Love Your Enemies, Part 1 A

If you just could drop that little phrase, it would be so convenient. If it just said, love your neighbor, period. But the Lord has a way of driving things right into the heart of our being. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Today, John MacArthur embarks on a study that's sure to challenge you and your relationships with others, especially those you have a hard time loving. You may never think about your friends or your enemies in quite the same way again, as you follow along with John in this study, which he calls Love No Matter What. And in case you're wondering, it's not an accident that we're airing this series on biblical love now with Valentine's Day on the horizon. I'm wondering, John, if some people might think that what you're going to say over these next two and a half weeks will sort of take the wind out of everyone's romantic sails, so to speak. Well, let's just hope the opposite happens, that this will put some real wind in everybody's romantic sails. I think you can only get away with a kind of superficial, worldly love for a little while, and then it's got to be much deeper and broader and more genuine, and I think more spiritual than that kind of thing that we call romance. So we're going to hope that this kind of love is going to enrich every single aspect of the life of all of those who listen and are a part of our series.

Let me introduce the study that we're going to begin today that I think will lead in that direction. Its title is Love No Matter What. That's right, Love No Matter What. It is not designed to minimize romantic love.

It is designed to build a much, much bigger foundation than just that. It will, however, challenge the listeners thinking about what it means to really love your husband or your wife or even a family member or church member or an unbelieving co-worker, even that annoying person or even your enemy. This study is going to be based on Matthew 5, Romans 13, and John 13, looking at love from a biblical viewpoint, and I don't want you to miss a day, because this is foundational to all our relationships, if they're going to be to the honor of the Lord.

That's right, friend. Building relationships is critical, and thankfully the Bible gives clear instructions for doing just that. So with a lesson that will help you strengthen your relationships, here again is John. Matthew chapter 5 deserves our greatest attention, deepest commitment, for perhaps no other passage in all of the New Testament sums up the heart and attitude of a Christian, as well as this one. It expresses what I think is the most single, powerful testimony that a Christian can have in the simple statement of Jesus in verse 44, love your enemies. I think that if there is one statement made by Jesus that in the eyes of the world sums up what Christianity ought to be like, it's probably love your enemies. I know Will Durant was asked what he thought of the Christian ethic, and he summed the Christian ethic up with the words, well, basically it's love your enemies. He said, without question, Jesus set the highest ethic ever set in the history of man, but too bad nobody ever lived up to it.

This is the supreme facet of life. If love is the greatest thing, then loving your enemies is the greatest thing that love can do. And so the sunim bonim in a sense of all of our kingdom living should be found in this concept of loving our enemies. In all the Sermon on the Mount, I think there are two statements that more than any others, and they're very obscure at first, sum up the ethics, the standards, the requirements of the one who claims to be a member of the kingdom of heaven.

They're very simple statements. The first one I want to point your attention to is in verse 47 of chapter 5. It says this in the middle of the verse, what do ye more than others? Now there is a tremendous summary statement of what Christ is asking in this whole sermon.

What does your system have more than any other human system? What makes you different? And then in chapter 6 verse 8, another simple statement. Be not ye therefore like unto them. There's a second statement. Two statements that sum up the whole sermon. What do you more than others and don't be like them.

What Jesus is saying in both of these simple statements is this. My standards are not like other standards. What I require is not what other people do. My standard is a higher standard.

And that's what He's saying. In fact, He's indicting the whole Pharisaical religious, Judaistic system as being substandard. When the best is said of your system, what makes it better than any other? What do you do different than anybody else? What sets you apart? If you were a part of My kingdom, you would not be doing like them. People in My kingdom have a higher standard than even yours. And theirs, by the way, was the highest religious standard of the day.

But it wasn't high enough. God requires for His kingdom a different standard, unique, separate, holy. In chapter 5 verse 20, He pointed directly to their system and said this, I say unto you that unless your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven. My standard is high, He is saying. My standard is higher than the highest human standard which is the standard of the scribes and the Pharisees. They struggled with all kinds of laws, all kinds of religious ceremonies and rituals. They were the most religious people of their time and yet God says, you're no different than anybody else.

