Love Your Enemies, Part 3 B

Welcome to Truth Network. Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. As thoughts turn next week to flowers and greeting cards and heart-shaped boxes of candy, it's fitting to consider a question asked through the ages. What is love? John MacArthur looks at that issue from a distinctly biblical perspective as his series Love No Matter What continues today. So how can you change a difficult relationship, even a hostile relationship, into one that pleases God?

The answer lies in the principles John MacArthur's outlining in this study. So turn now to Matthew chapter 5 for some compelling truth about your responsibility to show love for your enemies. And here's John with the lesson. With your Bibles, I want you to look at Matthew chapter 5 verses 43 to 48. Matthew 5, 43 to 48. In verses 44 to 48, we have the teaching of Jesus in response to the tradition of the Jews. The tradition of the Jews? Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. The teaching of Jesus?

Quite different. As we go through this passage, there are five points that I want you that I want you to see as we move. Five ascending connected sequential truths that lead us to a marvelous conclusion.

Let's look at the first point in the five. Jesus says simply in verse 44, "'But I say unto you, love your enemies.'" Secondly, moving up this ascending ladder of truth about love, he says, "'Pray for your persecutors.'" In verse 44, "'And pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you.'" Praying here, simply beseeching God on their behalf.

Despitefully using you is using you for a negative purpose or abusing you. And certainly persecution is clear. When somebody comes along and does despite to you or does evil to you or harms you, injures you, persecutes you, what are you to do? You are to go before the Lord on their behalf and intercede for them. That's what Jesus did on the cross.

That's what Stephen did. I've read so many stories about those who've died for the faith and even while they were being consumed in the flames, they were praying for those who were persecuting them. Pray for those that persecute you.

You know, there is no persecution in the world and there is no hatred in the world as severe as hatred regarding religious things. You see, man lives with sin and man lives with tremendous guilt. And guilt produces fear. And the ultimate fear that man has is the fear of death.

What's going to happen? If there is a God and I have sinned, will I be punished? Man lives with the imminence of punishment and thus man lives in fear.

So man inevitably constructs a system in which he can deal with this fear. He convinces himself that he's okay, that he's kept enough rules that God's going to let him into heaven, that he's really not such a bad guy, or else he just decides there's no God at all. I will not come under guilt. I will not have the fear of judgment and I'll get rid of it by just saying there's no God. When you go to an individual and you say you're a sinner, you will die and go to hell apart from Jesus Christ and you need to be redeemed and you need to be saved, you are striking that individual at the core of his deepest pain because you are dragging back all of his anxiety, all of the sin, all of the guilt, all of the fear that he has managed somehow to sublimate under his philosophy or religion, you see?

You're tearing it all open again. And that's why the most severe persecution is always religious because you are unmasking people at their most vulnerable point. Besides that, persecution brings to focus the real battle between Satan and God.

So religious persecution throughout history has always been the most intense...always. And when we really stand up and live for Jesus Christ in this society, we will get persecuted and more and more people all the time this is going to happen. And the question is, in the midst of the most heinous kind of hatred, at the point of the most serious reaction of persecution, can we pray on the behalf of the very one who seeks to destroy us? That's what Jesus said we are to do. What do you mean pray? I think He means to beseech God for their highest good. I don't think He's talking about the prayer of importunity to call down fire from heaven and consume them. I think He's praying here for their salvation. I was reading Spurgeon a couple of weeks ago and I found a little sentence in one of his messages and he said, prayer is the forerunner of mercy. When we pray, we release God's mercy in a very real way. And this is what I think Jesus is saying.

Pray for your persecutors, the very ones who would take your life, pray for them. You know, we can point out our enemies. You know, we can say, boy, they're enemies of Christ and they're enemies of the cross and the Bible and the church. And we can forget that what we hate is what they represent, but we must love who they are.

Hate the sin and love the sinner, you know? And pray for them. Wouldn't it be great if we just begin to pray for the people who are set against us, praying what? That they would be redeemed. You know what, just that prayer in and of itself will fill your heart with love.

It'll wash your soul to pray like that. When somebody comes to me and they'll say, you know, I've got a problem with so-and-so. I...they just...I resent them and this and that. My answer is always the same.

I'll tell you what to do. Pray for them. Set aside a certain time every day and pray for them.

You know what happens? That begins to wash the soul of bitterness when you pray for somebody and you ask God to be merciful. In fact, Chrysostom also said, that kind of prayer is the very highest summit of self-control. You've really brought your life into conformity to God's standards when you can pray for your persecutors. Dietrich Bonhoeffer who suffered so much in Nazi Germany said, this is the supreme command. Through the medium of prayer, we go to our enemy, we stand by his side, and we plead to God for him.

