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Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany
St. Stephen’s Anglican Church
The Rev. Jeffrey O. Cerar, February 23, 2014


Four Good Reasons to Love Your Enemy

Text: Matthew 5:38-48

More hard teaching today from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. [Matthew 5:43-48]

Jesus does challenge us, doesn’t He? Loving our enemies is one of the hardest things for human beings to do. It seems most natural for us to hate those who hate us. It seems perfectly acceptable for us to want what we have coming to us—all the good things life can provide. And it seems perfectly normal for us to want those who trouble us and hurt us and dislike us to get what is coming to them—punishment, pain, failure and disgrace. And yet, Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Jesus knew how hard this is. He understood human nature. He knew the psalms, and He had heard the prayers of David, a man after God’s own heart—prayers like Psalm 71:13:

May my accusers perish in shame;
    may those who want to harm me
    be covered with scorn and disgrace.

But Jesus was training His disciples in the Kingdom life. As Mary Swann pointed out last week, Jesus was talking directly to His disciples in this sermon, and the crowds listened in. Jesus was calling the disciples to a hard standard if they wanted to follow Him. And so He said repeatedly in this sermon, “You have heard it said, ....., but I say to you.” “You have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”

Let’s spend a little time reflecting on why Jesus commands this of us. The first reason is a societal one. Jesus commands us to love our enemy because hate destroys community Returning hate for hate intensifies the destruction. To return a wrong for a wrong causes a spiral that gets worse and worse.

Dr. Martin Luther King, preaching about this scripture in one of his early sermons, talked about this spiral of retaliation. He spoke of riding in the car with his brother one night. None of the oncoming cars was dimming its lights on the two-lane road. The brother got so mad, he said, “The next driver who fails dim his lights is going to get a good dose of my brights in his eyes.” And Dr. King talked him out of it, saying, “Somebody got to have some sense on this highway.” [Sermon: “Loving Your Enemy,” delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabma, Nov. 17, 1957, on Audio Book, A Knock at Midnight.]

That’s the way it is in the world. Hate begets hate, begetting more hate, and violence and viciousness and mayhem and chaos. Somebody got to have some sense on this highway. And the way that happens is that somebody decides to love his enemy, instead of hating his enemy.

The second reason Jesus tells us to love our enemies is a personal one. And that is that when we harbor hatred, it destroys us. It is like a cancer in us that eats away at our sensibilities. It causes us to look with confusion on the person we hate, to the point where good looks evil, and the beautiful looks ugly. It causes us to hear meanings in what they say that they probably don’t even intend much of the time. It causes us to believe lies about them to justify how much we hate them. And we begin to dwell in a dark cavern of destructive emotions.

Jesus is telling us to light up that dark cavern with His love. He’s telling us to look upon those who make themselves our enemies with good will and hope for their healing. He doesn’t mean that we must like them. To like someone is an emotional response, and we’re not talking about emotions. Nor does loving them mean we have to trust them. He’s telling us to hold them up in prayer, asking God to bring them to know Him and love Him so that they may spend eternity with Him.

The third reason Jesus tells us to love our enemies is a spiritual one. Jesus knows that when we fail to forgive, we are tied to a person in an unhealthy spiritual way. We are looking to that person to make us okay again. We are depending on that person to love us rather than hate us, restore us to our original well being, reassure us that all the wrong was his in the first place, and become a blessing to us. Jesus doesn’t want us stuck in a place like that. He wants us to look to Him for all we need. Our spiritual life in Him depends on our looking to God for our restoration, our wholeness, our vindication, our worthiness and our righteousness. When the Hebrew people were wandering in the desert for 40 years, there was no place for them to get food. God taught them to be wholly dependent on Him. He provided the manna, the divine substance that appeared every morning on the desert floor. And to keep them aware that He was the source of their sustenance, this food was only good for one day, and then it spoiled. They couldn’t even stockpile it for the next day. Well, Jesus said,

Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert; yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. [John 6:49-51]

Jesus knows that in ourselves, we are not worthy of God’s favor. And neither is the person who wrongs us. Without the Savior, neither of us can be righteous or worthy. But with Him, we can be saved for eternity. Jesus wants us to look only to Him and not to put our hopes in earthly things, whether it be bread, or the approval of our peers, or the apologies of our enemies.

