. In fact, He's indicting the whole pharisaical religious Judaistic system as being substandard. When the best is said of your system what makes it better than any other? What do you do different than anybody else? What sets you apart? If you are a part of my kingdom, you would not be doing like them.
People in my kingdom have a higher standard than even yours and theirs by the way was the highest religious standard of the day, but it wasn't high enough. God requires for His kingdom a different standard, unique, separate, holy.
In Chapter 5, verse 20, He pointed directly to their system and said this, "I say unto you that unless your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven." My standard is high, He is saying. My standard is higher than the highest human standard, which is the standard of the scribes and the Pharisees. They struggled with all kinds of laws, all kinds of religious ceremonies and rituals. They were the most religious people of their time. And yet God says, you're no different than anybody else.
My standard is that you do not act like them, that you do more than even the best that men can do. The highest human ethic falls woefully short of God's standard. Now this isn't anything new in the New Testament. God has always called His people to a higher standard. This is how God put it to the people of Israel soon after He had rescued them from their Egyptian slavery and made them this covenant people.
He said this, listen, "I am the Lord your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt where you dwelt. And you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan to which I'm bringing you." In other words, my standard is not the one you came from and it's not the one you're going to. "You shall not walk in their statuettes. You shall do my ordinances and keep my statutes and walk in them, I am the Lord your God."
Now notice he brackets the statement by "I am the Lord your God, I am the Lord your God." Beginning and ending with that statement and because I am the Lord your God, you don't act like anybody else acts. You don't live according to any standard, not the one you came from and not the one you're going to. Because He was their covenant God and because they were His special people, they were to be different from anybody else. They were to follow His commandments and not take their lead from the standards of the people around them.
And that's hard, it's hard for them, it's hard in Jesus' time and it's tough on us today. To try to live according to a standard other than the standard that engulfs us and traps us in the world around us. It is difficult. But that's what God asks for.
Sadly throughout the centuries that followed Israel kept forgetting their uniqueness. They kept forgetting that theirs was another standard and they kept falling into sin. They were in Balaam's words "a people dwelling alone and not reckoning itself among the nations." That sounds good. "They dwelled in isolation, not mingling," say Balaam. But the truth is, in practice, they became assimilated to...and to everything around them. So that scripture this, interesting statement, "they mingled with the nations and learned to do as they did."
Sad commentary, and that commentary could be labeled on the church just as well. They mingled with the heathen and learned to do as they did. From the very beginning God has always called the people to uniqueness. He has always called the people to another standard, to a higher level. And God's people for some reason are always pulled down. In fact, it came to be that in Israel they desired to have a king and their statement is this, "we will have a king over us that we may be like the nations."
They wanted to be like the rest of the world. They even went so far as to say, "let us be like the nations and worship gods of wood and stone." So God kept sending them prophets. And the prophets kept reminding them about their uniqueness. Prophets like Jeremiah who said people learn not the ways of the nations. Prophets like Ezekiel who said do not defile yourselves with the gods of Egypt. And prophet after prophet after prophet came singularly and in duos and trios and so forth they came continuously pleading with God's people to be sure they maintained their unique standards. To fall below was to dishonor God.
It's no different in Jesus' time and today. God wants His people to be different. He wants His people to be unique. And the standard that Jesus presents here regarding loving your enemies is not the mood of the mob. That kind of a statement to the average pagan today sounds like lunacy. Doesn't make any sense. It is not an earthly standard. It is not the morality of the age. It is unique. It is a far greater ethic, in fact, if you want to know the truth it's a far greater ethic than either you or I could ever keep on our own. It's way beyond us to love our enemies.
But kingdom character, now mark this, kingdom character is be absolutely distinct, absolutely unique. And the key to it is, that you can't live that way unless you are infused with divine power. And so Jesus is saying to the Pharisees you're system is substandard. And until you come to me for power you will never be able to live by my standards. This whole sermon really draws a contrast between the best of men and God's standards. And even the very best there were, the most legalistic, ritualistic, religious people on the earth, the Pharisees couldn't qualify.
