LOVE YOUR ENEMIES
Mathew 5 v 43-48
“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.”
Welcome back, PUYB fam! We are in the series Jesus Said What?!?, going through the red words in the Bible, diligently studying the words of Jesus Christ. As Bible readers, we can often get caught up in getting through our Bible reading time and overlooking the importance of pausing for the purpose of understanding and meditating on His Word. This series is an effort to encourage fellow Bible students to read the Word of God with the purpose of intentional study.
In today’s session, we are again in the gospel of Matthew. In this section of the account by Matthew, Jesus is delivering the famous Sermon on the Mount. Over the past 5 weeks we studied 5 Mosaic laws that Jesus reinterpreted for those who were following Him. To no surprise He raised the bar for His disciples, not just in the practice of the law but also in their understanding of it. Jesus is first concerned with the health of the heart. “A good man out of the good treasure of the heart brings forth good things“, He said in Matthew 12 v 35 . So, it is intentional on His part that His words to us focus on the transformation of our hearts.
In today’s passage, Jesus addresses another of the Mosaic laws. This law is considered one of the most essential and unique principles of the Christian religion. Even those who vehemently oppose Christians and Jesus, will often quote this principle and scorn the believer for his or her inability to uphold it. We can find this original law written in Leviticus 19 v 18 “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”.
When Jesus quotes it here in Matthew 5, he adds to it the ‘and hate your enemy” part that we do not find anywhere in the mosaic law. This is evidence that the current day teaching by the rabbis and the Pharisees had morphed from the original law that was delivered by Moses. They had derived from it this additional commandment of hate and contempt. Today we will study how Jesus interprets this law for his followers.
“But I say to you,” He says in verse 44, “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. “
Jesus in raising the proverbial bar for his disciples, prescribes this essential and appropriate response to our enemies – we must love them and pray for them. How do we love our enemy? What would that look like? Does it simply mean not retaliating to provocation? Does it mean a relationship with them? Does it mean we know their kids’ birthdays and invite them over for dinner?
It becomes immensely helpful to know exactly what Jesus is asking of us and I believe that we can understand this better when we look at the Greek in this context. In an earlier episode on the podcast, we discussed the four different loves described by four distinct Greek words- Storge, Philia, Eros, and Agape. I think its worth repeating here, so lets go through them again.
Storge refers to the affection that we see among family members. It’s the kind of love that develops because of established relationship, familiarity and often times proximity. You won’t necessarily choose these people because their qualities are attractive to you, like you would choose a friend or lover. The intrinsic characteristic of storge is the initial established relationship which becomes fertile ground for such a love to evolve. Here the relationship precedes the love, like in the case of parent and child or between siblings. To use C.S.Lewis’ words, storge has its own criteria – that the objects of love must be familiar. One could say storge grows amidst a prepared audience.
Eros, the Greek word from which we get our English word, erotic, describes the kind of love that we see between lovers. It is not just sexual because sex can occur in the absence of love. Eros is essentially the “being in love” between a man and a woman, that could exist even in the absence of the ability to sexually express it, though such expression is only natural and specific to this kind of love.
Philia is the Greek word used to describe the love between two friends or equals. Not “friends” as we understand it these days – the superficial tag we hand out by simply clicking a confirm or allow button. No, this Greek word refers to a deeper, more unique sense of friendship -a brotherly love that is intentionally cultivated between two otherwise unrelated persons. Philia or friendship is unlike storge and eros in that it is a non-essential kind of love. We could and many do live without it and for this very reason it is more intentional a love than eros and storge are. Philia displays the necessary characteristics of commonalty or at least complementarity in interests, personality, work, or hobbies etc.
These three loves, described by these three unique Greek words, storge, philia and eros, are natural loves. This means that God has placed in mankind, the abilities to express and experience these loves. However, agape, the fourth Greek word for love, is unique. Though it also means love, as Storge, Philia, Eros do, it is quite unlike these three kinds of natural loves. Agape, which is the love of God for mankind exists before and outside of humans. It is divine. And agape is the word that Jesus uses in the context of loving our enemies in this passage.
In his book, The Four Loves, C.S Lewis says that this agape love in man, “enables him to love what is not naturally lovable: lepers, criminals, enemies, morons, the sulky, the superior, and the sneering”. In the absence of familial connection, brotherly friendship, and romantic expression, which are all loves of the self-satisfying kind, this love stands independent. A love that needs no response. A love that needs only to give and not receive. A love that is interested in its expression alone, because in its expression the one who is loved benefits. This is the type of love intended in the statement – God is love.
