God Loves His Enemies

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the love of God from Matthew 5:43-47.

When I was a lad growing up, I am quite sure the best-known Bible verse in the Western world was John 3:16. Because this was quite a few decades ago, we knew it in the King James Version. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Advertise on TGC

Because I was brought up in both French and English (that’s the part of Canada I lived in), inevitably, I simultaneously learned, “Car Dieu a tant aimÈ le monde qu’il a donnÈ son Fils unique, afin que quiconque croit en lui ne pÈrisse point, mais qu’il ait la vie Èternelle.” So we were brought up with the King James Version on the one hand and the Louis Segond version on the other, and we were expected to learn them both in our family.

As the years have gone by, I’ve discovered sort of subtly with time the best known verse in the Western world is no longer John 3:16. I haven’t done a scientific survey here, but I’m dead sure I’m right. Moreover, the people who know the verse in question don’t know where it’s found. They don’t know the context, but they can all quote it. Do you have any idea what it is? “Judge not that you be not judged.” Nobody knows where it’s found, but everybody can quote it.

“Well, I don’t mind Christians. They’re all right. If they just weren’t so judgmental. Don’t they ever read their Bibles? The Bible says, ‘Judge not that you be not judged.’ ” That sort of settles the argument, whether it’s homosexuality or gambling or … you name it. It doesn’t matter what the ethical arena is, whether you’re talking about world religions or anything. Just, “Judge not that you be not judged.” That’s the sum total of contemporary Western Christian ethics in the mind of the media.

Mind you, it’s worth observing that a bare five verses farther on (that’s found in Matthew 7:1), Jesus says, “Don’t cast your pearls before swine,” which means somebody has to figure out who the pigs are. It’s very easy to rip texts out of context, and somehow in this whole area of the doctrine of the love of God, I think we are particularly prone to do so and from different sides.

I’ve taken a potshot at the broader culture, but in a few moments you will see it is possible to absolutize several different kinds of biblical texts and really play around with our theology in very detrimental ways simply by absolutizing one strand of biblical truth. So although I want to focus on this paragraph, Matthew 5:43 and following, I want to begin by a survey of two or three broader issues regarding the doctrine of the love of God then funnel into it narrowly and then open up again at the end to a broader application.

The first thing I want to say is the Bible speaks of God’s love in at least five distinct ways. We looked at one of them last night: the love of the Father for the Son and the love of the Son for the Father, what we might call the intra-Trinitarian love of God. Here there is no question of redemption. This is not a redeeming love. Then there is what might be called God’s providential love, his watch-care. It is, in one sense, amoral love.

That is to say, this text explicitly says God causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good. He sends his rain upon the just and upon the unjust. That is to say, he does not pour it out just on the faithful community or just upon the elect, still less on the elite of the elect, but he pours it out on just and unjust. All of God’s sovereignty is mediated now through Christ, who is the mediatorial King. He upholds all things through his powerful word, and this is ongoing. This is a function of his forbearing, providential love.

Then we may speak of God’s yearning, inviting, commanding salvific love. He is the God who cries, “Turn! Turn! Why will you die? The Lord has no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” He’s the God who can be portrayed as the cuckolded Almighty in Hosea, the husband who is betrayed by his wife. He is the God who invites us to come, who commands us to come, who wishes us to come, and the invitation is wide open.

On the other hand, in the fourth place, he is also the God who clearly has elective love; love that is directed at his own will, by his own choice, to certain people and not others. Sometimes these people are seen in large-scale connection, like Israel as a people, and sometimes to individuals, but nevertheless it is by God’s free sovereign choice.

Why does God choose Israel (Deuteronomy 7 and 10)? Because Israel is better or wiser or more intelligent or more colorful or more interesting? No. God sets his affection on her because he loves her. In short, he loves her because he loves her. Similar words are found, likewise, in John’s gospel and in Paul’s writings. They’re presupposed in countless places in the New Testament. Election is a function of God’s love.

Then sometimes God’s love, in the fifth place, is presented as conditioned by obedience. That is, his love is poured out in certain passages on the obedient. That’s presupposed in Jude, for example. “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” In the context, there is also warning. If you don’t act in certain ways, you won’t keep yourselves in the love of God. Read John 15. Again and again, the love that is mediated to us in Christ Jesus is conditioned by our obedience.