My standard is that you do not act like them, that you do more than even the best that men can do. The highest human ethic falls woefully short of God's standard. Now this isn't anything new in the New Testament. God has always called His people to a higher standard. This is how God put it to the people of Israel soon after He had rescued them from their Egyptian slavery and made them His covenant people. He said this, listen, I am the Lord your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt where you dwelt and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan to which I'm bringing you.

In other words, my standard is not the one you came from and it's not the one you're going to. You shall not walk in their statutes. You shall do my ordinances and keep my statutes and walk in them, I am the Lord your God. Now notice He brackets the statement by, I am the Lord your God, I am the Lord your God, ending and ending with that statement. And because I am the Lord your God, you don't act like anybody else acts.

You don't live according to any standard, not the one you came from and not the one you're going to. Because He was their covenant God and because they were His special people, they were to be different from everybody else. They were to follow His commandments and not take their lead from the standards of the people around them. And that's hard. It's hard for them. It's hard in Jesus' time and it's tough on us today. To try to live according to a standard other than the standard that engulfs us and traps us in the world around us is difficult.

But that's what God asks for. Sadly, throughout the centuries that followed, Israel kept forgetting their uniqueness. They kept forgetting that theirs was another standard and they kept falling into sin. They were, in Balaam's words, a people dwelling alone and not reckoning itself among the nations.

That sounds good. They dwelled in isolation, not mingling, said Balaam. But the truth is in practice, they became assimilated into everything around them. So that Scripture says this, interesting statement, they mingled with the nations and learned to do as they did.

Sad commentary. That commentary could be labeled on the church just as well. They mingled with the heathen and learned to do as they did. From the very beginning, God has always called a people to uniqueness. He has always called a people to another standard, to a higher level and God's people for some reason are always pulled down. In fact, it came to be that in Israel they desired to have a king and their statement is this, we will have a king over us that we may be like the nations.

They wanted to be like the rest of the world. They even went so far as to say, let us be like the nations and worship gods of wood and stone. So God kept sending them prophets and the prophets kept reminding them about their uniqueness. Prophets like Jeremiah who said people learn not the ways of the nations. Prophets like Ezekiel who said, do not defile yourselves with the gods of Egypt. And prophet after prophet after prophet came singularly and in duos and trios and so forth, they came continuously pleading with God's people to be sure they maintained their unique standards. To fall below was to dishonor God. It's no different in Jesus' time and today God wants His people to be different. He wants His people to be unique. And the standard that Jesus presents here regarding loving your enemies is not the mood of the mob. That kind of a statement to the average pagan today sounds like lunacy.

It doesn't make any sense. It is not an earthly standard. It is not the morality of the age.

It is unique. It is a far greater ethic. In fact, if you want to know the truth, it's a far greater ethic than either you or I could ever keep on our own.

It's way beyond us to love our enemies. But kingdom character...and I'll mark this...kingdom character is to be absolutely distinct, absolutely unique and the key to it is that you can't live that way unless you are infused with divine power. And so Jesus is saying to the Pharisees, your system is substandard and until you come to Me for power, you will never be able to live by My standards. This whole sermon really draws a contrast between the best of men and God's standards and even the very best there were, the most legalistic, ritualistic, religious people on the earth, the Pharisees couldn't qualify. For example, they thought it was enough not to kill. Jesus says, I don't even think you should hate.

In fact, it's a command that you not be angry with your brother. They thought it was enough not to commit adultery. He says you shouldn't even think about committing adultery.

They thought it was all right when they got a divorce if they took care of all illegal paperwork. Jesus said you shouldn't even be getting those unbiblical divorces. They thought it was enough that they kept certain vows. Jesus said you shouldn't even need to make vows because your word is so true and so pure. They thought it was enough that they gave back an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

He says you shouldn't be retaliating at all. In chapter 6 they said, here's the way we pray. Jesus says it's inadequate. When you pray, you're to do it this way. And Jesus said, here's the way you give and that's the wrong way to give.

I want you to give this way. And Jesus said, you are concerned with material things. I want you to seek the kingdom of God.

You see, all the way through He's leveling a contrast. And now as we come to chapter 5 verses 43 to 48, He contrasts their love with the kind of love that should characterize the subjects of His kingdom. And what He's doing is telling them that they're not in His kingdom.