Oh, what a beautiful thing that is. The cruel torture of crucifixion couldn't silence Jesus' prayer. The crushing stones couldn't silence Stephen's prayer. But I wonder, what has silenced your prayer? For your enemy. So, love your enemies.

Pray for your persecutors. And then we ascend another level up. Manifest your sonship.

That's the third point. Manifest your sonship. Verse 45, and it starts with a hapas in the Greek which indicates purpose. Why love your enemies? Why pray for your persecutors? For the purpose that you may be the sons of your father. The Bible says, God is love. If God is love and I'm his child, then I should be characterized by love. And so 1 John says, if you do not show love to your brother, how can you claim to be a child of God? Don't claim you belong to God if you don't manifest love. And Jesus is not saying you will become a son of God if you love. He's not saying, now just muster up enough love and you can get yourself into being a son. He is saying, you will prove the validity of the claim that you're a son when love is manifest in your life.

You will prove it. It's kind of like Peter said, we already have this divine nature. We already have received this incorruptible character. But to make our calling and election sure, we have to add to what we've received virtue and so forth.

In other words, we'll never convince anybody we belong to God unless we're like Him and He loves. Manifest your sonship. I told you some years ago that when I was a little boy, I got into trouble stealing some things from a Sears store with a little friend and they took us and put us in the city jail in Glendale. My father was out playing golf with a couple of deacons and he was notified about it, came to get me at the jail thinking it was a mistake and then tried to explain to his deacons what his son was doing in jail. But I remember when I got home, my mother was crying and she didn't think I would do such a thing. And I'll never forget what some person said to me. I can't even remember who it was. And they just kind of went, Johnny MacArthur, did you forget who your father was?

I never forgot that. I owed something to my father. He had given me my very life.

I wanted to be his son. And that's what Jesus is saying. You know, you Pharisees and scribes may claim to be the sons of God, but if you don't manifest the character of God, you never convince anybody.

Never. What is the biggest criticism that people have of the truth of the gospel? It's the people who claim to live it but don't. That's always it. There are so many hypocrites in the church. The best answer for that is come on in, we've got room for more. But it's true that the biggest detriment to Christianity is Christians.

I mean, we just don't live up to the standard that we ourselves ascribe to. So that's the problem. Manifest your sonship. Let it become a settled fact.

Prove it. You know, there are people who are Christians, but you never know it because they don't love like this. But I'll tell you, you find somebody whose life is full of love, who overflows with love, who gushes out with love toward everybody, be he friend or foe, and the world will have a very difficult time assuming that that person comes from a human source because people don't love like that. And that's exactly what the Lord goes on to say in this verse. He says, you are to be the sons of your Father who is in heaven.

In other words, your style of life ought to be one that isn't earthy. You ought to manifest a heavenly source. That's why He identifies the Father as the one who is in heaven. Not your earthly father, your heavenly one.

Not with a human approach to life as good as that may be philanthropically speaking, but in a manifestation of love that is only possibly described as heavenly. And then He says, and how is that so? Well, look at God. He makes His Son to rise on the evil and on the good. He sends rain on the just and on the unjust. First He talks about the evil and the good, and then He inverts it and talks about the just and the unjust.

And He switches those two back and forth. The evil come first one time and the good come first the next time in order that you might see the point here as impartiality. He inverts the order just to show you what He's saying is God loves everybody. When the sun comes up and shines and it's beauty and spreads its warmth, it's for everybody. And when the rain falls, it's for everybody. And the sun comes up and gives light and it grows your grass and it grows my grass and it grows the grass of the people on our block who don't know that God even exists and couldn't care less.

Why? Because God is good and God is indiscriminate in His benevolence. This is what Calvin called common grace...common grace.

Divine love and providence touches everybody and this is what He's saying. Look, be like your Father. Let your love be so indiscriminate that your sun shines on everybody and your rain falls on the just and the unjust.

Then it'll be obvious that you belong to your Father. Jesus says, love your enemies, pray for your persecutors and thereby you will manifest your sonship. Number four, exceed your fellow men. Exceed your fellow men.

This is a brief and clear point. Verse 46, four, if you love them who love you, what reward have you? I mean, if you just go around loving the people in your group, are you to be commended? If you just love the people who agree with you and think like you and belong to your little thing, are you to be commended?

Are you to receive some kind of reward? Do not even the tax collectors the same? I want you to know, folks, that you can never in any way imagine the emotion of the Pharisees and the scribes when he got done with that one sentence. Do not even the tax collectors the same. I mean, they must have gone into real fits. If there was anybody they hated, it was the publicans.