This love is indescribable and unfathomable to this world. As a matter of fact, those who do not know God, deny and even defy the existence of agape. This is why the rebellious sinners of this world vilify Christians. They do not believe the words of the Christian who says, “I love you, but I do not affirm of your choice to sin.” They do not believe it because in their denying God, they have no context for agape love. They do not believe that they can be loved unless they are deemed lovely in some sense. Thus one must affirm them to love them. If their understanding and experience of love is limited to storge, which requires familiarity and closeness, philia which requires commonality or at least complementarity, and eros which requires romantic expression, it is understandable that they do not fathom the love the Christian professes to them.
For that matter many who identify as Christians, in limiting their definition of love to the expression of these three natural loves, also feel that the only way to love the sinner is to affirm them in their sin. Such a Christian is then confused and finds himself in the unfavorable position of having to step off the very path he professes to be on. Such a Christian requires that the sinful be called lovely so that we could indeed love them.
But the love of God, Agape love, has no such requirement. God freely expresses it to all, His children and HIs enemies alike. As Jesus says in verse 45- “He makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” In God’s love for mankind, you are loved simply because of the existence of this God love. Not because of who you are or who you are not. It’s by its very definition exclusive of this factor.
So, all this to make the point that as a believer it becomes impossible to love our enemy when we try to limit our love to the three natural loves. Coming back to the passage we are studying, When Jesus asks us to love our enemies, the Greek word He uses for love is not storge that we should be affectionate toward them, it is not philia that we should develop common ground with them, it is not eros that we should be unequally yoked with them. Jesus specifically uses the word “agape“. We are to love them with God love. It doesn’t require us to compromise His moral code in order to practice it. It doesn’t ask of us to see beauty where there is none. Agape love is selfless in this sense. And a believer’s expression of this kind of divine but common love for the brother and enemy alike, is what is rewarded in heaven, because in this expression we are practicing perfect love as does our Father in heaven.
As a believer, if you find yourself holding on to a grudge or worse anger, mocking the sinner, indifferent toward their desperation, unable to pray for them, unwilling to share the gospel truth with them because you deem them underserving, even unlovable, I suggest this deeper understanding of what love should look like. Or, perhaps, you find yourself on the other end of this spectrum. Your compassionate heart inhibits you from speaking the truth in love to those who oppose your faith and the truth it stands on. The only way you know how to express love is to accept someone unconditionally. Your passion for harmony, peace, civil rights and social justice are at odds with what you know the Bible says. You are having to redefine what it says or ignore the truth all together, to make sense of a relationship or what is happening around you. If this is you, to you also I suggest, the same. Do not ignore what Jesus is commanding.
In the case of both of these scenarios, we have limited ourselves to the capacities of natural loves and thus have failed at the impossible task of loving our enemies as God has called us to. We have not practiced the love that Jesus speaks of here when he gives us the unique and high calling of loving our enemies. But the Bible tells us of the special access we as believers have to agape love.
Gal 5 v 22,23
“…the fruit of the Spirit is love (agape), joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
When we become believers we have, through the power of the Holy Spirit, agape within us. We experience it on the receiving end, even before we are believers, but when indwelt by the Holy Spirit, we become conduits of this love to the world around us, when we choose to live in the Spirit. It is an ongoing battle, even as a believer, to live and act in the Spirit. We must surrender our fleshly inclinations on a minute by minute basis. It doesn’t automatically happen just because we are believers. We must make the conscious and intentional decision to submit to the work of the Holy Spirit through us. And when we do, when we love others with agape love and start praying for them, we are transformed, they are transformed, and mountains are moved for the glory of God.
But Jesus not only mandates the actions of loving and praying, He also gives us the reason for such a response – “so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” In acting in the Spirit and choosing to surrender our feelings of pride, hurt, and fear, we become imitators of Christ. We don’t do so in order to become sons of God but we prove ourselves children of God in our doing so.
In John 13v35, Jesus says, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love (agape) for one another.”
Studying these red words in the Bible have been so joyful for me these past few weeks. It has proven timely and freeing, especially considering our current socio-political climate. I hope it proves helpful to you as well.
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