You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. “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 children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 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 and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. [NRSV]

Love your enemies

The prescription for healing our personal relationship, to our national and global relationships, requires love.

That makes this teaching one of the hardest.

The Big Ten Commandments are a list of “do and don’t,” Jesus raises the bar beyond following rules of “do or don’t.” Jesus is after our “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” [Luke 10:27]

To love our enemies requires more resource that we have.

God’s Love can do what nothing else can do.

In order for us to love with God’s love, we must rely on God’s love to shape our love.

• STEP 1: Love God and know God Love you
• STEP 2: Love God and know God loves your enemy
• STEP 3: Model God’s love by loving first, without merit, rather because we are modeling God’s work in us.

Easy Love, does not require God’s help.

Find someone who likes you,

• Find those who think and believe as you do like you,
• Find those who will not challenge your actions or opinions, and
• You can easily be successful in love that is self-affirming.
• This might feel or seem to be loving others,
  • but love is actually not even noticed
  • and may not even be real.

What is the difference in Easy Love and Challenging Love

One we can do without God’s help and lasts as long as everyone is of like mind.

But when someone challenges the core, we desire “them” to return to the comfort and conformity of “us”

While we yet sinners.

God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. [Romans 5:8]

• Jesus didn’t wait for us to go first,
• Jesus didn’t judge us first to see if we are worthy of forgiveness
• Jesus didn’t make us prove any reason to receive love, grace and new life.
• Jesus loves us. Period.

In our Steps toward loving our enemies:

• STEP 1: Love God and know God Love you
• STEP 2: Love God and know God loves your enemy
• STEP 3: Model God’s love by loving first, without merit, rather because we are modeling God’s work in us.

God’s love is preemptive

• God goes first.
• God makes the first move toward forgiveness
• God makes the way possible where there is division.

The model for our loving those who are difficult to love

• Begins by opening the conversation
• Begins by making a way for grace
• Begins by reminding ourselves and our enemies that God loves us even though we are at odds, broken or divided.

BUT WHY? Why does God loves us first?

It is the fundamental core of the nature of God

The core of our relationship with God and one another

God intervenes because we have broken the trust, we have divided our hearts, we have sided with like-minded.

If one side is righteous and the other totally corrupt, we would expect God to ‘smote’, flood and drive out the sinner from the garden. All these leave us separated and divided.

Jesus Reveals God’s Love as THE way to the heart of God.

Why don’t we move a far apart from one another and don’t cross paths, don’t interact, just avoid each other?

Why not write off the relationship and the people that are enemies?

1. It’s not what God does
2. It’s not what God has called us to do
3. It keep us both from knowing Love/God

 

You can Never make someone love you

But you and I, as God models for us, a love, respect, hope, and longing for good with our enemies.

• They may never repent
• They may never respond in love
• They may never relent

But their response is

• not our responsibility,
• not our challenge, and
• not our calling.

The Way God’s Love Works

1. It goes first, overlooking sin, broken, past, etc, with the hope of restoring the relationship
2. It waits, not condoning sin, but hoping that by being loved first, the door/conversation/way is opened.
3. It is genuinely longing for good, peace, joy, reunion, and the like to follow.
4. It remains even if rejected.

Dirty Work, but Most Rewarding

• Loving our Enemies is more difficult than following any rule or commandment
• It is the primary work that we are all called to share.
• Our ability to love and reciprocate love is linked to our salvation and eternity.

This is where it matters.

The challenge is to be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect.  Yikes!!

It is crucial that we define perfection as wholeness, completeness and not correctness, or a test score.

To be able to love those who have sinned, who are our enemies, is God’s work

And God gives us the same task to find wholeness by loving sinners.

To your Neighbor:

I’m a sinner, love me, forgive me and love me more

Back to your Neighbor: I’m a sinner too, I love you, I forgive you and need you to love me more,

God says: repeat daily.