Love Your Enemies
This week has been difficult to watch. Death has been in front of us. Evil and hate have been the focal point of all of it. Earlier this week, Charlie Kirk was murdered in broad daylight on a college campus. This week also marked twenty-four years since 9/11, when around three thousand people were slaughtered in the worst terrorist attack in American history. And this is shortly after witnessing a young Ukrainian woman, Iryna Zarutska. murdered on a train by a man who had been arrested fourteen times, released into the world by a broken justice system. We live in an evil, broken world of hatred and violence. And into this world, the world of this past week, Jesus speaks these words that cut across the grain of our natural instincts: “Love your enemies.” What a timely text we come to this week. Today we’re going to see both what it means to love our neighbors and what it means to love our enemies.
God’s command to love does not give license to hate. (43)
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”
Jesus begins with words his hearers knew well: “You shall love your neighbor.” That’s straight from Scripture.
Leviticus 19:18 – You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
But they added to it: “and hate your enemy.” God never said that. That’s nowhere to be found in Scripture. This was their way of twisting God’s commands to be more manageable. Their love was just for the Jewish people, their own people. That’s who their neighbor was. “By Jesus’ time, this hatred of foreigners was so institutionalized that the Jews thought they were honoring God by despising anyone who was not Jewish.”[1]
If I can limit love to my friends, to people who are like me and believe like me, and look like me, and act like me, then I am free to despise everybody else. That’s what they believed. Then everybody else can be my enemies. If I’m a Democrat, Republicans can be my enemies. Or vice versa. But God’s command to love never gave license to hate.
This matters today because of the same corruption that’s alive within us. Think about how quick we are to divide people into “neighbor” and “enemy.” Who do you count as your neighbor? Those who agree with you politically? Those who think like you? Those who live near you? Then who falls in the category of “enemy”? The one who disagrees. The one who belongs to the other party. The one who has hurt you personally. If we’re honest, we love our neighbors narrowly and justify hatred for everyone else.
The rhetoric of the political left has grown so absolutist that conservatives are not simply treated as people with different ideas. We (yes, I am one) are painted as villains, enemies, obstacles to be destroyed. And when you declare someone an enemy to be hated, and how even their words and conversations and debates (which are words and ideas) are considered “hate speech,” then from there it’s only a short step to violence. That’s part of what led to Charlie Kirk’s assassination. And as more information comes out, I’m sure that will be even more clear. He wasn’t just disagreed with. We should be able to have disagreements. That was his whole thing, was to go have conversations with people he disagreed with. Those people were to come to the front of the line. No, he was vilified and in a war-like manner. And in a culture where hate, and extreme hate at that, is so normalized, murder becomes not just possible, but inevitable. That’s why earlier in this same sermon Jesus says hate is no different than committing murder. Murder is always birthed out of hatred.
We see it, also, in the failure of justice, the failure to love our neighbor. That young Ukrainian woman wasn’t just the victim of that one man’s brutal sin. She was also the victim of a system that failed to do what God had placed it there to do. It refused to restrain evil. The man had been arrested fourteen times. FOURTEEN TIMES! And then an innocent life was taken. Do you think our justice system provided justice? And then we see the failure of love for neighbor lived out just as Jesus described in the Good Samaritan parable when not a single person helped her as she cried alone and bled to death, abandoned by individuals on a train who failed to help her and by a system that let a man go free FOURTEEN times. The government, according to a biblical worldview, and I’m not being political—I’m being biblical— is supposed to bring good to the people by bringing down the sword on evildoers. And they are servants of God by doing so! This is what justice and love of neighbor is supposed to look like by the government’s actions.
Romans 13:1-4 – 1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.
But we are not loving our neighbors when we are letting these things happen. Don’t stand by. Don’t let evil have free reign. Jesus taught on this very topic by teaching about the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). And that was to answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Which of those on that train proved to be a neighbor? None of them. Instead of Jesus saying, “You go, and do likewise,” you better believe He would say, “You go, and do the opposite.”
So, we’re not to twist God’s commands. We are to love our neighbor. But who does our neighbor consist of? Even our enemies. And that’s where they had twisted God’s Word.
The kingdom-ethic of Jesus is to love those who hate you. (44)
“But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Jesus doesn’t just expose the distortion. He raises the standard. Notice the verbs. Love. Pray. In Luke’s Gospel the list is even longer:
Luke 6:27-28 – 27 “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
Love for enemies isn’t theoretical. It’s actionable. It’s active. Jesus calls us to show real, tangible love to those who hate us. That feels so unnatural. And it is. Our natural instinct is retaliation, as we saw last week. Someone mocks you, and you mock them back. Someone hurts you, and you look for ways to hurt them back. But Jesus says kingdom citizens live differently. The ethic of His kingdom isn’t hate. It’s love. We don’t repay evil with evil. We overcome evil with good.
