Love Your Enemies, Part 1 | God’s Love is the Golden Rule

Luke 6:27-28

Luke 6:27, starting with Jesus’ opening imperative, in verse 27, love your enemies, love your enemies. This is about practicing the full extent of divine love. This is the way Jesus commands his followers to live, to practice the full extent of divine love. So to get this in our minds as we’re in the habit of doing, let’s start just by reading just a few verses here of this main section from verse 27 to 30, “But I say to you who hear,” Jesus says, “Love your enemies, and do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. To the one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also. And from one who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you do so to them.”

We might put a heading on that section of verses and summarize what Jesus is teaching right here in this way. This is about extending love for all, including enemies, and enduring all for love and make no mistake what Jesus teaches here is radical, not just in our time and in our culture, but at any time and in any culture. This is radical. This cuts to the bone, really, it pierces us to the heart, especially as we get into it more and more and unpack it, we realize we are very far from practicing this kind of love in any consistent, practical way and we need to grow in it. We’ve been introduced to this kind of love through Christ, we need to grow in this kind of love by the Holy Spirit. This is exactly the way Jesus loved us.

 Jesus loved his own. Jesus own disciples were loved by God, to the uttermost, to the full measure, and really to the salvation of their souls. Jesus death was the most profound act of love and it was a particular redeeming love by which he purchased them and yet, Jesus loved his enemy too, didn’t he? Jesus loved his own to the end, the uttermost and yet on a temporal and a superficial level, there was no discernible difference between the way Jesus treated his own and the way he treated his enemy, the one who betrayed him, the one who handed him over to death. That, beloved, is how Jesus wants us to love our enemies too. Okay, so with that in mind, turn back to Luke 6:27.

Verses 27-28, this is a single verse or a single sentence, I should say in the Greek, a single sentence with four imperatives: love, do good, bless, and pray. And all four of those imperatives, all four of those commands, that’s how we’re to love our enemies, let alone our friends, our acquaintances, anyone else who qualifies in this broad, broad definition of neighbor. This is as old really is Luke 19:18, which codifies the divine ethic, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” That is the summary command about all of our interactions, all of our relations on a horizontal level with all mankind, “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Here in the New Testament, though, from the lips of the incarnate Son of God and portrayed in his perfect life of sacrificial love, we see the full extent of that ancient ethic “love your neighbor as yourself.” What we discover is that the definition of neighbor is much broader than we would assume. It’s very broad. It extends to all mankind, those who you are in a position to help those who are in your proximity, enemies, as well as friends and everyone in between.

Now, if we break down Jesus main point, as I said, it’s a single sentence spans two verses, but we see four simple clauses there, each one with a subject, a verb, and an object. To start out with a subject, all four clauses have the same subject, it’s verse 27. Jesus directs his words to you who hear so the subject of those verbs are Christians, believers, those who are regenerate and enabled by the Spirit to hear, so we’re talking about true Christians, that’s the subject. But then there are four verbs and four direct objects. So that’s where we’re going to spend our time to understand what Jesus is here commanding us to do. And we recognize how counter intuitive this is for us as fallen human beings.

But I want to make a quick footnote to that. It is counterintuitive to us this is not something that’s natural to us. It’s something foreign, it’s something we need to learn. But I want to say quickly by way of footnote that it’s not counterintuitive to being human. Why? Because Jesus is fully and perfectly human. He has come in flesh, full humanity, full deity, but full humanity to demonstrate to us what God designed and intended humanity to be. It’s in Christ. That’s what he wants us to be. And it’s only those who are in Christ, who are enabled by God by the Spirit to do that.

Jesus’ life of love shows us what God intended humanity to be, lived out in a fallen world, even in the face of sometimes vicious and pitiless enemies. Jesus’ redeemed people are to practice this ethic of divine love, and that is tested, not merely by loving our friends and our families where, let’s face it, we often don’t even do that well, but the real test comes in loving our enemies. Jesus’ commands us to practice what he exemplified in his own life, to the greatest, most profound, most fundamental good to those who least seem to deserve it.

So, first of all, let’s make sure that we understand what Jesus is, is actually commanding us to do here what these verbs mean, what do they demand of us? And the first question we ask is what is love? What is love? It’s very basic question, but it is so essential and especially in our world that is so confused about love, even among us Christians living in this world, we are sometimes confused about what love really is, aren’t we? We who have had the love of God

And God has been demonstrating that kind of love ever since the beginning of time for all people, all sinners. Jesus reminds us of that there in verse 35. If you look there, God the Most High has loved all men being kind to all even the ungrateful and the evil. Over in the parallel count, Matthew 5:45, we understand God’s common grace, an expression of that agape love, he showers that grace on all of mankind, indiscriminately, without exception, Jesus said “your Father who is in heaven, he makes his sun,” I like how he says that his sun, it’s, it’s like, kind of pulls out his pocket, hey, here’s my sun, “and gives it to rise on the evil and the good.” The crops of evil men grow alongside the crops of good men. He sends his rain on the just and the unjust. That’s common grace. That’s what we’re to show to all people.

