Love for Enemies
27 "But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
32 "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Judging Others
37 "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
Dig Deeper
A few years ago I watched a movie called “Space Cowboys” which was about a group of former astronauts that were well past their sixtieth birthday. They were going to go into space again and some officials in NASA were skeptical that they would be able to handle the rigors of space at their age. Before they would agree to send them, the men had to go through rigorous training and preparation to spend even a short time in space. No one will ever confuse that movie for a factual documentary but it did depict one thing quite accurately. When someone is going to go into space they have to prepare intensely for it. Vigorous training is necessary to prepare oneself to be able to function at a maximum level when in outer space. I watched a video recently on the training that real astronauts actually have to undergo in order to prepare themselves for time in space. It’s difficult to describe in the written word the many aspects of their training but suffice it to say, they get spun around a lot, they strength train, and they even have to learn how to move, walk, and eat in low gravity environments.
Imagine, though, if you knew that you were leaving in a year and were going to live in space for the rest of your life. Would you prepare yourself or just that you were ready when that time came? Of course, you would want to prepare yourself. You would spend great amounts of time learning to live in your new reality and environment. In fact, you would probably practice for your future life at every opportunity. Yet, much of the things that you do to prepare for such an event would seem quite crazy from an earthly perspective. In fact, if you were not going into space the vast majority of those things would make no sense to do at all. These training exercises only take on any significant meaning if the future prospect of going into space is a reality.
This is the way it is with the challenging and often demanding way of life to which Jesus called his disciples. Many people get off course and misunderstand Jesus’ teachings as some sort of new kind of law or rules that must be adhered to without thought. That’s to miss the whole point, however. Jesus’ teaching and principles, like those in this passage, are not rules but training principles. They are designed to give us rules-of-thumb through which we begin to train and transform who we are at a deeper level than most people ever consider going. We simply will not understand these sorts of guidelines, though, unless we comprehend that these are part of a training regime. His new family, said Jesus, are people that are rejecting wholesale the values of this age and choosing to live in the age to come, the resurrection age where we will live with our King forever. We would never think that an astronaut’s training program meant that he was earning his way into space, though. No, we understand the difference between earning your way and preparing for what is ahead. This way of life laid out by Jesus is preparation, training his people for the reality that we will live in when we are in God’s presence for eternity. And just like the astronaut training, it would make no sense if the future prospect of the resurrection age was not a reality.
At the heart of Jesus’ instructions on the new way of living that his people are to embrace is the radical kind of love that is God. It is the love that makes little sense if one demands to view the world from a viewpoint of what is “fair”. It is the type of love that takes the breathtaking stance of turning enemies into friends. It means living and loving the way that God loves. It means truly treating all other people the way that God treats people.
Jesus’ words in this passage concerning the way his people are to think about their enemies could hardly be more challenging. To put it simply, this is big-boy stuff. This is not the kind of thing that can be done half-heartedly or even out of simple obedience. Obedience is the starting point to come to Jesus but to truly follow him as disciples we must go beyond that. This is what Jesus meant when he said “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because servants do not know their master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (Jn. 15:12-15). The point is that we know that the master’s business is to transform us into people that will be prepared for the age to come not to just create a bunch of people that can follow a few rules. We are to move beyond mere obedience and into being Jesus’ friends.
This means having the kind of love that only God can have and doing what seems crazy to the world. Jesus’ point in his examples in verses 28-31 are all examples of the principle given in verse 27: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” This type of love and generosity is absurd and even naive if we look at it from the values of this present age. It only makes sense when we recall that we are called to this type of mercy and generosity because this is what God is like and we are becoming like him so that we can dwell him forever. Many look at this ethic that Jesus lays out and think of it as weakness but it actually takes incredible strength to live like this.
Does this radical kind of love and mercy really have any effect, though? The life of Jesus demonstrates that it does. Jesus didn’t just call people to live like this and not demonstrate himself. When people would slap him, punch him, mock him, steal his clothes, and try to take everything from him, he responded in grace and mercy, even asking the Father for forgiveness for those who had persecuted him. As mentioned, the greatest effect of this kind of love is to transform enemies into friends. Nowhere is this seen more clearly in the Bible than in the life of Saul who would change his name to Paul following his conversion. He was the chief persecutor of the church and personally oversaw the stoning death of Stephen. As he lay dying, Stephen prayed “Lord, do not hold this sin against them,” and surely God did not hold it against Saul as he was transformed by God in answer to Stephen’s prayer.
We should not think for a minute that this kind of living is easy. It is challenging especially because it is to be applied to enemies and not those who love you. In fact, says Jesus, loving those who love you doesn’t demonstrate all that much to the world because the world is familiar, at least in theory, with that kind of love. The world loves those who love them. The world lends and extends credit to those who can repay. Those kind of actions make sense. But quite frankly, Jesus doesn’t what the kind of people that make sense. He wants people that are committed to loving like He loves. He wants people who will love their enemies, curse those who bless them, and lend without any expectation of receiving reciprocity.
Let’s be honest with all of this. It doesn’t make sense and that’s the point. At least it’s not common sense from the values of this age. It does open up Christians to be taken advantage of. It does open us up to not being treated “fairly”. But that’s only from the vantage point of this age. Surely we are to balance this radical kind of love with Jesus’ reminder to be “as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16) and not be dangerously naive but he does call us to a love that only makes sense from the vantage point of the age to come. These are actions that only make sense if we realize that we are not people who are going to live by the patterns of this age in eternity and increasingly want to shed ourselves of those patterns now. Jesus was calling his followers to be like those astronauts in training and begin to live, as much as possible in this age, according to the way that we will live in the age to come. It doesn’t make sense to share and love with abandon in this age but those will be the norms in the resurrection so our job is to begin to model that age for others and to begin to conform ourselves to those values and prepare ourselves for that time. This is what God’s family looks like. This is, in fact, what separates Christianity from all religions. There is no religion that calls people to live by these sort of non-sensical values.
What this all means is that the children take on the nature of the merciful Father and begin to live out that same mercy. Not only are we becoming like our Father in heaven but the truth is that we will be treated by God according to the values that we embrace. If we want to cling to the world’s ethic of what’s “fair,” then God will treat us “fairly,” which will not mean a pleasant time of judgment for any human. But if we cling to God’s mercy that he has shown us and pass that on to others, then we will stay in that place of mercy before God. Thus, if we want to not be judged by what we deserve, not be condemned the way our actions warrant, and to be forgiven lavishly then we must hold to those values in our own lives. The measure we want used for us is the one that we will use with others.
This all sounds good but the reality is that Jesus’ people haven’t done such a good job of consistently living by these values down through the years. We have, I fear, gone way too far in taming and applying logic to what Jesus said. It’s not that the truths of God’s kingdom have changed or weren’t meant to be followed. At some point Christians have to face that fact that we have watered down some of Jesus’ most challenging teachings. Perhaps when we get back to living by the radically futuristic values of the age to come will we really be able to have the kind of impact in the world that his first followers had.
Devotional Thought
What about this passage is most challenging to you? Do you look at this passage and long to live like that or does it make you feel like you have a pit in your stomach? What do you need to change right now to begin to live according to this kind of mercy and love?
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