Luke 6:27-36--Love Your Enemies

Luke 6:27-36
English Standard Version

Love Your Enemies
27 “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 To 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. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. 31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.

​32 “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

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You'll be somewhat familiar with these teachings that Luke is summarizing here if you studied the Sermon on the Mount with me when I started this blog site.  Jesus came to the people teaching them who God called them to be (the Beatitudes) and then raised the standard of the Law showing them that it wasn't simply a set of external rules to follow, but it it was about what was inside your heart and mind and if those feelings, thoughts, motives, and intentions were in line with God's feelings, motives, thoughts and intentions, or not.  God will see all of it and anything that falls short of God's perfection is sin.  We will not only be judged for what we do externally ,but also for what we say to ourselves in our minds and what we fantasize about and will even be responsible for when we lose control to our emotions.

You will notice a pattern here that Jesus will say, "You have heard it said....." (by the Pharisees and teachers of the Law of that time), and then Jesus will follow up with, "But I say....."  Jesus is asserting an authority greater than that of the religious leaders at that time and by quoting Scripture to them as authoritative and then raising the standard so that it is line with not just the letter of the Law, but the spirit of the Law, Jesus is also saying that He is God in the Flesh as He is the only one who is the Word of God and has the authority to explain what was in the mind of God when a commandment was issues and issue a new form of the commandment that holds people to a higher standard of righteousness.  Nowhere do we see Jesus actually "canceling" the Law here as some would like to argue He did.  No, Jesus said that the Law was insufficient to show these people that they were broken on the inside not just the outside.  They thought somehow that they were just trying to be better than each other or "good enough" for God to love them, but that's not what the Law says, and they did not have a proper view of what "good" meant.  Only God is good, and none of us are "good" when compared to Him--not even the Pharisees who wanted people to think they had it all together.

Jesus starts by saying that we are to love our enemies. The Pharisees had said to love your friends and hate your enemies, but God was telling us that we needed to love even those that we call our enemies and do good to them who do evil to us.  Why?  We need to be sharing the gospel with them.  We want them to be changed from the inside-out.  If we hate them, we will not share the gospel with them, because we'll want them to go to hell--much like what we see with the prophet Jonah who resisted going to Nineveh to call the people to repentance because he didn't want them to repent.  He wanted to them to perish, and He was mad at God for extending grace and mercy to them.  We must love others in the same way that God loved us, because He loved us when we were still Him enemies.

We should not lash out against those who abuse us through lies or even those who reach out and do physical violence to us.  That is not to say that we never should defend ourselves, but it is to say that we don't need to defend our honor.  People will know who you are.  You have nothing to prove by returning anger with anger or violence with violence.  You are then showing that you are just like the people that you say need Jesus.  No, entrust yourself to God and His righteous judgment which you know He has already made of you and let your words and your works together show people that you are different than those of the worlds.  You don't need to answer them or prove anything to them that is different than how you have lived your life out before God and men.  They have seen the transformation and they should glorify God for it.  If they don't then they are simply out to get you in the same way they were out to get the patriarchs and the prophets and Jesus Himself.

Have grace on those who don't deserve it, even those who are evil to you.  Do not adopt a "what goes around comes around" attitude.  That may be true--God may choose to judge them at some point, but desire for them to see the grace of God at work through you so that they better understand it when you talk about God's unmerited favor that you have received and you want them to receive too.  Be generous to those who can give you nothing in return, because we could offer God nothing in return.  Jesus tells us that always take care of the needs of those who are begging and even to be willing to let someone rob you and not demand your possessions back (maybe that person actually needed what you had more than you did and God wanted them to have it, or maybe God just wants you to be an example to others about how you trust God to take care of you and that nothing that you have really belongs to you.  It's His to begin with and they are stealing from God if they are being dishonest, so it's up to Him to handle that).  I fall very short here as I have often not stopped to help people who were begging, even looking on them with contempt and judging them in the way that the older brother did in the parable of The Lost Son (we're getting there in the book of Luke in a little bit).  We are not to look down our noses at anyone in self-righteousness or say that they are beneath us or that they are beyond our help and God's help.  As long as they have life and breath, God wants them to repent and have their greatest needs met--that their sin would be dealt with.  God is calling me to do better here.

We then see what many call The Golden Rule here.  We are to "Do unto others as we would have them do unto us."  Notice that Jesus doesn't tell us to do unto others as they have done unto us.  That's what He just got done telling us not to do.  He's told us to give grace to those who don't deserve it and this is connected to the grace that we want to be shown to us by God.  We will see this in the parable of the Unmerciful Servant.  Those who have been forgiven much will forgive much and those who refuse to forgive are showing that they don't understand forgiveness and have never been forgiven by God (they don't belong to Him).  We must do unto others not only as we would want them to do unto us, but as we would want God to do unto us when we have offended Him. Do we want Him to exact vengeance and go tit-for-tat with us repaying "evil" for "evil"?  God will most certainly win that battle if we try to one-up Him.  No, we let the grace of God overcome evil with good through the power of the gospel.

​Jesus then speaks some harsh words to them and told the people that the standard of righteousness they have from the Pharisees is no better than the standard that the pagans have for each other.  If you only love those who are like you and who you feel are worthy of your love and who love you back, even the godless pagans know how to do that--because that is self-serving love that even the world knows how to over.  No, we need to be called to an even deeper, higher form of love.  The divine love that we know as agope in the New Testament.  The unconditional love that is the basis of the divine covenants that we've studied that we can only imperfectly try to reflect and model here.  This is why marriage and family and all other kinds of relationships are so important to God--even the broken relationships between us and our "enemies" because this is where His love gets to shine in and through us and people understand what it means when we say, "For God so loved the world that He have His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him."

We would be in lots of trouble if God treated us on the basis that we treated others.  Only God can cause us to love others with His divine love, so that is why Jesus can promise a reward for those who love this way--they are the ones who God has changed and made to once again be "in His image" as we are transformed by the power of the gospel to be changed into the likeness of the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us.  I've been saying it all along, but Jesus really drives home the point that all this is about the righteous standard of comparing ourselves to God and not to others when He says to be merciful to others (not give them what they deserve) as God the Father has been merciful to you.  Now that is a different standard.

This is going to be the basis that Jesus lays for what it means to be called His disciple and everything else will rest on this.  What does it mean to love God and love others?  How does that play out in true worship and what if our horizontal relationships don't align with what we claim is going on between us and God?  Will God desire our sacrifices and worship if we say we have right orthodoxy (right belief) but don't have right orthopraxy (right living)?  Let's continue through the gospels and see what Jesus has to say.