They don't qualify. We are called on to be unique, beloved. That's the thrust of this whole sermon. God is calling us out of the system to be separated people with convictions and commitments and standards that we live by that are not the world's standards. Nowhere is the distinction between the life of man and the kingdom of God made more clear or unclear than in the life of a believer.

That's where it all comes down. And so Jesus is confronting Israel here because Israel, as religious as Israel was, was walking in the flesh. He attacks their humanistic religious tradition by saying it falls woefully short of God's standard. Let's look what He says about this subject of love in verse 43.

It's such an important one. "'Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies and pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven for He maketh His Son to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them who love you, what reward have ye?

Do not even the tax collectors the same? And if ye greet your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the heathen so? Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect.'" He says to them as He has said in the five previous comparisons beginning in chapter 5 verse 21, your law says this, mine says this. Your law says love your neighbor, hate your enemy. I have to say that I feel that this is the supreme statement here because it's a statement on love and love is the greatest thing. And loving your enemies is the greatest thing that love can do.

He really comes to the peak, the sunim bonim as He speaks of love. To compare with what we just read, Matthew chapter 22, a lawyer came to Jesus and asked Him what was the greatest commandment. And in verse 37, Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. In other words, you can keep all the law and all the prophets one by one, or you can just love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself and that will cover it all.

That is the sum of it all. It is also indicated in Romans 13 by the Apostle Paul who says, O no man anything, Romans 13, 8, but to love one another for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet. And if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill to its neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Paul says love fills up the whole law. Jesus says love fills up the whole law. And so in Matthew 5 when our Lord begins to speak about loving, He is touching on that which sums up the whole law.

Here is a devastating death blow at the Pharisees. In fact, it is so direct that it must have curdled their blood when He said to them, you can be compared with heathens. In verse 47, which is exactly what He says, your love is no better than anybody else.

You don't have anything on publicans and sinners, tax collectors and pagans. The point is this, the people in My kingdom have a love that is beyond the best of loves the world can ever know. We don't just love our neighbors and hate our enemies, we love our enemies. And in so saying, He indicts them because they don't love their enemies and shows them their need for a Savior. Now in each of these contrasts, and there are six of them in Matthew 5, we have marked out three major points, the teaching of the Old Testament, the tradition of the Jews and the truth from Christ.

And those are the same three points in all six. Let's look first of all at the tradition of the Jews...the tradition of the Jews. And that is referred to in verse 43, look at it.

"'Ye have heard that it hath been said.'" Now that little introductory phrase is a reference that refers to Jewish tradition. It is not a statement related to the Old Testament, it means your tradition has been passed down saying this.

This is your system. This is what you have developed and you have been taught. This is the rabbinical current religious teaching.

And what is it? "'Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.'" Now that's what they were taught. Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

That's pretty open-ended, wouldn't you say? The first thing you do is figure out who your neighbor is and then you can hate everybody else and be okay. You can just hate up a storm depending on how you define your neighbor, right? If you define your neighbor as your wife and three best friends, you can hate the whole world. So it all depends on your definition of neighbor and that's exactly what Christ gets into, not only here but elsewhere as we shall see in our coming studies. Look first of all at the first part, thou shalt love thy neighbor. Now that sounds so pious. Thou shalt love thy neighbor.

Oh, it sounds so good. You say, where did they get that? Well that's in the Old Testament.

Sure it is. Leviticus chapter 19, they got that right out of the Old Testament. You know, whenever they wanted to make up a rule, they made sure that they intersected somewhere with the Old Testament. Like the clock that doesn't run, they're right twice a day.

Every once in a while they're going to hit the truth and they always find some kind of a basis for truth somewhere. And so here they are in Leviticus 19, 18 which says, Thou shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. That's Leviticus 19, 18.

Love thy neighbor as thyself. That's where they got that. But did you notice something? They left something out. You have heard it said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor...what did they leave out? As thyself.

That's a convenient omission, isn't it? In their state of unbelievable pride, they were so puffed up that that kind of a phrase at the end of a sentence would only confuse their desires. And so rather than be trapped in a thing where they would have to treat others equal to themselves, they dropped it.

