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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. ~ Luke 6:27-28
Today, we continue our study of the Lord Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Luke’s record of what Jesus said that day near the Sea of Galilee is the same as recorded in Matthew 5-7 which is a much longer treatment of the sermon.
In Luke 6:27 we read, "But to you who are listening I say." Here, the Lord Jesus is addressing those with the ability to hear the voice of God and respond and are subsequently defined by Him. It is the Holy Spirit who gives us ears to hear God, however we can quench His influence.
In Luke 6:27, The Lord Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” People outside the influence of God don’t love their enemies. They hate their enemies. The Jews hated the Romans because the Romans were ungodly. The Romans hated the Jews because they were largely arrogant. The Romans were ungodly because they violated the law and the traditions of Judaism. The Jews were arrogant because they had no personal relationship with God.
The Lord Jesus uses this opportunity to challenge the misinterpretation of the law as it was taught by the Jewish religious leaders. In Matthew 6:44, he said: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor' (found in Leviticus 19:18 among many other OT passages) and hate your enemies'" (found no where in the OT). The Jewish religious leaders took the OT verses out of context to argue that they could join God in his hatred of sinners.
There are Christians today who think their responsibility is to hate abortionists, or to hate Muslims, or to hate homosexuals or anyone who perverts any definition of God. Like the Jews of the Lord Jesus' day, hate today has become a virtue for many who think they are doing the will of God by hating sinners.
Studies have shown that anger causes our blood pressure to rise, and our breathing rate to increase. As a result, this causes a strain on our heart making us more susceptible to a heart attack or to a stroke. It can also trigger headaches and lead to abusive behavior. It can break down our immune system and cause us to be more susceptible to various diseases. Hate destroys us.
Nelson Mandela said it well when he said, "Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies."
But here, in v.27, the Lord Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” He is saying, "Do not be defined by the evil people do. Do not be defined by your evil responses to the evil of your enemies. Do not allow them to pull you down to their level and allow sin to win."
This kind of love can only be demonstrated when we declare our spiritual bankruptcy and trust the Lord to love our enemies through us. The way to love an enemy is not to rely on ourselves, but acknowledge that we cannot do it. No, having come to an end of ourselves, we ask Him to love our enemies through us.
Agape love can only be produced by God as He expresses it in our hearts. It is not a matter of feeling, but a matter of the will. This kind of love is based more on actions than words.
Agape was developed almost exclusively in Christian literature to refer to the kind of love that doesn't serve itself, but extends itself for the sake of another. Agape love is really a different category of love that the world has not seen in action until the Lord Jesus came along and infected His followers with it.
The difference between agape and all the other types of loves is agape must be willed. We decide to love. Agape is a non-self-serving love. It’s willing to love someone not deserving or asking for it. It’s a non-emotional love. We do it because it’s the right thing to do, not because it feels good.
In v.27, the Lord Jesus said our enemies are “those who hate you.” It’s not those we hate. It is those who hate us. We are not to hate anyone.
Then in v.27, the Lord Jesus says, "do good to those who hate you." The language here means to continue to do good or to have a lifestyle of doing good to others. It is easier to do this when we act and live as if we are going to die. And, if we die, everything will be better.
In the beginning of v.28 we read, “Bless those who curse you.” To bless is to speak goodness into their lives, even though the system they had grown up in told them to hate those who hated them.
In the second half of v.28 we read, "pray for those who mistreat you." When we pray for anyone who has hurt us in some way, we discover it is hard to stay angry at them. Prayer leaves the consequences, revenge, and complete justice to God. It’s a transference of our will into God’s hands. By praying for our enemies, God’s Spirit can supernaturally show love and kindness through us that may ultimately change them. That process can also eradicate our fear of our enemies because perfect love casts out fear.
Finally, one of my all time favorite authors, Watchman Nee, tells a story about a Christian who owned a rice paddy next to that of a Communist. The Christian irrigated his rice paddy by pumping water out of a canal. Every day, after the Christian had pumped enough water to fill his paddy, the Communist would come out, remove the boards that kept the water in his neighbor’s paddy, and allow the water to drain into his paddy so he wouldn’t have to pump the water. This continued for some time, until the Christian could not take it any more. He prayed, “Lord, if this keeps up I’m going to lose all my rice, maybe even my field. What can I do?” The Lord began by putting this thought in his mind. The next morning the Christian got up early and started pumping water into his neighbor’s paddy first. Then he replaced the boards and pumped water into his own rice paddy. The result was that both rice paddies became productive and the Communist was softened by his neighbor’s generosity. The two men became friends and eventually the Communist became a believer in Jesus.
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