Love Your Enemies, Part 3 A

Let the enemy come and throw everything he can at you. It will never make you fall into sin. You will drown his evil, as Chrysostom said, like a spark that falls into the sea. So does an injury find itself extinguished when it comes into the sea of the love of a believer. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Whenever Valentine's Day approaches, advertisers prompt you to buy something special for the person you love. And of course, there's nothing wrong with showing affection for those you're close to, but what about the people that advertisers wouldn't dream you'd ever express love for? Your enemies. How are you supposed to treat those who are obnoxious or annoying or contentious?

What about those who even go out of their way to hurt you and make you look bad? What does God's Word say about dealing with difficult people wherever you find them? Today, John MacArthur will show you practical biblical steps to handling even your worst enemies.

The title of his current series, Love No Matter What. So take your Bible and follow along, and here's John MacArthur. That's the bottom line. You can really tell all there is to know about a man's true spirituality by what he does when people attack him, by what he does when people despise or hate or persecute or stand against or criticize, because then will be the revelation of the reality of his life. And if he is a creature of love made so by the indwelling presence of Jesus Christ, he will love that person just as much as he will love his dearest friend, because it will be his character to love and have little to do with the person involved. That is essentially what Jesus is saying in this passage. He is saying, your tradition tells you, verse 43, love your neighbor and hate your enemies. That's what you've learned. You've learned that there is a justification for hatred. You've learned that there is a place for vilification and animosity and bitterness and revenge and resentment. You've been told that your pride is justified and your prejudice is allowable.

You've been told that there are some people you well should hate. But verse 44, I say unto you, love even your enemies. You see, what men do and what God commands are two different things. And that's the essence here. You see, the people whom Jesus spoke thought that they were good enough.

He says, you're not good enough at all. Your kind of love is not adequate. Your kind of love is very, very narrow.

It picks out its objects. The love of those in my kingdom is indiscriminate, my kingdom is indiscriminate, it loves friend and foe just the same...just the same. In Luke chapter 23 verse 34, we see a beautiful illustration of this. The Romans have done a foul deed. They have taken the lovely Son of God. They have driven nails into His hands. They have driven nails through His feet, attaching Him to a wooden cross.

They have lifted the cross and dropped it in its socket, and when it hit, the jolt would have ripped and torn His flesh. They have spit on Him and mocked Him. The Jews have done a foul deed. They have accused Him of being a blasphemer. They've screamed for His blood. They too have mocked Him, casting things in His face. He hangs on the cross. He hangs on the cross. At His feet is a vicious, frenzied, frantic, hateful, despising mob, thirsty for His blood, the result of years of bitterness and hatred against one who is only an agent of love. And how does He react to that? And what is His attitude to them? Luke 23, 34 says, Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And they parted His garment and cast lots.

In the midst of His magnanimous prayer of forgiveness, they were still busy gambling for His cloak. But the point that I want you to see is that Jesus could love them so much that He could beseech the Father on behalf of their forgiveness. That's not a human love. That just isn't true of mankind.

You say, well, Jesus was God. You know, we can't do that thing. That's beyond us. We can't love enemies to that degree.

I think we can. There's another biblical illustration in the seventh chapter of the book of Acts. There was a man by the name of Stephen, full of faith and full of the Holy Spirit, a man who was numbered among the first chosen in the church in Jerusalem as a godly man to be placed over some important ministry. Stephen, who was the best of the very best in the early church. Stephen, who was a man who knew God and who knew the Old Testament and knew the New Covenant even in Jesus Christ.

And Stephen stood up in the seventh chapter of Acts and he preached an indicting, powerful message, not unlike Peter's message on Pentecost, and he laid bare the sinfulness of Israel. And when he was finished, the people were so frantic and so overwrought and so cut to the heart, says Luke, as he writes, that they literally screamed with their voices and clapped their hands over their ears that they wouldn't hear anything from this man. And they picked him up and threw him over a precipice and then they began to pummel his body with stones. And the Bible says in the midst of this, he pulled himself into a kneeling position.