For example, they thought it was enough not to kill. Jesus says, I don't even think you should hate. In fact, it's a command that you not be angry with your brother. They thought it was enough not to commit adultery. He says, you shouldn't even think about committing adultery. They thought it was alright when they got a divorce if they took care of all the legal paperwork. Jesus said you shouldn't even be getting those unbiblical divorces.
They thought it was enough that they kept certain vows. Jesus said, you shouldn't even need to make vows because your word is so true and so pure. They thought it was enough that they gave back an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. He says, you shouldn't be retaliating at all. In Chapter 6 they said, here's the way we pray. Jesus says, it's inadequate. When you pray you're to do it this way.
And Jesus said, here's the way you give, and that's the wrong way to give. I want you to give this way. And Jesus said, you are concerned with material things. I want you to seek the kingdom of God. You see all the way through He's leveling a contrast.
And now as we come to Chapter 5 verses 43 to 48, he contrasts their love with the kind of love that should characterize the subjects of His kingdom. And what He's doing is telling them that they're not in His in kingdom. They don't qualify. We are called on to be unique beloved. That's the thrust of this whole sermon. That's really what He's saying and that's what I was trying to say earlier in the service this morning that God is calling us out of the system to be separated people with convictions and commitments and standards that we live by that are not the world's standards.
Nowhere is the distinction between the life of man and the kingdom God made more clear or unclear than in the life of a believer. That's where it all comes down. And so Jesus is confronting Israel here because Israel is religious as Israel was, was walking in the flesh, He attacks their humanistic religious tradition by saying it falls woefully short of God's standard.
Now, let's look what He says about this subject of love in verse 43. It's such an important one. "Ye have heard that it hath been said thou shalt love their neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you love your enemies and pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you that ye may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven for He maketh His son to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them who love you what reward have yet. Do not even the tax collectors the same? And ye greet your brother in only what do ye more than others? Do not even the heathen so? Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect."
He says to them as He has said in the five previous comparisons beginning in Chapter 5, verse 21, "your loss says this, mine says this." Your loss says love your neighbor, hate your enemy. I say, love your enemy. You're substandard He's saying. Your ethics are too low. First as I said, He had exposed their perversion of the divine statute "Thou shalt not kill." Then He had attacked also their unwarranted whittling down of the commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."
Then He attacked their desecration of marriage. The He had spoken against their wicked tampering with the injunction not to take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Then He had shown how they corrupted the judicial law of an eye for eye. And now He attacks them on the basis of the highest and best of things, love, and says your supposed commitment to love your neighbor is inadequate.
And I have to say that I feel this is the supreme statement here because it's a statement on love and love is the greatest thing and loving your enemies is the greatest thing that love can do. He really comes to...to the peak, the sunumbonum, as He speaks of love. To compare with what we just read, Matthew Chapter 22, a lawyer came to Jesus and asked Him what was the greatest commandment, and in verse 37 Jesus said unto him, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind." This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like it. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." In other words, you can keep all the law and all the prophets one by one or you can just love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself and that'll cover it all.
That is the sum of it all. It is also indicated in Romans 13 by the apostle Paul who says, "Owe no man anything," Romans 13:8, "but to love one another, for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not covet and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying namely, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill to its neighbor, therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law."
Paul says love fills up the whole law. Jesus says love fills up the whole law. And so in Matthew 5 when our Lord begins to speak about loving he is touching on that which sums up the whole law. Here is really, people, and we'll see this in the next few weeks as we cover this, here is a devastating death blow at the Pharisees. In fact, it is so direct that it must have curdled their blood when He said to them, you can be compared with heathens in verse 47, which is exactly what He says.