Or read the Decalogue itself, where we are told God pours out his favor on those who love him to the third and fourth generation. Now there are several mistakes we can make at this point. One mistake would be to absolutize any one of these ways of talking of God’s love and sort of domesticate the rest, bring all the rest under that one rubric. If you do that, you make absolute chaos of any Christian theology.

For example, suppose you absolutize the last one. Then God loves the good and hates the wicked. It’s as simple as that. You are lost in a quagmire of merit theology, looking at yourself to see if you’ve been good enough today to please God. How can you possibly have any confidence about getting into heaven considering all of the nasty things that are said about sinners? And so on. Do you see? There’s no end to that.

Then you can absolutize election. You can so absolutize election that every time you find any expression of God’s yearning invitation to the broader lost world or the rebellious people all around us, of which we were once a part, we can no longer be sincere in our evangelism. We don’t know what to do with passages like, “We were all by nature children of wrath.” We use our Calvinism somehow to stifle our evangelism. God help us. Historically, that is so ridiculous it’s embarrassing, but let’s be quite frank. It does happen amongst some of us sometimes.

We learn something of the doctrines of grace and then find we don’t know how to pray except, “Your will be done, amen,” and find we can’t evangelize except, “Well, if you’re one of the elect, you’ll believe.” We know there’s something wrong with that somewhere, and we can’t put our finger on it. Well, part of what we have done, I’m afraid, is absolutized what the Bible does truly say about election, so we’re not learning what else the Bible says.

We can absolutize God’s yearning, inviting love too. Then God has done all he can, poor chap. Now it all depends on you or on me or on trying harder. If we can just get people to tip over, then they’ll be in. He has done his bit; now it’s all up to us. That’s not exactly the picture of the Bible’s God either. Or if we have this God providing his providential watch-care over everything.… If you absolutize that, pretty soon you’re not far from some kind of pantheism. All religions are the same and all of nature is the same.

God becomes a genial granddaddy who has lost about three-quarters of his marbles and sort of exercises a beneficent watch over the world without power, without morality, without truth, but he’s sort of kind and nice and he smiles a lot and has a white, snowy beard. And so it goes. In fact, some people more recently have tried to absolutize the first one, the intra-Trinitarian love of God, so that we all become part of God by a certain understanding of theosis, of becoming divine.

They begin with 2 Peter: “We’ve become partakers of the divine nature,” then suddenly, the whole distinction between God and human beings is lost, and we all become part of this circle of love that begins with the Trinity and reaches outward. It is a mistake to fail to observe the different ways the Bible speaks of the love of God and to listen to them carefully in their respective contexts.

In this passage, Matthew 5, when the text speaks of God loving his enemies, this is not in the context of God loving his enemies with redeeming, transforming, electing love. There are texts that do speak in that way, but this is not one of them. This is a text, rather, which speaks of God sending his temporal blessings upon the just and the unjust equivalently. That is what the text says. In this context, the love of God is not redemptive.

The second warning to make once we observe these different ways of speaking of the love of God is that we must not over-characterize them. I identify these different ways, but you must not think that now God has five different loves and then he decides in a particular case, “Hmm, I think I’ll use love number three.” The whole thing becomes grotesque and mechanical. To say the Bible has different ways of speaking of the love of God is not the same as to say God has different loves that he switches on and off on a whim.

It is a reflection of the fact that although God is transcendent, above space and time, although he is sovereign, he is also personal, and a person interacts with other persons in different ways. Thus, I may truly say I love my wife. I may truly say I love my brother’s wife. I hope I don’t mean the same thing. I love woodworking. My wife certainly hopes I don’t mean the same thing. I love reading.

In each case, the object of the love means I’m thinking about love in slightly different ways. I cannot think of loving my wife apart from full conjugal relationships and all of the pressures and joys that belong to the family. I don’t think in those terms whatsoever when I’m talking about woodworking or even when I’m talking about loving my brother’s wife. Thus, I don’t start thinking, “Well, now I’m going to start talking about love for my wife, so I’ll turn on love number three.” That doesn’t make any sense.

What we must do, therefore, is listen very carefully to the ways the Bible has of speaking of God’s love and not try to read in every other text of love into that passage to draw out some inferences that may, in fact, contradict the text at hand. There is one final warning that must be given. We are now in a position to think about some evangelical clichÈs we often hear and sometimes, I’m sure, repeat.