Just imagine that. Stephen was lying at the foot of this, receiving the stones, and he managed to pull himself into a kneeling position to do what? To pray a prayer.

And what was his prayer? Simply this, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. Lord, be merciful. Don't make them pay for this.

Be gracious to them. That's loving your enemies. And that's what Jesus is talking about. Kingdom character doesn't hate. It doesn't even hate enemies, not kingdom character, not the kind of character that manifests godliness, not the kind that manifests the virtue of a transformed life.

And that's the message here. You see, the Jews felt that they were already all right, but the Lord shows them that they're not as proven by the fact that even their love is an inept, inadequate, narrow kind of thing. And so Jesus presents to them the truth about love. 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 to see as we move. Five ascending, connected, sequential truths that lead us to a marvelous conclusion. I pray that God will really show you as we move how these apply in your heart.

Now keep two things in mind. Jesus is speaking here, and really there is a two-fold purpose. One, let's say a person is not a Christian and they're hearing this. What is their reaction? Their reaction is to know that they fall short of God's standards. Their reaction is to know that they don't love like this.

They can't love like this. Therefore, they're sinful because this is required. And if you don't love like this, you're a sinner. And if you're a sinner, you need a Savior. So the message that Jesus is giving to the people there, to the Jews, to the massive crowd, is that this should prove to you once and for all that you haven't arrived and that you need a Savior. And then, of course, He is the one who offers Himself as that Savior. But there was another group on the hillside when He preached this, and that was His disciples. They had already believed in Him. They had already committed their lives to Him. But sometimes even for those of us who have been forgiven for our lack of love, those of us who have been given the power to love, fail to love, and so for us this becomes an exhortation, doesn't it?

To live up to what is now potentially a reality. First, He is saying, you are a sinner if you don't love like this and you must be forgiven. Then He says, if you have been forgiven and you have been given the capacity to love like this, you must respond to that in obedience. So it's a message for everyone, the crowd and the disciples, for you that know Christ, an exhortation to a greater love for you that don't, a realization that you're a sinner and you fall short and you need a Savior.

Let's look at the first point in the five. Jesus says, simply in verse 44, but I say unto you, love your enemies. Now, beloved, this was just a devastating statement in the society in which Jesus lived because there was so much hate. A wonderful commentator, William Hendrickson, writes, all around Jesus were walls and fences. He came for the very purpose of bursting those barriers so that love, pure, warm, divine, infinite love would be able to flow straight down from the heart of God, hence from His own marvelous heart into the hearts of men.

His love overleaped all the boundaries of race and nationality and party and age and sex. When He said, I tell you, love your enemies, He must have startled His audience for He was saying something that probably never before had been said so succinctly, positively and forcefully." End quote. He was saying something that they just didn't do. Love your enemies.

Are you kidding? They were proud and prejudicial, judgmental, hateful men, masquerading as religious. And Jesus devastates that. He says just in one statement, love your enemies, what is contradictory to their entire lifestyle. They hated. They hated the rabble mob. They hated the publicans who were the tax collectors who had sold out to Rome. They hated the Gentiles.

They literally despised them. And Jesus gives them a simple command that lays bare all that hate. Love your enemies, He says.

Who does He have in mind, everybody? We talked last time about neighbor encompassing enemy, didn't we? Neighbor is a big enough word to encompass an enemy. Jesus said, love your neighbor as yourself.

An enemy fits into that. A neighbor is anybody in need, isn't it? Remember we looked at Luke 10 and we talked about the Good Samaritan and how in the story of the Good Samaritan, we said that the Good Samaritan came along and he saw this man who was a Jew and Samaritans and Jews didn't have any dealings. There was tremendous hatred between the two of them. And yet he went over and he saw that man and he said, that man's my neighbor and he bound up his wounds and he cared for him and he wrapped him and he put him on his animal and took him to the inn and paid his bill and did the whole thing and he made a sacrifice, didn't he? A sacrifice of time, a sacrifice of energy, a sacrifice of money, a sacrifice of prejudice, a sacrifice of all of the factors of his life to stop and do all of that because the man was in need.