Why? Because these were renegade traitor Jews who had committed treason against Israel by lining up with the Roman government to extort from the people taxes to pad their own pockets. They had become the pawns of the Romans who wanted to...literally a Roman citizen would buy a certain territory in the Roman Empire and he would have the rights to exact the taxes out of that territory. Then he would hire renegade rabble rouser Jews who wanted only money and thought nothing of their people and those Jews would then collect the tax.

They had to get a certain amount for this guy and all the rest they could skim off for themselves. They became despised, despicable. In fact, you read Matthew, you read Mark, you read Luke and you will find again and again and again the despised character of the publicans or tax collectors defined in those passages. Now he says to them, look, if you love them who love you, what reward have you? You just love the people with your own pride and your own prejudice and your own narrow little thing. You're no better than traitors and renegades and publicans because they love their group too. In other words, you don't prove you belong in my kingdom. They thought, you know, we have love.

Why? We love the people in our group. He says, yeah, well, that's great. So do the worst people in the human race. They do that.

They love each other. Murderers have something in common. So do thieves and robbers and adulterers and extortioners and whatever. You know, it's interesting to me and just doing some reading about the criminal mind, some people can't wait to get back in prison because that's where their element is.

You know that? One of the major reasons that people commit crimes again and again is because they're more home in the jail than they are on the outside because that's their people. They love those people. You're no better than that, he says, if all you can do is love the people in your group.

If you think that was a blow, the next one was even worse. And he says in verse 47, if you greet your brethren only, what do you more than others? Don't even the Gentiles do that? If all you can do is warmly embrace, the word greet having to do with a warm embrace with the kiss as it was done in the east, if you only have a warm and affectionate embrace for your brothers, you're no better than a Gentile. Now folks, there's only one thing worse than a tax collector.

What was that? A Gentile. And when Jesus...and I mean Jesus didn't pull any punches. When he told them they were no better than tax collectors and Gentiles, he was really getting them where they hurt. Some kind of religion you've got, he says. You're no better.

Look at the statement in the middle of verse 47. I just love this statement. What do ye more than others? What makes you different?

If you don't exceed the human standard, you're no different! Why should you be rewarded for being like everybody else? Why should God reserve His kingdom for you? Why should God reserve His crowns for you?

Why should God pour out His blessings on you? You're no better than anybody else! This is a devastating statement, folks. He's saying that religious people are no better than He than people. He's saying that people who function in the temple are no better than people who extort. You're all sinners, you see.

It's just a matter of kind of sin. You're no better than the rest. What do you do more than anybody else? What makes you different? What makes you different?

Beloved, that's a question for us to face, you know, those of us that are Christians. What makes us different in the world? Are we different on the job because our ethics are different, our conversation is different, our attitude is different, our love is different? Are we different in our homes? Are we different in our communities? Because if we're not different, we have nothing to say to this society that they're going to believe. Oswald Sanders said, the master expects from his disciples such conduct as can be explained only in terms of the supernatural. And if your conduct can only be explained in terms of the supernatural, then you've got something to say to the society, they're going to take note. But if you're like everybody else, what is the difference?

What do you have that they don't have? If we're to speak to this age and call this godless age to Jesus Christ and let them know that there's something real about Christ, it'll be when our lives are unique and have no other explanation than that God is there. So, Jesus says, love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, manifest our sonship, and exceed our fellow men, and one more, be like our God.

This is the sunim bonim. This is the epitome of his statement, verse 48. Therefore, all these four only lead up to this, be ye perfect. And I've heard people say, oh yes, but he means mature. He means you need to be growing. You need to be moving along.

You need to be coming along and just growing up. Listen, he says, be ye perfect, how perfect? As perfect as your Father who's in heaven. And he's not just coming along.

He's there. The point is this, you are to be like God. You say, well that standard is too high. You're right. And that's exactly what he wanted the Pharisees to know.

You can't make it. And they're supposed to say, but I can't be perfect. And that's when he says, right. And if you fall short of perfection, you need a Savior. And that's where Jesus comes in and brings to you what Peter calls the divine nature and makes you like God, a partaker of his nature. And God in a miracle of salvation does for you what you could never do for yourself, be like God. When you came to Jesus Christ, positionally you were made like God. You were given His eternal life, His righteousness.

You became like Him in that sense. And now you need to bring your behavior into harmony with your position. Listen, a Christian is not someone who keeps the Sermon on the Mount. A Christian is somebody who knows he can't, do you see? And comes to Jesus Christ for forgiveness for the sin of falling short and receives from Christ the forgiveness and then the power to begin to live these principles. That's the point of the message. Even when you fail, you're forgiven because Christ has paid the price for your sin. That's the message.

