Wednesday, 23 July 2025

Asking the impossible?

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew 5:43-4

Did Jesus ever say a more radical, indeed a more revolutionary, thing than this? Indeed, did anybody ever say a more revolutionary thing than this? – it seems almost laughably idealistic in our troubled and hate-filled world.

The problem for many of us who know these words pretty much by heart is that familiarity can breed, if not contempt, then at least a kind of indifference, if not of downright cynicism.

“Love your enemies”? Well, that sounds a pretty tall order, but, all right, I’ll do my best; at least I can aim to be courteous, I suppose. “Pray for those who persecute you”? Well, again, I suppose I can summon up an occasional prayer, even if rather grudgingly; it doesn’t cost a lot, after all. “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”? True, that certainly is a pretty big ask! But surely we must allow for a degree of exaggeration…

No! That won’t do!

We need to try and hear these words through the ears of their first hearers. To put it very briefly, Jesus is in effect inviting us to become like God: “that you may be children of your Father in heaven”. In other words, he wants to build a community of men and women who are, little by little, taking on the divine family likeness.

That’s the point of his words about the sun and the rain being given to all and sundry, the “righteous” and the “unrighteous”. Nowhere in the Old Testament are we told to “love our neighbours and hate our enemies” (though Leviticus19:18 could be taken as implying this). But nature itself makes it plain that God, the creator and sustainer of all things, is, putting it mildly, not picky about who he blesses! He loves all that he has made, however sinful and rebellious they may be. So, then, must we.

But what does it mean in practice to “love our enemies”? Surely, tolerating them should be enough?

The experts tell us that in the Greek in which the New Testament was written there were four main words for love: first, family love; second, sexual love; third, the kind of love we associate with friendship and respect; and then, fourth, a little-used word which one commentator defines as “unconquerable benevolence, invincible goodwill” – and this was the word which the church adopted as its favourite word for Christlike love (it’s the word Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 13). That definition I’ve just quoted from the commentary may be something of a mouthful! But it makes the point. New Testament love is love that stubbornly refuses to wish anything but good upon those who may hate and even hurt us.

This means, of course, that it is not so much a feeling as a conscious act of will. It means both wishing good on the enemy we feel we have, and also doing good to them in any way we can. Feelings, at first at least, simply don’t come into it.

Jesus goes on to tell us to pray for those who hurt us. If the hurt goes really deep that may seem a sheer impossibility - through gritted teeth only.

But… it’s a wonderful fact that remarkable things begin to happen when we take it seriously: among them, we start to see that “enemy” in a new light altogether – not just as a stupid, nasty, selfish, vindictive, spiteful individual who, deep-down, we have learned to hate and despise; but as a lost and helpless sinner who, by God’s grace, can be reborn and, as we have done, become part of the family of God. (It’s what Jesus elsewhere calls being “born again” (John 3) and what Paul describes as becoming a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5).

It’s becoming the kind of person God always intended me to be. And it’s why Jesus’ parting gift to the church was the person of the Holy Spirit, the very breath and energy of God himself

And, of course, it’s what Jesus himself exemplified on the cross as he looked at his killers: “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they’re doing…” (See what I meant when I spoke about beginning to take on the family likeness?)

Exploring these powerful words of Jesus – “love your enemies”, “pray for your persecutors”, even “be perfect” – takes some doing! But one thing we mustn’t do is water them down or try to wriggle out of them. We are all children of a sinful, fallen race: the first Adam was guilty of disobedience, and we still carry the curse that resulted.  But now God has sent us a second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45-49) to renew the fallen creation. His name is Jesus, and in Matthew 5:43-48 he invites us join his new family. Not just a tarted up version of the old (if you will pardon the expression) but new priorities, new aspirations, new ambitions, new hopes, new attitudes… new you, new me!

Oh, Lord, help me to take seriously your call to be perfect, as you are perfect, whatever that may mean in practice. Amen!

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