And we said, that's the way it is. Your neighbor is anybody in your path with a need. But in Luke 10 in the Good Samaritan, Jesus really is making an opposite point as well because the lawyer said, who is my neighbor?

I mean, I'm going to go through the world and I want to pick out my neighbors and do what I should. But when Jesus came to the end of the story, he said, who was that man's neighbor or which one of the three that came down the road showed themselves to be his neighbor? Now what was he saying? First there was a priest and he ignored it, then there was a Levite and basically they were the helpers of the priests so they fit into the religious community and he passed by and then a half-breed Samaritan and he helped him. And he said to the lawyer, which one of those proved to be the wounded man's neighbor?

In other words, Jesus turned the tables. Instead of going through life and trying to pick out who your neighbor is, he says, are you a neighbor? Because if you're a neighbor, then anybody in your path is going to get your neighborly love. It kind of works like this. In our society, humanly speaking, we basically are object-oriented in our love, aren't we? You know, you sort of love people by...on the basis of the kind of object they are, if they're attractive, you know.

For example, when the guys are looking for some girl to marry, you know, girls come across their path and they'll say, you know, no thanks, keep moving, I'm not there yet. And, you know, different girls will come along and all of a sudden, boom, you know, there she is, you know, and you just kind of zing, zero in on her. And there's something attractive there and there's this emotional thing that hooks you to the thing and you don't feel that with anybody else. So that our love is object-oriented. When we look at a picture or we look at a house or the style of a car, there are some objects that attract our affection and some that do not.

There are certain personalities that attract our love and some that do not. Now that's the human kind of affection. And that's really what the lawyer was saying.

Now as I go through the world, how do I know which objects I should attach to? Jesus is saying that's not the issue. The issue is, are you a neighbor? If you're a neighbor and your heart is filled with love, any object that gets in your path is going to receive that love.

See, that's what He's saying. He's saying don't try to figure out who your neighbor is, you be the neighbor to everybody and then you won't have a problem. Jesus is calling for love toward an enemy.

And that's a simple thing. I don't know how else to say it other than to simply say it means to love everybody exactly the same, be they friend or foe. You say, what do you mean by love, John? I don't mean affection.

We talked about that last time. God doesn't expect you to love Him philia like a friend. He doesn't expect you to love Him storge like you love somebody in your own family. He doesn't expect you to love them eros, affectionate, desiring love. But what He does say is to love them agapao which is a love that seeks their highest good and seeks to serve their needs. When Jesus said in John 13, love one another as I have loved you, He had just washed their feet. At that point He wasn't saying, you know, these disciples are so wonderful, they're just irresistible. No, they were cantankerous, ugly, arguing over who would be the greatest in the kingdom. They were acting sinful. They were self-motivated and self-centered and couldn't even be considered enough to consider Christ going to the cross and comfort Him. They were acting about as ugly as they ever acted in the New Testament and yet He said, love each other like I've loved you.

What did He do? He washed their dirty feet. And that's what He's saying. Love is an act of service to one in need, not necessarily an emotion. You'll notice that He says, love your enemies. And then the text also in the King James says, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.

Now that's not in the critical text or manuscript text. It's been brought into this one from Luke 6. The Lord did say it. Matthew just didn't include it and some scribe brought it over.

But it's really true. If you love your enemy, when He curses you, you'll bless Him and when He hates you, you'll do good to Him. Look with me for a moment at 1 Corinthians chapter 13, 1 Corinthians chapter 13. And what is it saying but perhaps the greatest definition ever given of love? I want to have you note verse 4 through 7, just briefly. We could spend a lot of time on this and rightly we should and have in the past, but for this moment just a brief look.