And so back to where I started. If you're not a Christian, what's the message to you? If you don't love like this, that's a sin. And if you're a sinner, you need a Savior. And Jesus Christ will come in and forgive your sin of lovelessness. Jesus will cleanse your life and He'll plant His love in your heart and then He'll teach you how to love the way He wants you to love. For some of you, this is a call to salvation.

For some of you, it's an exhortation to let the love that's there flow. My favorite illustration I close about loving an enemy is this one. Abraham Lincoln was held in contempt by a man named Mr. Stanton. He called Lincoln a low, cunning clown and he nicknamed him the original gorilla. And he said that men were foolish to wander around Africa trying to capture a gorilla when they could find one in Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln never said anything to Stanton and because Stanton was the best man for the job, when Lincoln needed a war minister for the United States, he chose Mr. Stanton.

He appointed him over all of the soldiers of the United States. He treated him with love and courtesy in the years past. The night an assassin's bullet tore out Lincoln's life in a little room to which the president's body was taken, there stood that same Mr. Stanton looking down into the silent face of Abraham Lincoln with all of its ruggedness and character and speaking through his tears, he said, there lies the greatest ruler of men the world has ever seen. And because Mr. Lincoln could love him with a forgiving love, he received in return his adoration. Beloved, Jesus is calling us to love our unlovely, unlovable world with a love that knows no discrimination. And such a love will show that we're like God and reveal God to them. That's the beginning of an effective evangelism. May God help us to love the way we are to love, to manifest His nature.

Let's pray. Lord, we're so much aware of people with needs. Transportation for the elderly and the handicapped. House cleaning for old people, people who are handicapped. People need jobs, houses, medical, legal, financial help.

We have kids at the juvenile hall, people in the jails and the hospitals. We need some people whose hearts are filled with love to touch these people, to reach out, pick up the wounded and the needy. And Lord, we need to love each other no matter where we are in human definition, the way you love all and are good to all. Teach us to love that we may be known as your children. In Jesus' name, amen. That's Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary.

His current series is titled, Love No Matter What. To paraphrase one of John's points, if you love only the people who agree with you and think like you and belong to your group, how is that praiseworthy? And so with that in mind, John, let me ask, what should it look like for Christians to show love to people, especially people in the church, who may have differing views on cultural trends and social causes and politics and so on? What does demonstrating love, no matter what, mean in those situations?

Well, I think it's the same in any situation. Love is not sort of a private emotion. I mean, there's really no value to another person in you feeling loving. I mean, it's nice if you feel that way because you won't be bitter, but you don't transmit anything of that love to a person by just how you feel about the person. What you do if you want to demonstrate that love to someone is very simple. You serve them. So demonstrating love to a person is finding ways that you can express your affection, express your appreciation, do something for them that will benefit them, that will bless them, that will encourage them, and that's how you serve them.

A way I think that is pretty common is to write a letter to someone, send them an email, and just assure them of your concern for them and your love for them. And I think that's a very disarming thing to do to people who are sort of cultivating a bad attitude toward you. And when you respond by doing the very opposite thing, the Bible calls it heaping coals of fire on someone's head. You're making them feel terribly guilty. So yeah, I don't think it's very difficult to answer that question. I think loving people only has meaning if it gets beyond how we feel about them.

And it really doesn't matter how we feel about them either. It's when you express service to them in a meaningful way that conveys love and conveys the idea that I want to contribute to your life, I want to affirm you, I want to be a blessing to you no matter how you think about me. Yeah, thank you, John. And friend, just know that our current study is all about helping you cultivate the extraordinary love that John has just described.

I encourage you really to dig into this material. The transcripts are great for that. You can download them for free today. You'll find the transcripts for all seven sermons from Love No Matter What at our website, gty.org. Of course, the MP3s are also available free of charge.

Just download them at gty.org, and you can listen to them at your own pace. And if a CD album is better for you, you can order that when you call 800-55-GRACE. That's our toll-free number, 800-55-47223.

Or you can order from our website, gty.org. And when you go to the website, remember, there are thousands of resources available to you, all free of charge. Whether you want to listen to radio broadcasts you may have missed, or you have questions about marriage and parenting, honoring Christ at your job, or how you can minister to a loved one who's suffering, you can search thousands of John's sermons or daily devotionals and blog articles to find a resource that will help you meet your spiritual needs. Our website one more time, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for starting your week with us and be back tomorrow to consider what true love looks like. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.