Chris Webb
01/04/16
Can you recall a specific moment in your life when everything changed? Perhaps it was when you got married or graduated from high school. Those events carry with them words recognized with the occasion, e.g., “I do” or “You may move your tassels from the right to the left.” One event that changed everything for every person on earth was the Sermon on the Mount, and with it came words necessary for the occasion. In the middle of Jesus’ sermon, He uttered words that still change us today:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 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. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:43-48).
When Jesus commands His followers to love their enemies, He forces us to change the way we think about those who seek our harm. He realizes that we have an easier time loving those who love us but challenges us to seek a higher standard. Love, in this sense, is the expression of benevolence, or selflessly seeking someone else’s good, and such a challenge is in direct opposition to our natural tendencies.
What, perhaps, is more striking is how Jesus compares the expression of love to the vital necessities of the sun and rain. It’s difficult to comprehend how love is needed when we spend most of our life expressing the philia side of it and neglecting the agape part. But, concerning our enemies, Jesus says loving them is as vital for their salvation as the sun or rain. It isn’t difficult at all to understand when we remember that God loved us the same way, “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” Romans 5:8. God’s love is vital for us and so it is for our enemies.
Thus, people need love, and if we define it correctly, we know it can manifest itself in many ways. It manifests itself in the way that sheep are distinguished from the goats. In Matthew 25 those counted as sheep take care of others in visiting, feeding, and sheltering, while the goats either don’t do these things, or do them only to a select group. Love is manifested when we pray. Or it may mean in the way a person is corrected or disciplined, “My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the LORD reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights” Proverbs 3:11-12. We must selflessly seek after the good of our enemies, and if we truly want to be like our Father, there’s no option.
Jesus does more to completely change us in the way He reveals how we tend to love and greet only those we know or are comfortable with. He says if we want to be like Our Father then we need to be impartial in how we treat everyone. Everyone, because Jesus brings out two groups on opposite sides of the spectrum: Those who are good and evil or brothers and enemies. It is natural to assume that He also means everyone in between.
Jesus insults the Jews in the crowd with His line of questioning, insinuating that they are on par with tax collectors and Gentiles—two groups that were usually regarded as enemies. His rebuke was triggered by their lack of love for the tax collectors and Gentiles. Likewise, not only do we need to understand that love is a requirement, but we must also spread it as impartially as the sun shines and the rain falls. God is impartial in the way He treats mankind. That trait is what helps us see Him as the perfect being He is. Therefore, His children need to exercise that quality in how they love and treat others.
It is only by doing these things, as Jesus says, that we become sons of our Father. All of this is linked to acting like a child of God. Sons are to be understood as heirs, and we know God has promised great things to His heirs, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” 1 John 3:2. Those who are Christians and seek to follow the Lord in word and deed will someday realize that honor in its fullness. But, for now, it is enough for us to engage in the nature of God in how we impartially seek after the good of others. We may not be able to do it to the extent that God showed us by sending His Son (John 3:16), but we can do it in smaller ways.
Jesus changes everything by showing us the Father and challenging us to follow Him. He helps us understand that love isn’t a convenient option, but a dire need. A person who is changed by this becomes His child. As Children of God, there is no reason to act like anyone else or anything less than perfect