But keep in mind one great and important truth. There are 15 characteristics of love given here. All of them appear in a verbal form. They're not presented as substantive. They are presented as verbs.

Why? Because love is doing. Love is in action. Love can never be defined statically. Love can never be defined as a plateau. Love is always an activity, always an action. And by the way, somebody has titled this as the beatitudes set to music, or a lyrical interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount.

So others have seen the parallel. But Paul in describing love uses verbs because love is only described in terms of what it does, that's all. And I suppose the reason that you don't always believe somebody who says they love you when they say it is because they say it, but there never seems to be anything done about it.

And you have every right to question that kind of love because love does things. For example, verse 4, love is patient. Literally means long-tempered and most times the word is used of patience with people. Love is patient. Love is kind.

It means literally in the Greek, useful. In other words, love sets itself to do deeds of kindness that help people in their time of need. And then it says, love does not envy.

That is, it doesn't have a competitive spirit. It isn't jealous. It joys in another's success. And it says, love is not boastful...is not boastful. Vaunteth not itself means it's not boastful.

And I think the Greek word there has mostly to do with outward bragging, outward pretense, outward showing off, the voice of conceit. And then it says, following that, love is not puffed up. And I think that's talking more about the inside, the inward, big-headed, self-centered. See, love is not self-centered. It's patient toward people. It's kind and it has no competitive spirit, no jealousy, never envies anybody else's position or anybody else's situation at all and can just totally rejoice in somebody else's success. Love does not behave rudely or unseemly, it says.

And that's such a beautiful thought at the beginning of verse 5. Love is always considerate, always concerned with somebody else, always tender in dealing with people, even evil people. Love never insists on its rights. You know, today you can even take courses. Do you know this?

You can even go to seminars a week long and take courses on how to assert your rights. That's not the way love acts. Love seeks not its own. In other words, it's unselfish.

It only seeks the things of others. Love is not provoked and that means it doesn't have a sudden outburst of anger or rage. It never reacts to injury or loses its temper. Love thinks no evil. That is, it always imagines the best about people. It always wants to think the very best.

It always wants to give the benefit of the doubt. It always forgives and forgets and never carries a grudge and is never defensive, never eager to blame somebody else. And then it says, love in verse 6, rejoices not in iniquity. Love never takes pleasure when someone else sins.

It never takes pleasure when someone else is chastised. It rejoices in the truth. That is, love is positive, encouraging goodness. And love then forethings, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love bears all things. It's a beautiful Greek word. It means to cover something. It throws a blanket on others' faults.

It just covers them up. It believes all things. It's never suspicious. It always believes the best. It hopes all things. Even when it knows there's a failure, it's optimistic enough to believe that something different is going to happen.

There's going to be a change. It refuses to take. The failure is final. And then love endures all things. No matter what you do to love, verse 8 says, love never...what?...fails.

Boy, what a great picture. Just like shining a light into a prism, it splatters all of the colors of love. Do you love like that? That's the kind of love that characterizes our Lord Jesus Christ. That's the way God loves. If you don't love like that, you need a Savior.

And if you've received the forgiveness for a lack of love and Christ lives in your heart and you have forgiveness and you have His love shed abroad as Romans 5, 5 says, but you're not letting that love out, you're bottling it up, then you need to make a new commitment to love the way He says you're loved. The commentator Linsky says, it indeed sees all the hatefulness and the wickedness of the enemy, feels his stabs and his blows, may even have something to do toward warding them off, but all this simply fills the loving heart with the one desire and aim to free its enemy from his hate, to rescue him from his sin and thus to save his soul. Mere affection is often blind, but even then it thinks that it sees something attractive in the one toward whom it goes. The higher love may see nothing attractive in the one so loved.

His inner motive is simply to bestow true blessing on the one loved and to do him the highest good. Linsky says, I cannot love a low, mean criminal who robs me and threatens my life, at least in the sense of liking him, and I cannot like a false, lying, slanderous fellow who perhaps has vilified me again and again, but I can by the grace of Jesus Christ love them all, see what is wrong with them, desire and work to do them only good and most of all to free them from their vicious ways. End quote. And so we are to love not in terms of a feeling but in terms of service. Paul says it so beautifully in Romans 12 verse 20.