Now granted, the one who came to Jesus in Mark 12 adds, as thyself, and the lawyer in Luke 10 adds, as thyself, but it may have been that they wanted to make sure they were accurate because of who they were speaking with. Apparently the norm was, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, period. They didn't want to love anybody like they loved themselves.

That would be crowding them. They were too proud to love anyone equally. Have you ever thought about what that means, to love someone as you love yourself? If you were just to love someone and it didn't say as yourself, you could just sort of love them at a distance. You could treat them a little less than you treat yourself. Whatever you do for yourself, you do half for them or a third or a tenth. I mean, if you just could drop that little phrase, it would be so convenient if it just said, Love your neighbor, period. But the Lord has a way of driving things right into the heart of our being. Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Oh, come on. Equal to...you say, how do we love ourselves? Listen, you love yourself.

You do. I mean, whose teeth did you brush this morning? Whose hair did you comb? Whose wardrobe hangs in your closet?

Whose savings account is in your bank? You are concerned about yourself. You love yourself. To love means to serve the needs. You serve your own needs.

Let's face it. You have an unfeigned, unhypocritical, total love for yourself. There aren't some days when you fall out of love with yourself. You love yourself all the time. And you're genuine about it. You really do. You're fervent about it. You're habitual about it. It's a permanent love.

Why? Whenever you have an interest, you want to fulfill it. Whenever you have a need, you want to meet it. Whenever you have a want, you want to supply it. Whenever you have a desire, you want to fulfill it. Whenever you have a hope, you want to realize it. Whenever you have an ambition, you want to see it come to fruition. I mean, you are really working in your own behalf.

It's just the way life goes. You're very concerned about your own welfare, your own comfort, your own safety, your own interests, your own health, physical, spiritual, temporal, eternal things. We're very concerned about ourselves. We seek our own pleasure and we know of no limits to gaining what we want. Now that is exactly the way you're to love everybody else. Jesus said, even your enemies. In other words, you ought to have that same totally consuming, unfeigned, fervent, habitual, permanent love which brings into your heart their interest, their needs, their wants, their desires, their hopes, their ambitions and prompts you to do everything you can to make sure that all their welfare, safety, comfort and interest is met and whatever they need and whatever they want and whatever pleasure they have, you are anxious to fulfill on their behalf. How do you measure up? The last time you had a choice between doing what you want or sacrificing yourself so somebody else could do it, which way did you go? Who do you really care about?

The standard is very high, people. Love your neighbor as yourself is very, very high, very high. Humanly speaking, it is impossible because humanly speaking, we are totally absorbed in ourselves.

I mean, just think of it. Think of it from the standpoint of your income. I mean, probably at best you keep 90% of what you finally get after taxes and maybe give the Lord 10. When it comes to how much you spend on you as opposed to how much you spend on the people on your block, I mean, it's minuscule to even think of how much you might spend on them.

As to how much you give to the needy and how much you use for yourself, those kind of comparisons are very remote because we don't even think like that. That's how far we are from these kind of principles. Loving your neighbor as yourself is a very, very, very heavy principle. That's the way we're to love.

You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. His lesson today is part of his study titled Love No Matter What. Well, a point John made today is that we all naturally love ourselves. So to love others, especially your enemies, is almost an unbelievably high standard.

But that's what sets Christians apart and it's something we all need to put into practice. For help with that, let me suggest you download this series and review these relationship-building truths at your own pace. Get in touch today. You can download all seven sermons from Love No Matter What free of charge at gty.org. Also, this series is reasonably priced on a seven-CD album, if that's better for you. You can order the CDs when you call 855-GRACE. That's our toll-free phone number, 855-GRACE.

Or you can order from our website, gty.org. And when you visit gty.org, be sure to take advantage of the thousands of free Bible study tools available, including what we call GraceStream. It's a continuous verse-by-verse study that goes through the entire New Testament, starting in Matthew 1 and going all the way through the end of Revelation 22.

And we run it continually and then reset it about every two months. So whether you have 15 minutes or a couple of hours, log on to GraceStream for constant challenge and strengthening from God's Word. GraceStream and much more is available free of charge at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson, with a question for you. You're probably in favor of higher standards in education, but are you willing to commit to higher standards in how you show love to others? Consider that tomorrow as John continues unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.