Dealing with Enmity

Proverbs 20:22; 24:17-18; 25:21-22; Romans 12:14-21; Matthew 5:38-48

This is our seventh sermon in the series on the Sermon on the Mount, “The Greatest Sermon Ever Preached: A Spiritual Overhaul by the Master.” We have discussed changing our goals and standards and being delivered from evil. We have dealt with rage, lust, deception, and hypocrisy. Today we turn to deal with enmity. Let’s read about it in Matthew 5: 38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist (or, my preferred translation, Do not retaliate against) the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 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. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

For many of us, the most challenging thing Jesus ever said, was, “You must be perfect,” and the second most challenging thing he ever said was, “Love your enemies.” That’s just plain hard. It is surely no accident that these two most difficult teachings are in the same paragraph. Loving enemies and being perfect go together like a horse and carriage, and when the horse and carriage are coming down the street together toward us, looking to us like they are careering wildly out of control and threatening to destroy us, our first impulse is to flee, but that would be a mistake. The horse moves with the power of the kingdom, and the carriage will carry us safely to the kingdom. They have been sent to rescue us from ourselves. So we had better take another look at this horse and carriage, and take the leap of faith to get aboard.

Who are our enemies? Some people seem to think that, if we just live obediently to God, we won’t have any enemies. Not so. The perfect Son of God had lots of enemies, pretty serious and vehement enemies. Indeed, most of them were his enemies precisely because he was so obedient to God. Of course, that’s not how they saw it, but that is because their vision of what it was to obey God was so much smaller than Jesus’ vision. They had a small vision of God’s blessing people who were familiar, pretty much like themselves; Jesus had a big vision of God’s redeeming the oppressed, the lost, the outcast, and the foreign. To those of small vision, Jesus’ large vision was frightening, threatening them and their ways. They hated him for disturbing their comfort zones.

Who were these enemies? The Sadducees with their priestly control of the Jerusalem temple and its system of atonement, the Pharisees with their control of the synagogues and its system of shaping the culture of Judaism, the Herodians with their drive for political power and privilege, the Zealot revolutionaries with their commitment to overthrow Rome, ordinary people who simply did not like for new ideas to rock their boats, and even Jesus’ own family and disciples who wanted to keep him safe even at the cost of opposing his ministry.

What did it mean that Jesus loved these enemies? Whatever else it meant, it did not mean that he gave in to their small vision. It did not mean that he tried to do whatever they wanted him to do. It did not mean that he sought to please them in the ways he conducted his ministry. It did not mean that he softened the challenge of his message for them. It did not even mean that he never lost patience with them. He bluntly and clearly challenged them to wake up to the heart of God, and when they persisted in trying to block his ministry he sometimes spoke and acted with exasperation.

In today’s Sunday school lesson in the fellowship hall, the Pharisees greeted Jesus on the shore as he got out of the boat with his disciples. They asked him for a sign from heaven to authorize his ministry. This was after he had driven out countless demons, healed lepers, the lame, the deaf, the mute, raised the dead, calmed storms, fed multitudes, and much, much more. In exasperation, he groaned deeply with despair, and spoke sharply, “No sign will be given to this generation. Then he got back in the boat and went elsewhere. Did this mean that he did not love them? Not at all. He just recognized the reality that, if they at this time had any interest in the truth, they would have already seen it. There was nothing more he could do for them until they had a change of heart. He could not directly persuade them into the kingdom. There was nothing more he could do than to keep his focus on the mission that might eventually win them over and to speak the truth.

And he spoke the truth with shocking bluntness. When Peter, the disciple he saw at the foundation of his church, tried to prevent his going to Jerusalem, he said, “Get behind me, Satan.” In his last days in Jerusalem before his crucifixion, he said that the religious leaders in Jerusalem, who were operating their religious leadership for their own purposes, would be held accountable for killing the Son of God. He said that the temple that was no longer serving God’s mission of redeeming love would be left with not one stone on another. Before members of the Sanhedrin, when the High Priest’s asked, “Are you the Christ, the son of the Blessed?”, Jesus answered, “I AM, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven.” In other words, Jesus said, “Not only am I the Messiah, but also, although I now stand before your judgment, because of this, you will one day stand before mine.” The High Priest probably did not feel very loved right then. He tore his robes and raged about Jesus’ blasphemy. But Jesus in love had warned him so that, if he chose, he could escape the judgment that was coming.

