Love Your Enemies

Love Your Enemies

Matthew 5:43-48 NIV

Bulletin Outline

The Enemy-Making Machine (our current social dynamic according to David Fitch)

1. We define ourselves via a position.
   
   
2. In doing so, we define ourselves against someone (an “other”) via our position.
   
   
3. Our motivations and desires get aligned with our position.
   
   
4. We defend our position at all costs and feel justified in doing so.
   
   

44 …Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…

Love ≠ generating warm fuzzies

Love = sacrificially seeking the good of another

45 …For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

            God blesses both the evil and the good.

            It is not obvious to us which is which.

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being…” – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 

• Responding to love with evil = the way of the wicked
• Responding to love with love = the way of the world
• Responding to evil with love = the way of Jesus

48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

…is not about moral perfection but maturity in love.

            …is only possible when our hearts are transformed by God’s love for us in Christ.