Let me read it to you. Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him. If he thirst, give him drink. That's how you treat an enemy. If he's hungry, feed him.

If he's thirsty, give him to drink. For in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Basically I think that means to bring conviction upon him, to make him feel bad about his hatred and his sin. And be not overcome by evil. In other words, when somebody does evil to you, don't retaliate, don't lose the battle, but overcome that evil with your goodness.

Let the enemy come and throw everything he can at you. It'll never make you fall into sin. You will drown his evil, as Christendom said, like a spark that falls into the sea. So does an injury find itself extinguished when it comes into the sea of the love of a believer. When people cast their sparks of hatred at us, may they be as quenched as the spark in the sea. That's John MacArthur, pastor, author, chancellor of the Masters University and seminary and Bible teacher here on Grace to You.

John calls his current study love no matter what. And John, as you've talked about loving enemies and seeking their highest good, it's clear you were talking about non-Christians who cause problems. But what about when conflicts come from where you wouldn't expect, as close as the same church pew, and the person causing the trouble has bowed the knee to Christ?

Is the prescription the same? Well, absolutely, it's the same. Because it defines this kind of love as love for an enemy. A non-believer may be an enemy, but in reality, another Christian may be an enemy as well. Somebody in your own family may be an enemy, or your own wife or husband may take an adversarial position against you. So, yeah, loving your enemies is a huge category of people. All those people who offend you, all those people who seek to do harm to you, all those people who assault or attack you or stand in your way or trouble you would fall to one degree or another into the category of an enemy.

And whether they're a non-believer or a believer, you have the same responsibility. This leads me to mention again a book that I talked about this week in an earlier broadcast titled Anxious for Nothing. And the reason I relate to that book is because I think it's very difficult for people to make meaningful relationships with others, particularly with enemies if they don't have control of their own lives, their own emotions.

If you are a worrier, if you are a person who tends to be a conspiracy theorist and think people are against you or plotting against you, very hard for you to behave in a way that is God-honoring toward your enemies. So it's really important for you to get a grip on your own life and make sure you're on firm footing and that your trust in the Lord is solid and firm and you're not worrying. So we're providing for you an opportunity to get a copy of the book Anxious for Nothing. It's free to anyone who has never contacted this ministry before. There's a chapter in the book called Dealing with Problem People. And again, it relates to how well you order your own life and how much trust and faith and confidence you have in the Lord. But there are so many other issues that are in this book covering the areas of relationships that lead to worry that will be a great help to you.

Here's the good news. It is free of charge to anyone who has never contacted this ministry before. Do it today and we'll get your copy right away. If you're already part of our Grace to You family, you can order them and the price is reasonable.

Thanks, Jon. And friend, whenever someone tells us that he or she is battling fear and worry, this is the book we suggest. To get your copy of Anxious for Nothing, again, we'll send it free if you've never contacted us before. Just ask for it today.

Email your request to letters at gty.org. You can also let us know if you'd like Anxious for Nothing when you call 855-GRACE or when you visit our website, gty.org. Again, we'll send you a free copy of Anxious for Nothing if you're getting in touch with us for the first time. Or if you have contacted us before or you'd like extra copies of Anxious for Nothing to give to friends and loved ones, they are available for $10.50 each and shipping is free.

To order, call 855-GRACE or you can shop online at gty.org. And don't forget, at our website you'll find more than five decades of messages by Jon. That's 3,600 sermons free to download in MP3 and transcript format. It's an ocean of free verse-by-verse teaching and I would encourage you to dive in today at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and our staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch Grace To You television this Sunday on DirecTV channel 378, and plan to be here Monday when John MacArthur shows you the answer to the question, How do you fix a relationship that's fallen apart? It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace To You.