Your love is no better than anybody else. You don't have anything on publicans and sinners, tax collectors and pagans. The point is this, the people in my kingdom have a love that is beyond the best of loves the world can ever know. We don't just love our neighbors and hate our enemies, we love the our enemies.
And in so saying, He indicts them because they don't love their enemies and shows them their need for a Savior. Now in each of these contrasts and there are six of them in Matthew 5, we have marked out three major points, the teaching of the Old Testament, the tradition of the Jews, and the truth from Christ. And those are the same three points in all six.
Let's look first of all at the tradition of the Jews. The tradition of the Jews, and that is referred to in verse 43, look at it. "Ye have heard that it hath been said," now that little introductory phrase is a reference we have seen now for the sixth time that refers to Jewish tradition. It is not a statement related to the Old Testament. It means your tradition has been passed down saying this. This is your system. This is what you have developed and you have been taught.
This is the rabbinical current religious teaching. And what is it? Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. Now that's what they were taught. Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. That's pretty open-ended wouldn't you say? The first thing you do is figure out who your neighbor is and then you can hate everybody else and be okay.
You can just hate up a storm depending on how define your neighbor, right? If you define your neighbor as your wife and three best friends, you can hate the whole world. So it all depends on your definition of neighbor and that's exactly what Christ gets into, not only here, but elsewhere as we shall see in our coming studies.
Look first of all at the first part, thou shalt love thy neighbor. Now that sounds so pious. Thou shalt love thy neighbor, oh it sounds so good. You say, where did they get that? Well, that's in the Old Testament, sure it is. Leviticus Chapter 19, they got that right out of the Old Testament.
You know, whenever they wanted to make up a rule, they made sure that they intersected somewhere with the Old Testament. Like the clock that doesn't run, they're right twice a day. Every once in a while they're going to hit the truth. And they always find some kind of a basis for truth somewhere and so here they are in Leviticus 19:18 which says, "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people. But thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self." That's Leviticus 19:18. "Love thy neighbor as thy self." That's where they got that.
But did you notice something? They left something out. You have heard it said "Thou shalt love thy neighbor," what did they leave out, "as thy self." That's a convenient omission isn't it? In their state of unbelievable pride, they were so puffed up that that kind of a phrase at the end of a sentence would only confuse their desires. And so rather than be trapped in a thing where they would have to treat others equal to themselves, they dropped it.
Now granted the one who came to Jesus in Mark 12 adds as thy self, and the lawyer in Luke 10 adds as thy self, but it may have been that they wanted to make sure they were accurate because of who they were speaking with. Apparently the norm was "thou shalt love thy neighbor." They didn't want to love anybody like they loved themselves. That would be crowding them. They were too proud to love any equally.
Have you ever thought about what that means to love someone as you love yourself? If you were just to love someone and it didn't say as yourself, you could just sort of love them at a distance. You could treat them a little less than you treat yourself. Whatever you do for yourself, you do half for them or a third or a tenth. I mean if you just could drop that little phrase it would be so convenient. If it just said love your neighbor.
But the Lord has a way of driving things right into the heart of our being. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Oh come on. Equal to...you say how do we love ourselves? Listen you love yourself. You do. I mean, whose teeth did you brush this morning? Whose hair did you comb? Whose wardrobe hangs in your closet? Whose savings account is in your bank? You are concerned about yourself. You love yourself. To love means to serve the needs. You serve your own needs, let's face it. You have an unfeigned, unhypocritcal total love for yourself. There aren't some days when you fall out of love with yourself. You love yourself all the time.
And your true...you're genuine about it, you really do. You're fervent about it. You're habitual about it. It's a permanent love. Why whenever you have an interest you want to fulfill it. Whenever you have a need, you want to meet it. Whenever you have a want, you want to supply it. Whenever you have a desire, you want to fulfill it. Whenever you have a hope, you want to realize it. Whenever you have an ambition, you want to see it come to fruition.
