Love Our Enemies & Be Perfect

Love our enemies and be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. Who are your enemies? Who is injuring, hurting you? Who is opposing you, against you, oppress you? Insulting you? Who is persecuting you because of Jesus? Take a few moments to think about and identify your enemies. It may be someone from a different faith or an atheist. It may be that environmentalist who opposes your livelihood. Or that conservative or liberal. It may be the other political party. It may be a business partner trying to cheat you around every corner. That colleague at work that talks behind your back. It may be the bully at school that uses every opportunity to make life difficult for you. We have religious, political, social, cultural and personal enemies. Take a few moments and identify a personal enemy of yours by name. See his or her face before you. Keep that person and your enemies in mind as we go through today’s teaching.

1. Abusing God’s Word

Verse 43—You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’

How many times have we abused and misused God’s Word to support our personal theologies and viewpoints. This is what the Pharisees and the teachers of the law did. They quoted from Lev.19:18—“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” But they ignored the other commands in the same chapter that told them how to behave toward their enemies.

Lev. 19:9-10—“When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.”

Lev. 19:33-34—“When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”

They ignored Ex 23:4-5—“If you come across your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to return it. If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help them with it.” Almost the exact same instructions given regarding their neighbor’s animals in Deut 22:1-4.

They turned a blind eye to Prov 25:21-22, which Paul quotes in Romans 12:20-21—“If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.” Nowhere in the OT is there a law that says “hate your enemies.” Jesus focuses here on our personal enemies, not God’s enemies.

2. Love Our Enemies

We must honestly admit that like the world and today’s culture we also tend to love only our own and those that love us. The others are enemies, hated and disliked. This poem by an unknown author is very applicable today, including ourselves. “Believe as I believe, no more, no less; That I am right, and no one else, confess; Feel as I feel, think only as I think; Eat what I eat, and drink but what I drink; Look as I look, do always as I do; Then, and only then, will I fellowship with you.” (Quoted by Hughes, 141)

But Jesus tells us, “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (v.44).

We respond and say, “I love my enemy, but I don’t like him, or I don’t have to like him.” Do we hear ourselves and what we are saying? This statement does not fly with Jesus. How can you love someone when you don’t like them? This is our self talking, justifying, rationalizing why I actually don’t love my enemy. I am not willing to sacrifice myself for his sake; not willing to sacrifice my comfort for the cross.

We think that just by saying that I love my enemy, I have fulfilled Jesus’ command and done my Christian duty. These are mere, empty words, not real, true, authentic love that asks us to sacrifice for them, self-giving love, to put their well-being before myself.

Jesus does not ask us to love our enemies in the same way we love our loved ones. We love them with a spontaneous, natural, instinctive love without much effort. Jesus does not ask us to love our enemies with a romantic love or a buddy love or a family love or an emotional love. He tells us to love them with agape love. That is deliberate, intelligent, determined love. This love is not a feeling but love as an act of the will, an intentional decision to love as the Father loves. This love is not only to bear with the evil person patiently, but actively to engage in heart-felt love towards him, to serve him.

C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity said that we should not waste our time to bother, worry, or think whether we love someone. We must act as if we love them. “As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.”

How do we love our enemies? We love them with our deeds, through practical, humble, sacrificial service. “Love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back” (Lk 6:27,35). “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink” (Rom 12:20). Kingdom love is love in action. Love is caring about and doing something for their wellbeing and welfare. Giving them hospitality.

We love them with our words expressing love, kindness, grace and forgiveness to them. “Bless those who curse you” (Lk 6:27). “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” (Ro 12:14-15).

We love our enemies by praying for them. “Pray for those who persecute you.” “Pray for those who mistreat you” (Lk 6:28). This is not just a quick prayer to get it over with. Pray for them as you would for your loved ones. Pray for all their needs, pray for their salvation, pray blessings upon them. You will discover how the Holy Spirit changes your heart and your love for your enemy grows.

Bonhoeffer said, “Through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God.” Our enemies may continue to persecute and hurt us. “But not even that can hurt or overcome us, so long as we pray for them. For if we pray for them, we are taking their distress and poverty, their guilt and perdition upon ourselves, and pleading to God for them. We are doing vicariously for them what they cannot do for themselves.” And when we do that we are like Jesus, the Son of God, and we are behaving like sons, children, of God.