Did Jesus really love his enemies? Oh, yes. He sought the best for them as much as he sought the best for others. He went to the cross for them as much as he went for others. He prayed from the cross for them, perhaps more than for others, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” It was his will for his followers to receive his former enemies into the church as soon as they had a change of heart. Indeed, former priests, Pharisaic rabbis, Herodians, Zealots, ordinary people, Jesus’ mother and brothers, and eleven of his twelve disciples were prominent in the early church. Their coming to the side of Jesus’ redemptive mission was an answer to Jesus’ prayers for them. I am sure that there was much rejoicing in heaven for each one who woke up to the redeeming love of God through Jesus.

But, for Jesus, loving his enemies did not mean wasting his time trying to please them. What did it mean that Jesus loved his enemies?

1. Jesus’ loving his enemies meant he did not retaliate against them. He did not return their fire with like fire. Even if his enemies lied about him, he did not lie about them. Even if his enemies adopted violent political strategies, he did not respond in kind. In the end, he let their violent political strategies put him on the cross rather than calling his followers to arms to defend him. When his follower Simon Peter cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant, Jesus healed it and rebuked Peter, “Those who live by the sword die by the sword.” In other words, fighting fire with fire is not a long-term winning strategy.

2. Jesus’ loving his enemies meant that he prayed the very best for them. He was able to do what he did only because he really believed that God reigns, that God’s will and God’s ways win out in the end, and therefore that prayer that taps into God’s reign is the most powerful weapon in the world.

3. Jesus’ loving his enemies meant that he kept his focus on doing the will of God which was the best hope that his enemies had to get out of their self-imposed boxes of death. If he kept pursuing his calling as the divine Son of God, his enemies might catch on. They might see and have faith, they might repent of their wrong attitudes and actions, they eventually might be baptized into Christ, into his life, death, resurrection, into his reign and mission, they might receive the forgiveness of sins, and they might open themselves to the leading and empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Significant numbers of them did. Jesus’ way was personally costly, but it was ultimately the winning way.

This is a sobering and challenging message. It is a call to a perfection of faith and living that we probably have not yet reached. I try to do it right, but I fall short—by smaller distances than I used to fall short, but I still fall short. I have no room to point fingers, nor do I expect that the rest of us do.

If we thought that the counsel of perfection to love our enemies meant that we must achieve it by our own efforts, then those of us with the capacity for self-examination and honesty could only despair.

If we thought that the counsel of perfection meant that anyone who falls short is hopelessly lost, then we would simply have to give up now.

But that it is not what it means.

Even in the face of the counsel of perfection, there are at least four reasons for hope.

Reason for Hope Number 1: God reigns. Everything that Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount is based on the assumption that we do not reign, that our efforts do not determine final outcomes, that, both now and finally, God reigns. We are commanded to seek first the kingdom of God and to let the rest fall into place behind. God’s reign provides for us and protects us so that we can do far more than we could ever do on our own.

Reason for Hope Number 2: Jesus died for us. Hear these words from

Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Chapter 5:6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Do you hear the hope? While we were still weak, while we were still sinners, while we were still enemies, Christ died to reconcile us to God. The love Christ commands for our enemies, he first lived out for us at the cost of his own life. Our hope that we can learn to love our enemies rests in what Jesus did in loving us while we were still his enemies. Our weakness, our unworthiness, cannot undo what he has done for us. But nonetheless, his love calls us in gratitude to dedicate ourselves to consistently express his love even for enemies.

Reason for Hope Number 3: Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to those who believe in him. The Holy Spirit will help us learn to think in the strange new ways of the kingdom of God. Make no mistake: the ways of the kingdom are strange and new to the children of this world, even and maybe especially if we have been raised in church. The Holy Spirit enlivens the scriptures for us and gives us an inner voice from God without which we are lost. Degree by degree, the Holy Spirit grows spiritual fruit, Christlike qualities, in us. It is not our job to make ourselves perfect, but as we are covered by the grace and righteousness of Jesus, the Spirit will work within us to bring us toward actual, lived-out righteousness. To the degree that we depend on him, he will show us how to love our enemies.

Reason for Hope Number 4: We can pray. When we pray for God to help us become more like Christ in our attitudes and actions, including loving our enemies, only occasionally will God zap us so that the changes are instantaneous. Usually God will answer the prayers through a long process of gradual transformation during which we really learn things that will help us in more ways than we have imagined for the rest of our lives. When we pray to love our enemies, we may not be able to carry that out perfectly overnight, but so long as we persist in that prayer, God will honor that prayer and transform us until at last we prevail. Prayer is a potent weapon for those on the journey toward a perfect future.