“God loves everybody the same way.” Careful now. If by that you mean to overthrow election, that’s a false statement. On the other hand, in passages like this one, where God sends his love and, thus, his rain and sun upon the just and the unjust, in this context that is precisely what is said. But it is most definitely not what is said in Malachi 1, where God says, “Jacob have I loved but Esau have I hated.” It’s most definitely not what is being said in Romans, chapter 9. It depends on the context.

“God loves us unconditionally.” Careful now. True or false? Well, it depends on the context. There is a sense in which God’s love for his elect is unconditional and will be fulfilled completely at the end. There is no way that God has made a mistake here and is going to withdraw his grace in his love for the elect. It is unconditional. On the other hand, the last kind of love of which I have spoken is specifically conditional.

Many of the Old Testament passages tie God’s love to specific conditions of obedience, not least the Decalogue but also, as we’ve seen under the terms of the new covenant, John 15 and Jude and elsewhere. That’s not so hard to understand, is it? After all, I have two children. I would like to think my love for them is, in some level, unconditional. I don’t want it tested, but I would like to think so.

So if my son, all six-foot-two of him … a great big, buff chap … suddenly decided to start selling drugs on the streets of Chicago, or if my daughter, who is at university in Ithaca, New York, decided to move to the Big Apple and become a hooker, I would like to think my love for them would still be unconditional.

They will always be my children. I would like to think that no matter what they do, no matter what the circumstances, I will always love my favorite daughter and my favorite son. (I have one favorite wife, one favorite daughter, and one favorite son, acquired in that order.)

On the other hand, if I say to my son who’s about to leave home, “Nicholas, I want you to have the car in by midnight tonight, please,” and he says, “Sure, Dad,” and then doesn’t show up until 12:30 and has no jolly good reason, he will face the wrath of Dad, and it will be no use whatsoever for him to turn around and say, “Yeah, but Dad, I thought your love for me was unconditional.” That will just gain extra sanction for sass.

There are different contexts in a family relationship where it is appropriate to speak of unconditional love and it is appropriate also to speak of conditional love. So the Bible speaks of God’s elective love from before the foundation of the earth, bound up with the mind of God, as certain, as sure as all of God’s promises in Christ Jesus, and it can also speak of temporal judgments, which God as the heavenly Father certainly imposes upon us in sanction and righteous indignation.

Moreover, the last warning. It is also very important not to think that God’s love, however it is described, is turned on or off so that he has space for other attributes. We are sometimes in danger of flirting with that position without recognizing it. God is never anything other than a loving God. He is never anything other than a holy God. He is never anything other than a just God. He is never anything other than a merciful God.

But the way all of his perfections, which are always operative, work out in the dynamic of his interchange with his people can vary a great deal. There is no fundamental reason why God cannot be loving toward us and wrathful toward us in the same moment, precisely because he is a holy God and his holiness will react in wrath against sin. We know that too even as parents, do we not? It’s a little harder for us there.

Sometimes we get so angry or upset with our kids we’re on the edge of forgetting that we love them just so we can clobber them properly. On the other hand, even in our best moments as parents, we know that sometimes there is a place for wrath to be displayed even while deep down we love them. What God never does is display wrath because he loses it. God’s wrath is never bad-tempered. Not ever. It is always principled.

It is in this sense that God is not subject to emotions. It is not that he has no love. It’s not that he feels nothing. It is that he is never controlled by his emotions. He always works out of the perfection of all of his perfections. He can never be less than perfect, and therefore he never falls in love and he never loses his temper. He is always principled. As we grow in conformity to Christ, there are ways in which these sorts of things must be seen in our lives as well.

Now all of this is merely prolegomenon, but in my judgment it is important prolegomenon today because there is so much in our culture that is trying to squeeze all notions of love into one or two narrow categories and, therefore, cannot listen to the multiplicity of biblical texts that teach us to listen to each text carefully. If I had time, I would also show you that the Bible speaks of Christian love in different ways too, and at the very end I will come to one small part of that question. I’ll float it now, and then at the very end I’ll come to it again.

On the one hand, the Bible clearly tells us to love one another as Christians. On the other hand, we’re to love our enemies. What is the relationship between love for enemies, which is commanded, and love for one another as Christians? Sometimes our Christian friends are our enemies, but we’ll let that difficulty pass. What is the relationship between those two? We’ll come to that at the end.