3. We Are Children of God

Verse 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.”

Kingdom love is to love like God, and not like the world. God’s love is all embracing, all inclusive, impartial love. He extends his common grace to all humankind, to believers and unbelievers alike. He loves everyone, provides and cares for everyone. He sustains all life. Everything is in his hands—every breath, every heartbeat. When we love our enemies, we love like our Father, and we are children of God.

Just think about this. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Ro 5:8). We were his enemies, and it is when we stand at the cross, “that [we] realized that [we] too were his enemies, and that he overcome [us] by his love … [We know] that [we owe our] very life to One, who though [we were] his enemy, treated [us] as a brother and accepted [us], who made us his neighbors, and drew us into fellowship with himself.” (Bonhoeffer)

“Perfect, all-inclusive love is the act of the Father, it is also the acts of the sons of God as it was the act of the only-begotten Son.” (150) To see our enemies as our neighbors, and to love them, makes us like God, perfect, and different from the world.

4. We Are Peculiar, Extraordinary

Verses 46-47—“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?”

All people love. Unbelievers and atheists love and do good. But all human, worldly love, even the highest and the best love is tainted by our self-interests and evil. As kingdom people we are called to love with an extraordinary love that goes beyond the normal and regular. This extraordinary love distinguishes us from the world. Jesus call us to be “perissos" — extraordinary, peculiar, radically different, beyond the ordinary, normal or regular. Only then can we be the salt and light of the world. This extraordinary love, divine love like our Father’s love, is how we live the kingdom life.

It is “the way of self-renunciation, of utter love, of absolute purity, truthfulness and meekness. It is unreserved love for our enemies, for the unloving and the unloved, love for our religious, political and personal adversaries. In every case it is the love which was fulfilled on the cross of Christ. What is περισσός? It is the love of Jesus Christ himself, who went patiently and obediently to the cross—it is in fact the cross itself. The cross is the differential of the Christian religion, the power which enables the Christian to transcend the world and to win the victory. The passion in the love of the Crucified is the supreme expression of the ‘extraordinary’ quality of the Christian life.” (Bonhoeffer, 153)

As followers of Jesus we choose the Cross over our own comfort. We love others with his extraordinary love. In Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected, and in us, this extraordinary love becomes reality. We are perfect because in us the love of the Heavenly Father is perfected. It was that love which gave the Son to die for us upon the cross, and it is by suffering in fellowship of this cross, taking up our crosses daily, that we are being perfected.

5. We Are Perfect

Verse 48—“You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Jesus does not call us here to sinless perfection. He would be contradicting himself. Jesus said that to hunger and thirst for righteousness is an ongoing quality of his followers. In the Lord’s prayer he teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our debts.” These indicate that Jesus did not expect us to become morally perfect and completely holy in this life. Jesus call us to imitate God and to love others with the perfect love, the same merciful, inclusive love of our Heavenly Father. Not tolerate sin.

Is this possible? Can we be perfect and love our enemies like God? Yes, we can. We are perfect and we are being perfected. Christ is in us. We are in Christ. We are new creations. We are children of God. In Christ we are already made righteous, holy, perfect. On the other hand, through the power of the Holy Spirit we are being perfected, we are becoming perfect.

Therefore, all of us can love like the Father does. Jesus Christ lives in us. The Holy Spirit fills us. When we say we cannot, or make excuses to avoid loving our enemies by saying we are not perfect, we are denying the power of the Holy Spirit. We are denying that Jesus Christ is living in us. …

The question each one of us must ask is this, “Is there more in my love? Is my love different, beyond the normal, extraordinary?” Now let’s go back to the enemies you have identified earlier. Commit yourself to pray for your enemies everyday. How can you love them with your words? How can you bless them? How can you love them in action? What are their greatest needs? Go and serve them. Greet them with love and peace when you meet them again. See them as a person, a human being created in the image of God, loved by God.

Love our enemies with extraordinary love and be perfect like our heavenly Father is perfect. And just may be God’s love will overwhelm them so much that they would seek God and come to Jesus Christ. And even if they don’t, we will continue to love them. We will not quit. We will not give up. God did not give up on us. Love our enemies and be perfect and we will make a difference.