The fourth reason Jesus tells us to love our enemies is also a spiritual one, and that is so that we can be like our Father in heaven. Notice in the passage we read today from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, in verses 44 and 45, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” What did He mean by that? He meant that God wants us to love as He loves. He wants us to carry that family likeness that became ours when He adopted us as His children. Listen to the last part of that same teaching: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” There it is again. Do this because this is how the Father is.

Never have we met anyone who so perfectly bore the Father’s likeness as Jesus Himself.

And the Bible tells us that we will be like Jesus. I John 3:2 says this: “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him....”

God wants us to be like Him. He intends to transform us so that we will be like Him. And one aspect of our God-likeness is that we love our enemies. As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. The Bible tells us that God’s mercy is everlasting, and His steadfast love endures forever. He loves every person whom He has created. His goal is that every person be saved and spend eternity with Him. That includes those who reject Him, those who ignore Him, those who nailed His precious Son to the cross, those who persecute and martyr His children. And it includes those who make themselves our enemies. He is calling to love them as He loves them.

God’s love is redemptive. It has the power to turn evil into good. It has the power to turn darkness into light. It has the power to bring into the Kingdom those who have been persecuting the Kingdom. God’s love working in the lives of His disciples, your life and my life, has that power, if we will let it work.

I’m sure you remember that passage from Romans that says,

If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. [Romans 12:20]

We are all familiar with this verse, because it is so vivid. And, God help us, we like the image of burning coals on our enemy’s head. But think about what it is really saying. When we allow the love of God to work in us, we bring His redemptive power to bear on a person who needs salvation. Those burning coals on his head represent the burden of carrying hatred that is not reciprocated. The hot coals represent the searing pain of knowing that the person they hate is infuriatingly kind in return. It may make them hate you more initially, but this kind of redemptive love opens the door for God to work on that person. And the more we do that, the more the world will be changed for the good, and for the glory of God.

We are going to have enemies if we are doing God’s work. It has to happen, because the devil, with his agenda of evil, will come back against us. I was a lawyer for 18 years. It was a rough and tumble practice at times. I had a lot of cases where the stakes were high. I dealt with a lot with hard-nosed attorneys representing the opponents of my clients. And as I look back, I cannot identify a single person I would have called an enemy during those 18 years.

Then I went to seminary. I was ordained. I was called to be a pastor. And that is when I made enemies. For the first time in my life, I recognized my duty to take a firm and public stand on the Word of God. I am obliged to come against evil. I am obliged to confront things that conflict with God’s will. And the enemies I have made are too many for me to keep track of.

Just imagine the burden it would be upon me if I was waiting for all those people to call me up or write me a note and say, “You know what? You were right. I’m so sorry I said those terrible things about you. Please forgive me.” I can’t hate all those people. It would just be too much. And besides, in how many of those cases was I the one who started the spiral? Perhaps I told the truth, but not in love. Perhaps I proclaimed the Gospel, but not in a pastoral way. Maybe my own sinful action triggered the hate response from some who became my enemies.

All I can do is try to follow the hard teachings of Jesus. And so, I try to pray for my enemies as often as they come to mind. And I try to hold them in good will and redemptive love. For I do want to be like Jesus, as I am sure all of you do. As hard as it is, I want to be like Jesus. I want to be perfect because my Father in heaven is perfect. Realistically, I know that won’t happen this side of heaven. But as people of faith, we can say that we know we are children of God. And although what we will become has not yet been made known, we know that when Jesus appears, we will be like Him.

© Jeffrey O. Cerar, 2014

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