Now we should focus a little more narrowly on this text. What I propose to do is to read this text first against the background of the Sermon on the Mount, then to read it against the background of the first and second great commandments (after all, the words quoted here, “Love your neighbor,” are, in fact, the words Jesus also quotes for the second commandment), and then to look at the paragraph itself very closely, to think our way through it, and then finally we’ll apply it to our lives and ministries today.

1. Loving our enemies in the context of the Sermon on the Mount.

I took the time to read all of verses 17 to the end of the chapter because it’s worth reminding ourselves that verses 17–20 become a kind of controlling introduction to what follows, and what follows are six antitheses. They’re called six antitheses because each one is shaped the same way. “You have heard that it was said … but I say. You have heard that it was said … but I say.”

In three of them, what you have heard is simply Scripture. In three of them, you have heard and then they have mucked up Scripture. The last one is one of those. “You have heard, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ” Nowhere does the Scripture simply tell us to hate your enemy. So in one sense, what they’ve heard is a little bit mistaken. But in every case, there is an antithesis. “What you have heard, and now what I say.”

All six of these antitheses are placed under the introductory paragraph in verses 17–20. I don’t have time to unpack that paragraph at length, but I want to draw your attention to one very important part of it. Verse 17 begins, “Do not think that I have come to [destroy] the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to [destroy] them but to fulfill them.”

Here, too, there is a kind of antithesis. “Don’t think that I’ve come to do this. I haven’t come to do this; I’ve come to do that.” Because of the nature of this contrast, we sometimes try to think of a meaning for fulfill that will be the simple opposite of abolish. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law. I haven’t come to abolish; I’ve come to do the opposite,” which is … keep? Maintain? Find the deeper pattern of? Obey perfectly myself?

Do you see what the problem is? As soon as you try to understand fulfill by looking for the opposite of abolish, you’re into a whole lot of choices, all of which have been used by some interpreter or other in the history of the interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. But if I’m not mistaken, the verb to fulfill in Matthew, that is used 20-odd times, always has the same force.

It’s used a great deal in Matthew, and it always has to do with the accomplishment of something predicted, the bringing to pass of what has been predicted, which means Jesus’ thought is running something like this: “Do not think that I have come to abolish. That’s not why I’m here. I haven’t come to destroy anything. I’ve not come to abolish it; I’ve come to be and to teach that which it predicts. I have come to fulfill it.”

We’re already used to this notion of fulfillment of law in certain respects. Think of the laws regarding the priesthood. Think of the laws regarding the temple. Think of the laws regarding the sacrifices on Yom Kippur. Do we not say that Christ fulfills the law? What we mean by that is that these institutions, these instructions, these religious rites, which were commanded as part of the Mosaic covenant.… They were taught and they were the obligation of God’s faithful people for as long as they were under the law covenant.

Nevertheless, in the stream of redemptive history they had a predictive role as well. They pointed forward to something. Now all of the reasons for justifying this from the Old Testament text it would take me too long to unpack, but there are many reasons within the Old Testament text itself for understanding that these laws were not only lex (that is, legal demand); they were also, in one sense, prophecies, predictions, anticipations … types, if you like … of that which was to come.

Thus, when Jesus does come as the Lamb of God, the temple, the High Priest, the Day of Atonement, the Passover, we say, “Christ has fulfilled the law.” We recall Paul’s word, “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us,” and so forth. We read our epistle to the Hebrews, and we think these things through and gain some glimpse of how the Old Testament legal structure actually anticipates the new. Isn’t that what we do?

In some ways, in ceremonial realms, that’s also true. The locus of the people of God in the old covenant was a nation. The locus of the people of God under the new covenant is not a nation; it’s an international community, the church. Nevertheless, we are a nation, if you like (stretching the word a bit), a nation of priests under one God. Our citizenship is already in heaven. We find ourselves in some kind of tension because we’re in American citizenship and in kingdom of God citizenship.

These tensions will be with us until Christ returns and our inaugurated eschatology has been fulfilled eschatology, accomplished eschatology, consummated eschatology. So we understand that in those realms as well, the laws insisting on justice and discipline and so forth that were bound up with the nation are worked out in various ways in the very nature of the church’s life. So also in these laws too. There is a sense in which these laws about murder and adultery and so forth also point forward.