This doesn’t mean we ignore sin. Loving your enemy doesn’t mean pretending evil isn’t evil. When terrorists attacked this country on 9/11, that was evil. When Charlie Kirk was assassinated, that was evil. When Iryna Zarutska was murdered, that was evil. Jesus never calls us to excuse evil or pretend it’s light. He calls us to name it for what it is and still refuse to let hatred rule our response. You don’t overcome darkness with more darkness. We are to overcome darkness with the Light.
The world needs the prophetic voice of the church. The church is supposed to be a shining city on a hill (Matt 5:14). Our culture doesn’t know what to do with evil. Secular relativism has no categories for right and wrong. Everything becomes a matter of opinion. But relativism dies in moments like 9/11 and in moments like this week’s assassination. No one can look at towers collapsing or people murdered and call it neutral. We know it’s evil. After Charlie Kirk’s assassination I even saw (some) left-wing activists sobbing. And a biblical worldview tells us why. It tells us sin is real, human hearts are corrupt, hatred left unchecked leads to death, and something must be done about it. And it’s into that darkness Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” And you know what that is right there? That is cross-shaped love. Because the cross is what shows us what was done for it.
We love our enemies because this is how God loves us. (45)
“So that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”
Jesus gives the reason we can and should love our enemies: it is God’s character. God shows kindness even to those who hate Him. He gives sun and rain to all people — righteous and unrighteous alike. He sustains their lives, provides their food, gives them families, even when they rebel against Him. That’s what theologians call common grace. God shows mercy to His enemies every second of every day. And when His people love their enemies, they are showing that they belong to Him. They reflect His character. They demonstrate that they are children of their Father.
And this gets to the heart of the biblical worldview. The world talks about justice but cuts itself off from the Judge. It cries out for accountability but denies the Lawgiver. It wants mercy but it forgets the Source. But Scripture tells us why evil is evil and why justice matters. It tells us God has written His law on our hearts.
Romans 2:15 – They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.
That’s why all people know instinctively that 9/11 was evil, that assassination is evil, that murder is evil. And it also tells us something else: that while we were enemies, God loved us. Romans 5:10 says, “While we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.”
That is special grace. God loves His enemies. He loved you when you hated Him. He pursued you when you ran from Him. He forgave you when you denied Him. And if God has loved us like that, how can we do anything less? We love our enemies because this is how God has loved us.
Limited love looks no different than the world’s self-love. (46–47)
“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?”
Everyone loves those who love them back. Even the most corrupt tax collector loved his friends. Even the pagan greets his family. That’s not distinctive. Limited love is love that stops at the boundaries of friendship. And that’s what we see in our culture every day. Tribal love. Ideological love. Terrorists love their cause. Political radicals love their party. Criminals love their crew. But that’s not love in the kingdom sense. It’s self-love. It’s love that protects my tribe and despises everyone else.
Church, if our love looks no different than that, then what are we even doing? If we only love people who think like us, vote like us, worship like us, then we are no different than the terrorists of 9/11. We are no different than the radical extremist. And if we mirror the hatred and venom of our culture, then we have nothing distinctive to show. Jesus is saying our love must stand out. Kingdom love must be different than the love of the culture. I’m not saying we don’t call evil what it is. Light exposes darkness. But listen: it also points to the true source of the light.
Think about Charlie Kirk again. He stood on campuses across the country debating people who disagreed with him, sometimes who vehemently hated him. And he did it face to face. That’s rare in our culture. But also, he did something rare, whether you agreed with his politics or not, he was an ambassador for Christ, and he was your brother in Christ, and he would go on the frontlines proclaiming Christ.
Here are some of the words he gave under that same tent that day where he was assassinated: “It’s not just intrabiblical evidence, but extrabiblical evidence that Jesus Christ was a real person. He lived a perfect life, he was crucified, died and rose on the third day, and he is Lord and God over all.”
God so loved you, that the only perfect One was persecuted in your place. (48)
If you thought loving your enemy was impossible, Jesus ends this with an even more impossible command: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” That is the standard. Relative goodness isn’t the standard. Better-than-your-neighbor morality isn’t the standard. Good-in-your-own-eyes isn’t the standard. Perfection. That’s the standard. That’s what it takes to get to heaven. That’s it. As perfect as God.
Who can meet that? None of us. We fail at loving friends, let alone enemies. We fail at praying for neighbors, let alone persecutors. We fail at blessing those who agree with us, let alone those who hate us. Jesus sets the bar so high that we have to admit there’s no way we can reach it.
And that’s exactly the point. This verse drives us to the only One who is perfect. Jesus Christ lived the perfection we cannot. He loved His enemies perfectly. He prayed for His persecutors as they drove nails through His hands. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And then He took the punishment our imperfection deserved. He was the perfect Son persecuted in our place.
That is the heart of the gospel. God so loved you that He gave His Son to bear the hatred of the world so that you might receive the love of God. One, how could you not receive that love today? Two, how could you not show that love to even your worst enemies?
[1] Hughes, 141
