"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you."
Matthew 5:43-44
Part 2
Yesterday: Beware of Wrong Teaching in God’s Name
“Ye have heard that it hath been said.”
“Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.”
“But I say unto you.”
Just because someone says something wrong for a long time does not make it accurate or true. The Pharisees thought that the law said to “hate your enemies.” Jesus pointed out their error.
Today: Jesus Taught Us a New Way to Live
“Love your enemies.”
The Pharisee taught that a person should love those who are “near and dear to him.” But Jesus saw through their mistaken reasoning when He said,
“For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them. And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same. And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for He is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil” (Luke 6:32-35).
Jesus reasoned that the law says we must do loving things for our neighbors, and anyone who lives close to me is my neighbor. If my enemy is my neighbor, I need to be doing loving things for that neighbor and my friends.
“But I say to you, love your enemies:“… Jesus reminds us that in the sense God means it, all people are our neighbors, even our enemies. To truly fulfill this law, we must love, bless, do good and pray for our enemies – not only our friends”[1] (Guzik).
“Bless them that curse you.”
Jesus gives His followers a new way to live and behave. He takes loving our enemies a step further when He tells us to “bless them that curse you.” The ones who choose to mistreat us by cursing us are to be in our crosshairs as we focus our attention on blessing them. No phoniness will work here. If we are insincere, the enemy will quickly know that we do not mean what we say.
“Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not” (Romans 12:14).
“Do good to them that hate you.”
As far as the world is concerned, this is a crazy idea! It makes no sense to the worldlings to be kind to those who hate us. But this is kingdom living, the way Jesus expects His child to behave in His Kingdom. In fact, Jesus says that this action is like “heaping coals of fire” on the hater’s head. What He means by this is that our kindness on the unexpecting hater will open his conscience like burning coals in his brain.
“If thine enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink: For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the LORD shall reward thee” (Proverbs 25:21-22).
“And pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.”
What are we to do with an enemy who wants to do us harm? As Jesus said, “they despitefully use you and persecute you?” His answer is simple, “pray for them.” Never underestimate how God may use your testimony and your “effectual fervent prayer” to change your enemy’s heart (James 5:16). We are never to stoop to their level but to rise above it and remember that we represent the King!
The story is told:
“A holy man was engaged in his morning meditation under a tree whose roots stretched out over the riverbank. During his meditation, he noticed that the river was rising, and a scorpion caught in the roots was about to drown. He crawled out on the roots and reached down to free the scorpion, but every time he did so, the scorpion struck back at him.
“An observer came along and said to the holy man, ‘Don’t you know that’s a scorpion, and it’s in the nature of a scorpion to want to sting?’
“To which the holy man replied, ‘That may well be, but it is my nature to save, and must I change my nature because the scorpion does not change its nature?”[2]
Just because a sinner will not change his or her nature doesn’t mean that we believers ought to change ours to be like them. We do not fight “fire with fire,” but instead, we bless those who curse us, we do good to those that hate us, and we pray for those that despitefully use us. Our Lord Jesus Christ lived this way, and He has taught us to live like Him (see Luke 6:27-29).
Quote: “True intercession involves bringing the person, or the circumstance that seems to be crashing in on you, before God, until you are changed by His attitude toward that person or circumstance. People describe intercession by saying, ‘It is putting yourself in someone else’s place.’ That is not true! Intercession is putting yourself in God’s place; it is having His mind and His perspective”[3] (Oswald Chambers).
[1] Guzik’s quote is from the Enduring Word Commentary, the electronic version in eSword.
Matthew 5:44-45. The emphasis is his.
[2] This story was Downloaded: Friday, June 18, 2021. From: https://bible.org/illustration/scorpion, the source of the story is Joseph B. Modica. The emphasis is mine.
[3] Chamber’s quote Downloaded: Friday, June 18, 2021. From: https://www.therandomvibez.com/praying-for-others-quotes/.