Jesus does not come along to abolish them. That’s not the point. He comes to show the true direction in which they point, and in the antitheses we begin to see a pattern. “Do not think that I have come to abolish. For example, I haven’t come to abolish the law of murder. Oh no. The law that prohibits murder is ultimately pointing in the direction of such a transformed society in the consummated kingdom that there will not even be hate. That’s the direction in which they’re pointing, and I have come to fulfill them,” Jesus says.

Within that framework, then, there is in reality a kind of intensifying, but intensifying isn’t quite the right word. It doesn’t work exactly, for example, with the matter of oaths. It’s not quite intensifying. It’s rather pointing in the direction of something. It’s pointing in the direction of truth-telling. Consider the oaths, for example.

Verse 33: “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’ But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’ …”

Of course, in consequence of this, there are various groups that refuse to put their hands on a Bible in a court of law and swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help them God. They say this would be breaking one of the tenets of their religion. They must simply say, “Yes, I will tell the truth” or “No, I will not tell the truth.” But has that really quite captured what Jesus is after here?

The point is that in Jesus’ day, some people were listening to the Old Testament texts very carefully and observing, for example, that in Deuteronomy 6 we’re actually told to make sure we make our oaths in the Lord’s name. Do you remember the passage? It’s quite wonderful. “Construct your oaths in the Lord’s name.” Why? Because you swear by that which you judge to be most important.

That’s why an atheist will say, “I swear on my mother’s grave” or “I swear by the breath of my children.” They don’t have a god to swear by, so they have to swear by something they think is important. Well, in ancient Israel it was very important that the children of God swear by the Lord, because otherwise they might be swearing by one of the Baalim. They might be swearing by Asherah up the street.

It was very important, therefore, to swear by that which was most important. “I give my solemn oath in the name of Yahweh.” Then from this came a whole lot of casuistry. “Well, swearing by the Lord, clearly that’s binding. How about swearing by the Lord’s temple? Is that binding? How about swearing by the altar in the Lord’s temple? Is that binding? How about swearing by the gold on the altar? Is that binding? How about swearing by the sacrifice that is laid on the gold on the altar? Is that binding?” It’s all there in the Jewish literature; you can read it for yourself.

Thus, there are degrees of holiness that are part of an attempt to understand the legal workings out of this law. So suddenly, to swear by Jerusalem is not binding, but if you swear when you’re facing toward Jerusalem, then it is binding. To swear by the altar is binding; to swear by the sacrifice on the altar is not binding. You can find more of this in Matthew 23 where the same question recurs.

At that point, Jesus says, “No, don’t you understand? The command to swear oaths is pointing in the direction of truth-telling, absolute reliability, and if all you’re going to do is take the command to swear certain oaths, even in the Lord’s name, and make a casuistic system out of it as a way of defending evasive lying, then I tell you let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ Whatever more comes from sin.”

To argue that the passage goes beyond this and is abolishing all court laws or the like is simply nonsensical. It is not listening very closely to the text. Avoid the casuistry that justifies deceit, deception, lying. That’s the direction in which the command points.

2. Loving our enemies in the context of the first and second great commandments.

Now then, let me come more closely to the text itself. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor.’ ” We could look at this passage in several parts of the New Testament. I’m going to invite you to turn for a few moments to Mark 12, beginning at verse 28. We could look at the parallel in Matthew or elsewhere, but we need to put this command, “Love your neighbor,” in the context in which Jesus himself most dramatically puts it.

Mark 12:28: “One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, ‘Of all the commandments, which is the most important?’ ” Any complex judicial system will bring up situations where you have to elevate one law above another. Jesus himself points this out, for example, with respect to the Sabbath in John, chapter 7.

He says, “According to the Sabbath law, you must not work on the seventh day. According to the circumcision law, the priest must circumcise the male child on the eighth day. That’s part of the priest’s work. Supposing now the eighth day on the circumcision cycle falls on the Sabbath. Do you circumcise the child or no?” That’s Jesus who raises that question, not me. Don’t look at me.

What Jesus says is, “Yes, you do circumcise him, because circumcision takes a certain precedence over Sabbath law in this respect.” Now there are reasons for that, but nevertheless, in any complex system of law, sooner or later you’re forced to recognize that one law will take precedence over another where they clash. There are three or four major examples like that in the teaching of Jesus.

That inevitably reflects also what the Jews were asking about. If you start saying one law takes precedence over another, must you not ultimately ask the question, “Okay, which one is the most important of all?” That’s the question. Jesus doesn’t say, “Oh, it’s all from God. Just don’t think about those matters. It’s quibbling. It’s casuistry.” No, he gives his answer.

