“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Matthew 5:43-48 NLT
Jesus leads these discussions with, “you have heard it said.” Of course he’s referring to passed down sayings from those who have interpreted the laws of God and put their own application spin on it.
We know that “love thy neighbor” comes from Leviticus 19:18, but where does “hate thy enemy” come from? Well, it makes sense right? I mean isn’t the definition of the word enemy, have within reason, the idea of hating them? They are a hostile foe, are they not? Wouldn’t hate be helpful to stop our enemies from being so adversarial? Wouldn’t hate be the appropriate emotion to keep my family safe from their obvious oppositional acts to hurt me? Matthew wrote the greek word Jesus used for the word enemy, exthrós – someone openly hostile, animated by deep-seated hatred, implying irreconcilable hostility, proceeding out of a “personal” hatred bent on inflicting harm.
There’s an unspoken law that lives with in us as humans, it’s Newton’s Third Law of Motion. It states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. When applying that to an emotional force, such as hate, we must apply an equal amount of hate to stop it! Or at least enough to deter the hater from causing real harm to someone. You haven’t just heard it said, we still live this law every day!
When someone on the freeway races up behind me, practically kissing my bumper, then suddenly jets out beside me not only to pass me, but to cut me off in the process, there’s some real hate going on IN ME! In my mind, someone has to stop this maniac, this law breaker. And since there’s no presence of the “law,” it’s up to me to save myself and others by giving her a physical token of my disapproval!
Jesus doesn’t just school us about love and hate, he condemns the sin response in us (because that’s what it is) and teaches us to model our thoughts and behaviors after God. Loving our enemies is behaving as true children of our Father in heaven. And not only love them, but pray for them as well! Jesus says PRAY for those who curse (katara) you!
Jesus then blows our Newtonian Law right out of my brain. In the Kingdom of God, LOVE is the more powerful force to stop hate! But look, we need to quit throwing the weak, watered down version of our modern interpretation of the word, “love,” and get back to the Biblical version – agapaó. Agape is the God version of love, that is self-sacrificing, putting others before our own needs, painful and beautiful expression of wanting the best for someone. It’s not a cheap, surfacey love that lies to make someone feel good, nor the one that accepts you for whoever you are, or whatever you are today. Agape is a tethered truth to the core of who God is and the extent he went through to save and restore us. Believe me, to the broken and dysfunctional, this kind of love hurts because it is true and can be trusted when all other love-lies have failed.
Jesus did a perfect job illustrating this, it’s easy to love those who love you. It’s a built in reward system. I love you BECAUSE you love me back. Or, I love you because you showed me love to begin with. Jesus then points out of the most hated people group at the time, even “tax collectors” do this. It works because you get something out of that transactional kind of love, it’s a reciprocal deal (this is the way most people love anyways).
Get this, then Jesus says to be and do “perfect” love. Jesus uses this word, teleios: having reached its end. Teleios is the mature, consummated, wait for the full completion kind of perfection. It’s the long view of completion because God’s stories are very long. Jesus says, take the long-view of love (agape) like God does with us. That kind of long-view love is powerful, unstoppable and is more than enough to stand up to the hatred, cursing and even violence of your enemy.
It reminds me of when Jesus was in the olive garden with his disciples, well before the thorns, spikes and spears tearing into his body. Peter pulled out a sword (how long had he been hiding that?) and Jesus told them, “Don’t you realize that I could ask my Father for thousands of angels to protect us, and he would send them instantly?” Jesus could have easily gone all Old Testament on the Roman soldiers and left the traitor Judas as a pile of smitten dust! Ah, but Jesus’ long-view love meant that he would retaliate with a much more powerful and eternal force – he would die for all of us.
Prayer
Dad,
I am beyond thankful your love is not short-sighted and only applicable in the moments when I am thinking or behaving at my WORST! Thank you for the most powerful force in the universes that saves and keeps me close to you.