I mean, you are really working in your own behalf. Just the way life goes. You're very concerned about your own welfare, your own comfort, your own safety, your own interests, your own health, physical, spiritual, temporal, eternal things we're very concerned about ourselves. We seek our own pleasure and we know of no limits to gaining what we want. Now that is exactly the way you're to love everybody else. Jesus said even your enemies.
In other words, you are to have that same totally consuming unfeigned, fervent, habitual, permanent love which brings into your heart their interest, their needs, their wants, their desires, their hopes, their ambitions, and prompts you to do everything you can to make sure that all their welfare, safety, comfort, and interest is met and that whatever they need and whatever they want or whatever pleasure they have, you are anxious to fulfill on their behalf.
How do you measure up? The last time you had a choice between doing what you want or sacrificing yourself so somebody else could do it, which way did you go? Who do you really care about? The standard is very high people. Love your neighbor as yourself is very, very high. Very high. Humanly speaking, it is impossible, because humanly speaking we are totally absorbed in ourselves. I mean just think of it. Think of it from the standpoint of your income.
I mean, probably at best you keep 90% of what you finally get after taxes and maybe give the Lord 10. When it comes to how much you spend on you as opposed to how much spend on the people on your block, I mean it's miniscule to even think of how much you might spend on them.
As to how much you give to the needy and how much you use for yourself, those kind of comparisons are very remote because we don't even think like that, that's how far we are from these kind of principles. Loving your neighbor as yourself is a very, very, very heavy principle.
And that's the way we're to love. But you see they weren't interested in that and so they just dropped it. Love your neighbor. And so they omitted something, but beyond that, they added something. What did they add? And what? "Hate your enemy." Now where did that come from? Did that come out of the Bible? No, nowhere does the Bible command us to hate our enemies. Where did they get that? I mean, what do they just make that up? That's right. It was the logical extension of their perverted thinking.
You see what they did was, they said all right, we are to love our neighbor. Now we've got to figure out who is our neighbor, right? So they said our neighbors are the Jews not the Gentiles. That's what the Pharisees believed. Only the Jews qualified and among the Jews only certain Jews, right? Certain Jews didn't qualify as neighbors.
For example look at Matthew 9:10. And Jesus passed forth from there, verse 9, He saw a man named Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector. All right, then verse 10, "He," Jesus meeting with a tax collector. "It came to pass as Jesus sat eating in the house, behold many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples." And you have two categories of people tax collectors and we'll see more about them in our future study, they were the renegade trader, rebel, extortionist Jews that were despised by the people because they had sold out to Rome for money. And then there were sinners, they are the public sinners, the displaying sinners, the prostitutes, and the criminals. And the Pharisees saw it and they said "what, why eat your master with tax collectors and sinners?"
So they said their neighbors are the Jews, but only the Jews who are tax collectors or sinners. So we eliminate all of them. They aren't our neighbors. In fact, they found a woman taken adultery one time and they picked up stones to stone her. So it was a very defined neighbor. That wasn't all.
Look at John Chapter 7, verse 49. In John 7:49, they went even further. And the Pharisees are kind of giving away themselves here and in verse 49, they say, "But this people who knoweth not the law are cursed." And what they mean there is this rebel mob here. They're talking about a crowd. This rebel mob of uneducated, not knowledgeable people with no commitment to Pharisee of tradition, this riff raff that doesn't know the law are cursed. So they have eliminated the tax collectors and they have eliminated the sinners and they eliminated the rebel mob that weren't committed to the law they were. You know who their neighbors were? The people in their group that's who.
And if you were in their group you could...you would beloved but outside their group you were an enemy whether you were the rebel mob or a tax collector or a public sinner. If you weren't one of them, you know, it was us for, no more, bar the door. Commitment to ourselves and nobody else. They fed their evil proud hearts by concluding that anyone not a neighbor was to be hated.
