To Love Even Your Enemies

This is Christmas Sunday. Welcome to church. I want to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. As opposed to reading from a traditional Christmas passage, I want to read from a passage in scripture from the Gospel of John. We will not be talking about wise men, or shepherds, but we will be talking about the idea of God in His fullness. In honor of our reading of scripture, I want all of us to stand, if you can, and read it together. We’ll be reading from John 1:9-14. ⁹ The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. ¹¹ He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. ¹² Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— ¹³ children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. ¹⁴ The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:9-14) You can all sit down now. This is how the Christian life starts. It doesn’t start by measuring up. It starts by realizing that we don’t measure up. We are poverty-stricken, helpless as infants, and sin-sick in need of a Great Physician. Then we hear the gospel news that Jesus “came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45); and we hear the free offer that by trusting him our sins we will be forgiven, God will be our Father, and the power of the kingdom will come into our lives, and we will have the help we need to live our lives. This is the reason we celebrate Christmas. I want to hear an Amen, because this is a wonderful thing that we need all be in agreement with. Now we conclude our series on the Sermon on the Mount, while celebrating Christmas. Some of you will may have thought it coincidence, but it was just really well planned. Knowing what you know about why we celebrate Christmas, as I explained it to you right now. The reason for and why Jesus came, I want us to look at the last portion of scripture in Matthew chapter 5. This Christmas season and going into 2015, I want you to understand that we preach these sermons, we have sing these songs, we live what we believe because life as we know it is totally and wholly dependent on the rationale Jesus gives for loving. ⁴³ “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. ⁴⁴ But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! ⁴⁵ 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. ⁴⁶ If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. ⁴⁷ If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that.⁴⁸ But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. (Matthew 5:43-48) Unlike God, human beings love on the basis of reciprocal relationships. Our love is given in return for something else. In other words, I’ll love you because you’ve earned my love or because you’re entitled to my love. You love me. So I’ll love you back. Just what does it mean to love your enemy? These days love often gets defined as just an emotion, a feeling. But love in the Bible goes well beyond how you feel about something. It is a decision, sometimes a decision to do something opposite to what you feel like doing. Now today I want us to think about who our enemies are, and what it means to love them, and how this is possible. We know it’s possible because we are celebrating Christmas today and again on Wednesday. Jesus thought about who his enemies were and decided, along with the Father, that he needed to come and be one of them, walk in their flesh. That’s exactly what he did. I’m so fond of Christmas, not necessarily because of presents, we didn’t have many presents growing up in my house. But because when I actually came to know Jesus as my savior, I came to realize what a pain and what a heartache, and what a crazy thing had to be done. I know that if I were God, my enemies would lie in my wake and I would never love like God loves. But now I have the opportunity to do so. I want to define for you two types of enemies this Christmas, because some of you will recognize one but not the other. And it will be the other enemy that needs to be loved more so than an enemy you can easily recognize. There are two types of enemies. The first is somebody who persecutes you for some reason or another. I don’t mean make fun of, I mean straight, full on, I’ll cut you into a million pieces because I don’t like what you believe or what you look like. This is the ISIS type of persecution. They killed Christians for being Christian. They killed Americans for being American. There are people who blatantly hate you. As such, you hate them—the Taliban, serial killers. Maybe, it’s a sports team, like USC, or the New England Patriots, Boston Celtics, the Red Sox. You know these people. You can rattle their names off in a hurry. They may be people at school that bully you. That tattle on you. That you are sworn enemies of and with. The other is the frenemy, somebody you just don’t like because they don’t see eye to eye with you. Like your neighbor that complains about everything to you. Or your friend at school that takes every opportunity to make you look bad and himself or herself a little bit better. You don’t necessarily hate these people because they’re not blatant enemies, but you hate these people and keep them as your friend or at least acquaintance, but you wouldn’t pick up the phone if they call you at night type of people. These are the type of people that mess up all your intricate plans and plots and surprises. I know these people. I know lots of these people. You know these people. You know plenty of them. Jesus says an enemy, look at verse 44, and is anybody who isn’t considered yourself. So the point seems to be: don’t stop loving because a person does things that offend you, or dishonor you, or hurt your feelings, or anger you, or disappoint you, or frustrate you, or threaten you, or kill you. Because these things happen all the time. The thing that happens when our feelings get hurt by people is simple: we make them enemies and we hate them instead of loving them. “Love your enemies” means keep on loving them. Keep on loving people who were once your friends and messed you up once or twice or thrice. The question really becomes then, how do you love them? There are two big ways spoken by Jesus in Matthew 5:

• You love your enemies by meeting their physical needs. Not emotionally drowning them. But pouring upon them an act of kindness which goes beyond logic and comprehension. Meet their needs. Do for them what nobody else is willing to do.
• Pray for them. Jesus says pray for them. When was the last time you prayed for the wellbeing of somebody you hated? This Christmas can you pray for somebody you hate? Like earnestly, go to God and say, I pray for them. Can you do that? Can you do that at all?

Where does power to love like this come from? Just think how astonishing this is when it appears in the real world! Could anything show the truth and power and reality of Christ more than this? At Christmas. I want you think about this going forward, there is a lot to consider here. As followers of Jesus, as people looking at what happened 2,000 years ago, I want us to honestly see what would happen if we would pour out love on our enemies. What would the world do if we would repay good for evil? Where would things go? How would people react? Lets pray.