Title: Love Your Enemies (Matthew 5:43-48)
When Ramon Narvaez, Prime Minister of Spain in the 19th century, was on the brink of death, the priest came to him and asked if he would forgive all your enemies, and the Prime Minister replied, "I cannot forgive my enemies, because I have killed them all." answered. Not everyone will do like Prime Minister Ramon does, but people hate their enemies and often kill them, either directly or by heart. This world is a world of revenge. And people enjoy novels, movies, and dramas about retaliation against a bad enemy.
Even the scribes and Pharisees who taught the Bible and served as religious leaders in Jesus' day taught us that we should hate our enemies. These religious leaders said that we love our neighbors, but we cannot love our enemies, but rather hate them (verse 43).
However, nowhere in the Old Testament does God say to 'hate your enemies', but rather, "You shall not hate your brother in your heart... I am the LORD.” (Leviticus 19:17,18) “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him water” (Proverbs 25:21). These words do not directly express God's command to love your enemies, but the expressions 'Do not hate,' 'Do not take revenge', and 'Have compassion on your enemies' can be said to be 'Love'. So, "Hate your enemies" is what the scribes and Pharisees added to the Word of God in their own way.
Why did they teach people what God did not say? Perhaps the Pharisees and scribes claimed that from the psalms God taught us to hate our enemies. Because there are such expressions in the psalms. In Psalm 143:12, praying for an end to the enemy is not loving the enemy, but hating it. So, the scribes and Pharisees may have thought that it was God's will to hate the enemy.
However, the enemy mentioned here is not the psalmist's individual enemy, but the Lord's enemy. So, this prayer can be changed to 'Lord, destroy your enemies who oppose you and persecute your servants without repenting to the end.' God hates and judges those who are evil in their hearts and do not repent to the end while opposing God and the church community. The psalmist hates the enemies God hates and prays to destroy them, but the scribes and Pharisees have turned them into personal enemies. Whether they misunderstood the Bible or had other intentions, they taught the people contrary to God's will.
Jesus corrects what the scribes and Pharisees were teaching wrong. In verse 44, Jesus said, unlike the scribes and Pharisees, to forgive and love those who have wronged me personally, rather than hate them. To love your enemies like this is not easy and very difficult, but it is not impossible. The impossible was not told by the Lord.
But there is something to think about about the difference between love and liking. Not a small number of people have forgiven those who have harmed and hurt them, and they no longer hate them, but they doubt whether this is true forgiveness. If you forgive, you should feel better emotionally, but if you don't, you often fall into doubts about whether it's a lie. Likes are emotions.
However, you can order someone to love someone because love is a matter of will rather than feelings, but you cannot command love because it is an emotion. So if I forgive someone, it's love and it takes time to get better emotionally. Sometimes there are people who say that they will die of liking, but the Lord did not command us to love our enemies to the point of liking them. It's hard, but Jesus commanded us to love. When you fall in love like this, there are times when you get better emotionally over time.
Then how should we love? In some translations of the Bible, verse 44 says, "Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who despise and persecute you." ) has been translated. In Luke 6:27,28 it is written, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who insult you.” So, this time, let's take a look at loving our enemies by referring to these words. You can think of it in three ways, all of which are related to the will.
First, love can be expressed through good deeds. In verse 27, to be kind means to do good. To do good is to actually act, as opposed to loving only with words. The world doesn't look at the lips of Christians, but at our good deeds, our character and our lives.
Our enemies try to harm us, but we must try to do good to them. We must show it not only with our lips, but with our lives. Because this is the way God has dealt with us. Because God loves us, when we were enemies, He sent His Son not only in words but in reality (Romans 5:10). What could be better than this?
God's goodness is expressed in the second half of verse 45, saying that God makes the sun shine and sends rain regardless of the good and the evil. He not only loves good people, but also allows evil people to enjoy God's grace. God makes the crops in the fields of those who believe in Jesus grow well, and the grains in the fields of those who do not believe in Jesus do not grow at all, but make all of them grow. Because God is merciful. Treating enemies kindly is to imitate God's love.
A man had a loyal slave named Zhao, whose master consulted with him and entrusted him with many tasks. One day, the owner and Zhou went to the slave market to buy another slave. The owner is strong and wants to buy a young slave, but Zhou insists on buying a sick slave, so the master buys the slave according to Zhou's advice. The sick slave came home and didn't do much work, but Zhao worked hard and cared for him. When the master asked Jou why he was taking such care of the unemployed slave, Jou cried and said, "That slave is my enemy. When I was a child, he kidnapped me and sold me to a slave trader, where I am now. He is also a slave and sick. The moment I saw his face, God said to me, Love your enemies. Now I will love him until he passes away."
The second way is to bless with words. “Bless those who curse you” (Luke 6:28). When someone says something that you want me to fail and perish, the nice retaliation is not to say a curse, but a word of blessing.
The third way is to pray. “Pray for those who persecute you” (verse 44). Jesus later set an example, and he prayed for those who persecuted and crucified him. "Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing." As Stephen was stoned to death, he prayed a similar prayer. “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” (Acts 7:60) Persecution and insults are not limited to unbelievers only, but those who believe in Jesus sometimes persecute and insult them. If I have such a person, let's pray for him. This is what Jesus meant.
When you love your enemies, what are the benefits of doing good to them, blessing them, and praying? “If you do this, you will become sons of your Father who is in heaven” (verse 45). No matter how much you love your enemies, you cannot become a child of God because of that. By loving my enemies, I can prove that I am a child of God.
Children resemble their parents. Children not only resemble their parents' facial and physical characteristics, but they also resemble their behavior, so they behave and develop similar habits as their parents do. So, in many cases, a child's appearance, character, and behavior reflects the image, character, and behavior of the parent. Likewise, we must imitate the character and behavior of our Father God. Because God loved our enemies, we must also love our enemies. Then it will show that God loves his enemies.
What else happens when you love your enemies? It turns out that they are different from unbelievers. “If you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Don’t tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what do you do in more than others? Are not the Gentiles like this?” (verses 46, 47)
People love those who love them, those who are dear to them. However, this can be done by anyone, both non-believers and sinners. The tax collectors who were labeled as sinners and despised by the people of that time and the Gentiles who despised them as unworthy of God's love do the same. Even thugs today are good to those who are good to them, to their families.
But Jesus told us to love our enemies who are difficult to love. As the philosopher Immanuel Kant said that it is impossible for man to love his enemies, it may seem impossible for man to love his enemies.
In fact, there are times when we decide to love the person we hate, the person we hate, but we often fail. You become hated again, angry and resentful, and you want to retaliate and curse. Why is this happening? In order to love our enemies, it is necessary for us to be determined and make an effort, but God must give us grace.
If I can love my enemies in my own strength, this can be my righteousness. It is true that it takes my determination, my effort, but my determination and my strength alone cannot love my enemy. God must give you grace, strength, and heart. You cannot love an enemy if you only look at your feelings. You can love when you see it from God's point of view and treat it with God's heart.
So we should pray.'Give me the heart to love the enemy who has done me so much harm, the one who hates me, the one who is hard to forgive... such a person. Give us the strength to love.'... Then, when we were enemies, God, the loving Father, who sparingly sent his son, will give us such a heart (Summary: Butler Kang Mi-ra)