In other words, they said the Bible says love your neighbor, therefore, if someone who is not your...therefore, someone who is not your neighbor is not to be loved and the opposite of love is hate so love your neighbor means, hate your enemy. That's what's known in legal arguments as a nonsecutor argument. It doesn't necessarily follow. But that's the way they reason, because they had a perversion in their hearts to begin with. Their prejudice found a way.
By the way, they didn't read far enough in Leviticus 19 either. If they'd have read verse 34, they would have read this, "The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you and you shall love him as yourself." If they'd have read a little farther, they would have known that even a non-Jew a stranger, whatever he was, was to be loved as they love themselves.
How they conveniently ignored Exodus 12:49, "There shall be one law for the native and one law for the stranger who sojourns among you." There aren't different laws for different people. If you are to love, you are to love and it is as broad as the commandment of God is broad. It wasn't only the Pharisees who were like this. We know of the three groups in Jesus' time, the three sects of Judaism. Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. The Essenes were the hippy cult. They were the ones who went out of town and they set up a community on the edge of the Dead Sea, which is now known as Cumeron. It's the place where we have found the Dead Sea Scrolls.
And they lived apart from society. They lived out in the wilderness in a primitive life and copied copies of scripture and lived in a very austere anti-social way. And the Essenes have among their writings these statements that show they had the same attitude as the Pharisees. "Love all that God has chosen and hate all that He has rejected. Love all the sons of light, each according to his lot in God's community and hate all the sons of darkness, each according to his guilt in God's vengeance." And then this, "The Levites curse all the sons of Belial." And to them the sons of Belial were the non-Essenes. So they cursed everybody who wasn't in their group, just like the Pharisees.
Their love was a prejudice, narrow, ugly thing that just gave them license to hate everybody. If you don't think they hated just watch them interact with Jesus Christ. They were so filled with hatred. One of the evasive maxims of the Pharisees that we've discovered in archeology is this statement, listen. "If a Jew," this is what they taught, "If a Jew sees a Gentile fallen into the sea, let him by no means lift him out for it is written, thou shalt not rise up against the blood of thy neighbor, but this man is not thy neighbor."
In other words, if you see a Gentile drowning, stand there and enjoy it. Don't save him, he's not your neighbor. With such an outlook, it is little wonder that the Romans charged the Jews with hatred of the human race. Now frankly, there's some reason to see why they were able to twist Leviticus 19 to fit their own prejudices. No place in the Old Testament does it ever say to hate your enemy. But there are some things in the Old Testament that at first might be a little hard to understand.
So let's move from our first point, the tradition of the Jews to the teaching of the Old Testament. Where did they ever get these ideas? And we're going to see a lot of this. We'll see some of it today and some of the teaching of the Old Testament in our next study and finally we'll see the truth of Christ as He clears up all the misconceptions. But let me just give you the tension that created that sort of opening for them to do this.
They wanted a way to hate. They wanted to justify it in their religious system so it would encroach on their self-righteousness. So they had to invent some way to hate. And no doubt they found a couple of good excuses. One would be the Old Testament promises to exterminate the Canaanites. You'll remember that when God brought Israel into the land of promise, the land was filled at that time with the Canaanites who were vial, retched people. In fact, archeology has shown us that there has not been a race of people found that were worse than the Canaanites.
They were despicable things. They were a cancer on human society of the worst kind. Human sacrifice, blood letting, massacres of babies, you name it, the Canaanites did it. Horrible orgiastic kind of things. And so the Canaanites were to be wiped out and when Israel came into the land they were told regarding the Ammonites, the Moabites, and the Edomites to wipe them out. They are not to be treated with kindness. Deuteronomy 23, verse 3 through 8, that whole section there. It says that all of these people, Edomites, Ammonites, Moabites are to be treated with no kindness, but they are to done away with.
Now later on we read that also the Amalekites were to have the same fate. In fact, God says wipe not only them off the face of the earth, but the memory of them as well, so they won