For us as believers, though, that agape love has been shed upon us in the form of redeeming grace. Not only does God love us by shedding that common grace upon us, along with our evil, ungrateful neighbors. He also loves us by saving us eternally with his particular grace, his saving grace, it has nothing to do, as I said, with our own attractiveness, has nothing to do with our merit or any prior relationship. In fact, just the opposite is true, Romans 5 says, God loved us in Christ when we were weak when we were ungodly while we were sinners and yes while we were God’s enemies. It’s because of Jesus Christ that we now know what agape love is and it’s because of God’s saving grace and because of the regenerating sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit within us, that we can practice this agape love toward other people.

I want you to turn for just a brief moment over to Ephesians 5:1, and take a look at what the Apostle Paul commanded there, in this regard, to the Ephesians and over in Ephesians 5, he’s, he’s really, Paul is not teaching something new, he’s just simply reinforcing what Jesus taught here in the Sermon on the Mount. He writes, Ephesians 5:1 and 2, “therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love.” How Paul? Well, “as Christ loved us, and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering the sacrifice to God.” Notice the way Paul has summarized the love of Christ. We’re to walk in love as Christ walked in love as Christ loved us. How did he do that? Four things we see there first, he took action. Christ loved us and gave. Giving is a part of love. It’s active, it’s action oriented.

Secondly, he sacrificed. What did he sacrifice? Christ gave himself up. Thirdly, he sought the highest good of somebody else, our highest good. It says there, that Christ gave himself up, for what? For us. All of that describes his death on the cross for our sins, to purchase us for God, to redeem us for God, but there’s more in agape love. Fourth, Christ, he pleased God fully, he satisfied all God’s righteous demands, fulfilling all his perfect will. It says Christ loved us gave himself up for us and here’s the pleasing part, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. That’s Old Testament language. That’s the language of sacrifice. It alludes and points to the sacrifices offered to God on the altar.

God required the sacrifice, he commanded the sacrifice, he stipulated how it was to come, exactly the form, all its perfections, and Christ brought it; sacrifice of his own body, in an offering and a sacrifice to God, literally unto a pleasing aroma to God and God received that sacrifice. He was pleased. He demonstrated his approval by raising Jesus up from the dead, he brought him to heaven, he seated Jesus Christ at his own right hand bodily. Christ’s love is both fundamentally and ultimately focused on pleasing God first.

So Paul commands here, be imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love and how do you do that? Like this, take action, sacrifice yourself, seek the highest good of the object you love and as you love, number four, conduct yourself according to the will of God. That’s divine. That’s, that’s agape love that’s what he’s saying. Okay, now with all that in mind, go back to Luke 6:27 and 28 and I hope you’ll see how this comports with what Jesus commanded. Jesus says, to all of us who are hearing, to all of us true disciples, to all of us who are recipients of God’s grace, regenerated by the Holy Spirit, saved by faith in Jesus Christ, his finished work on the cross, he says to us, “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”

That is the agape love of action. That is the agape love of personal sacrifice. That’s the agape love that seeks the highest good according to God, the highest good of the object of love and that’s the agape love that is only agape love when it is rightly aligned with the revealed Word of God. This is not warm sentiment or squishy emotion. The agape love Jesus commands here, it lines up with the revealed will of God, it’s instructed by the knowledge of God, and it’s conducted in the righteous wisdom of God, that’s love.

Okay, so let’s drill down into these commands and see how Jesus said it here. First of all, for all four of these commands, verses 27 to 28, you need to understand these are present tense verbs. Verbal tense in Greek, verbal aspect in the Greek language, it’s basically describing not, not tense isn’t necessarily time, first and foremost, it’s describing the kind of action portrayed. And in this case, Jesus is commanding a present tense kind of action, it’s a habitual action, it’s a continuous action, continuous kind of action. That is, we are to love continuously this way, we don’t do it once and then leave it, leave it behind and keep on moving. It’s a habit of life. We do this habitually, we, we love continually, we do good habitually, we bless repeatedly, we pray constantly. We’re to make these commands our regular habit, our continual practice, this is in other words, this is our lifestyle as true Christians, followers of Christ.

Secondly, just, just an observation of all of them, notice the progress in these commands? How they move from one to another, the overarching concept is love. The other three words elaborate how we portray love, you could say, the fundamental motivation in the heart is love and the other three words unpack how we portray it. We can see that Jesus starts with heart motive. It starts with the intentionality of the will “love your enemies,” it gets right to the heart and then he moves outward, and immediately commands our action, whether it’s in what we do that is do good, or in what we say that is bless.

Notice also how the public outward action of doing good and blessing that involves our behavior and our speech, both of which can be seen, heard by others as they observe us, but Jesus final command is to private action. This is an action, prayer is and action that’s hidden from others. This is a love that only God knows that only God can see prayers and only he can hear. Prayer is what truly brings love to its fulfillment and its culmination, as we combine our action, and our words of blessing into the regular habit of intercessory prayer for others, and oh, by the way, intercessory prayer for your enemies; all starts with the hidden motives, the intentions, the thoughts of the heart.