Verse 29: “ ‘The most important one,’ answered Jesus, ‘is this: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” The second is this: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no commandment greater than these.’ ” I would love to unpack this at length, and I don’t have time, but I do want to make several points from these verses before we come back to Matthew 5.

A) The command that Jesus himself here gives is drawn from Deuteronomy 6.

It’s the Shema. This Shema is still quoted by conservative, reverent Jews twice daily even to this day. It is worth remembering what that text says in its context. In this context, Moses is warning the people of what will come after his departure. He writes:

“These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.

Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, promised you. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

Notice, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is one.” This prefaces the commandment. Why? What does it have to do with anything? You will only see that it has something crucial to do with it if you understand the contrast with paganism. In pagan thought, gods occupy certain domains. In the Greek world, for example, there’s a god of the sea, so if you’re going to make a sea voyage, you want to offer a sacrifice to Neptune.

In the Latin world, Mercury (in the Greek world, a corresponding god) is the god of communication, so if you’re going to give a speech, you want Mercury to be on side. If you’re going to war you want Jupiter to be on side, or Zeus in the Greek world. The gods occupy certain domains, and because they occupy certain domains, you can’t give full allegiance to any one of them. It all depends on what you’re after. In fact, some of them [inaudible] erect an altar to an unknown god (Acts 17), just in case one got left out and had his feelings hurt.

But supposing there’s only one God. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord your God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.” You cannot do that unless the Lord is one. Pagans could say, “There is one god.” They could not say, “The Lord is one.” Pagans could say there’s one god because in many forms of paganism there is a kind of pantheism that underlies it.

In the ancient Greek pagan literature they vacillate between god in the singular or gods in the plural because there’s a kind of godness that underlies all of reality, and then this godness that underlies all of reality is bound up with reality, so certainly there’s a finite god. So they can say that there’s one god, but that one god is not personal.

The personal gods are all finite. They could not say that God is one. But that’s what the Bible says. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord your God, the Lord is one.” So all of your devotion, all of your allegiance, all of your obedience, all of your faithfulness, all of your adoration must be tied up with this one God, and anything else is idolatry.

B) The particular phrases that are used can be slightly misleading in the English translation.

Depending on the text, there are three or four of them. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart.” What does that mean? If a young man says to a young woman, “I love you with all my heart,” what does he mean?

Well, for us the heart is a symbol of emotion. “I love you with all my heart.” But in biblical physiognomy, that’s not the way it is. The heart is the seat of your personality. It’s not far removed from what we mean by mind, because the mind is cerebral. It’s the seat of your whole personality.

You are to love the Lord your God with all that you think and cherish and hold dear and your whole self-identity, something like that. In the biblical world, the part of the physiognomy that symbolized emotions was your gut or your kidneys. So in the older English versions, like the King James Version, you hear of reins (kidneys), les reins in French. “I love you with all my kidneys.” You speak of bowels of compassion. In our world that’s vaguely indecent.

That’s because in the physiognomy of the day, your emotions are about here, and this is the seat of your personality … about here. So when the text says you are to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, it is not saying with all of your emotions; it is saying with your whole personality. Then it says with all your mind. What on earth does it mean to love the Lord your God with all your mind? And then there are two intensifiers. “With all of your strength and with all of your soul.” With your whole being.

So the thrust of the whole thing is not to love God with your emotions abstracted from everything else. “So long as you just love God with your emotions everything is all right. It doesn’t matter what you think. Don’t worry about theology. Love God with your emotions. That’s what Jesus said, isn’t it?” But it really isn’t. We’re to love God with our whole being, our whole personality, our whole strength, whole being to whole being, because he is one and we are made in his image.

Within that framework, we begin to understand where the root of sin is. The root of sin is idolatry. It is the de-Godding of God. That is why Paul argues so strongly that even before the law is introduced men and women die. We’re still guilty even though we have not transgressed a whole lot of specific commandments because we are all idolaters. We have all defied God. We have put self at the heart of things. Isn’t that part of the original temptation? “God knows that you will become like God.”

What is it in the Old Testament that angers God more than anything else? What is it about which he is said to be jealous? It is idolatry, anything that overthrows God, that dethrones God, that de-Gods God. He is a jealous God, because he alone is God. Sometimes when we try to show the relevance of moral law to our larger world we forget this. We try to show that if we have decent families we’ll build a decent society. We talk about honor and integrity. Then you can have business deals on a handshake instead of 50,000 lawyers for every engineer.