Jesus said, “love your enemies,” that’s at a level that only God can see, whether you truly love or not. It’s also something only God can produce, by the Holy Spirit in you. Whom as Romans 5:5 says, we already have, we have the Holy Spirit, God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. And so for every true Christian, we have this love. It’s just a matter of are you exercising it or not?

Now we all need to put this into action. How do we do that? Next command, verse 27, “do good to those who hate you.” Do good, practicing the love Jesus commands, not only involves the cooperation of our thoughts and our wills, it moves outward, it comes outward; if it stays internal, and doesn’t move outward, you know what it’s not this. It’s not true love. It must come outward; it makes demands on our actions as well.

James explains that he says what kind of love is it that sees someone in need and says, oh, go in peace be warmed, be filled, without giving that person the things needed for the body. What good is that? It’s not love. That’s the cruelty of utter indifference. Not only that, but it’s made more hideous because it’s dressed up in religious language. Go in peace my brother be warmed and be filled, while you make your way over to the restaurant, when this person is starving. What is that?

When Jesus says do good, he’s commanding us to do what’s beneficial for the other person. He’s telling us to demonstrate practical benevolence to those in need to show kindness to people and again, even those who hate us. Again, this is love in action. It’s initiated by a decision to love, it’s prompted by an opportunity to show compassion, it’s expressed in practical kindness to fulfill needs. The word, do, translated, do, there, it’s poieo. You could legitimately translate that word as practice. This is how we live.

It’s as old as Leviticus 19:18. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. So is the command though not just to love neighbor, but also to love enemies? That’s also very ancient. Proverbs 25:21 and 22 says this, “If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat. If he’s thirsty, give him water to drink. For you will heap burning coals on his head and the Lord Yahweh will reward you.” Look what Jesus is teaching here, it is radical I know. It confronts our hearts, doesn’t it? But this is consistent with all of Scripture. God has never said anything different and Jesus came to exegete, to explain the heart of God to us. John 1:18, “No one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the father’s side,” who’s that? Jesus Christ, “he has made him known.”

He comes to interpret him to us. Look at third command verse 28, “Bless those who curse you […] Bless those who curse you.”  This obviously has to do with our speech, audible words, the word you eulogeo, that we get the word eulogy from, this verb it can mean to commend it can mean to confer a blessing on someone, to praise, to extol. This doesn’t mean when someone curses you, you respond by saying, hey, good job with that curse. That’s nice. What? What amazing descriptive adjectives you are using just wonderful vocabulary. No, this is not about that direct reply to a curse, that is you kind of have to bless them in response right there.

 This is not about the direct reply, but it is about the heart of our reply. It does get to the heart of the one who was cursing us and it gets to our heart of response to that. This is about a measured, loving response to cursing and Jesus here commands a love for our enemies that’s revealed not only the way we think and our motives not only in the what we do practically, but also in the way we talk about them. Also in the way we speak about them. That is to say we don’t slander people. We don’t back bite, we don’t gossip behind their back. We don’t, we don’t wish them ill.

Instead, we, when we speak to others, we bless those people, we speak graciously. We don’t tell lies. We don’t sugarcoat the evil that they do. We don’t sugarcoat the curses of our enemies. We call it what it is. But we don’t join them in reviling speech. Rather, we speak words of blessing. We speak as those who are asking God for a blessing upon those who curse us. That’s the idea of blessing in this context. But here eulogeo has to do not just with blessing others but actually asking God to bestow a blessing a favor on somebody else as in to grant this person a blessing. That’s the idea and our love for enemies is expressed finally there in prayer.

This takes us to the final command verse 28, and this honestly really does confront our self-centeredness. Jesus here in this whole section intends to replace our natural selfishness with supernatural love. And that is most evident in our prayer life, verse 28, “Pray for those who abuse you.” Look, our spiritual maturity or our spiritual immaturity is evidenced most clearly in our prayer life. Our prayer life is something really only God can see clearly. But something we know, if we’ll assess ourselves honestly. We know we’re loving others when we stop and entreat God on others’ behalf, if we make others a regular part of our prayer life, when we, when we act as intercessors, mimicking Christ’s intercession for us, and we do that for others and for our enemies in particular look that’s how we know we’re walking in love.

It’s very hard to retaliate in your heart and your actions, it’s very hard to hate those you’re praying for, that’s why Jesus brings these commands full circle. He, he goes from the internal motive of the heart, love, to the outward public action of what we do and then what we say. Well doing, blessing, then he goes back full circle to the inward private intercession. Praying to God for the benefit of our enemies, for those who mistreat us, those who abuse us. What Jesus commands with regard to our enemies, loving, well doing, blessing, praying, this goes deep within. It confronts and exposes our true affections. It confronts what we truly love, what we truly hate, to see if they really are aligned with God’s will, with God’s love. It exposes the true nature of our love and obedience to Christ. We’ve got to ask ourselves will we give ourselves for the ultimate good of our enemies? Seeking the blessing of God on their lives? Or will we have hearts of vengeance, retaliation, wishing them harm, evil, destruction?