So what we want is morality so we can build a nice culture. Isn’t that right? But that’s not the biblical perspective at all. The biblical perspective is your morality flows out of your god, and if you have false gods, then you become as detestable as the gods you worship, according to the Minor Prophets.

The first sin is to break the first commandment. The first commandment is to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength. The first sin is not to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength. It is to fall into idolatry. It is the one sin you always commit when you commit any other sin. It is the first sin.

The second commandment, we’re told, is to love your neighbor as yourself. Now in Deuteronomy 6, when we’re told to love God, there the whole context takes us through the importance of passing on the teachings of God to our children and that part of loving God is making sure you observe all [inaudible]. “The Lord our God is one.” In Leviticus 19, where the command to love God is quoted, it’s a slightly different pattern, and it’s very interesting.

It’s tied so closely to Deuteronomy 6 once you see it. In Leviticus 19, you find all kinds of explicit commands of one sort or another. “Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another.” But also, “Do not defraud your neighbor. Do not hold back the wages of a hired man. Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind. Do not pervert justice. Do not go about spreading slander among your people. Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life,” and on and on and on.

What’s striking about that passage is the reason given in text after text after text. “Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the Lord your God.” “Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.” “Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the Lord.” “Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the Lord.” Again and again, “I am the Lord. I am the Lord. I am the Lord.”

The second command is tied to the first command. The first command is there is only one God, and you are to love him with heart and soul and mind and strength, and then because he is the Lord, if we can love him with heart and soul and mind and strength then, of course, we will act with respect to each other because it is idolatry to think [inaudible].

How can we? We’ve already died to self so that we may glorify God supremely, and he commands us, then, to also [inaudible] with respect to our enemies. Isn’t that why we’re told, “Love your neighbor as yourself”? Look at the specific text itself. It’s most revealing in this regard. Leviticus 19:18: “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.”

3. Loving our enemies in the context of Matthew 5

At last we come to Matthew 5. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ” There is no text that says, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy,” but there are texts, as we shall see in a few moments, that do have God hating people and where righteous people are said to hate people. Does not David say, “Do not I hate them with a perfect hatred, O God”? So before you condemn the Jews and their interpretation, we better remember this. I’ll come back to that in just a moment.

Still, there is no text that overtly says, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” Rather, it came out of the fact that clearly, in some instances, there was a hate that was forbidden, a certain kind of wrath that we’ll come to in a moment, and the text does say, “Love your neighbor,” which raises the question, “Who is my neighbor?” [Inaudible] … imagine how the thing gets going, and eventually you find one or two sources in Qumran that actually do suggest it’s all right to hate your enemy. “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”

But Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons 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 brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

The context of Leviticus 19 must be borne in mind. Just as when Jesus says, “Love the Lord your God” you have to bear the context of Deuteronomy 6 in mind, so also when he says, “Love your neighbor as yourself” you have to bear that context in mind too. Jesus expects those who hear him to be biblically literate. In the context of Leviticus 19, the issue is entirely personal vengefulness. That’s what the text says. Leviticus 19:18: “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.”

The issue is not whether public justice is mandated. It wasn’t the case in Leviticus. It wasn’t the case in the Pentateuch. Where there was a public sin that demanded public punishment there was public punishment. When Achan sins, likewise there is judgment that falls. There was no point with Achan saying, “Yes, yes, yes, but didn’t you say, ‘Love your neighbor’?” This is not impinging in the area of justice. It is impinging on the area of personal vengefulness.

That is also true of the preceding paragraph. The “eye for an eye” language in the Old Testament was bound up with public justice. It is ruthlessly just. If somebody maliciously takes out someone’s eye, it is ruthlessly and effectively just to take out his eye. This stops any possibility of feuding and it is ruthlessly just, but that doesn’t warrant vengefulness or a vendetta or an individual taking these matters into his hands. Those laws about an eye for an eye were given for the courts of Israel. It was part of the public justice system.

If, instead, this now becomes a warrant for endless vengefulness, endless bitterness, there is no end except the kind of bitterness you see in Northern Ireland or the Balkans or the Middle East, where each side will always read the other side’s actions and motives as the reason for their own viciousness. Always. There is no end. At that point, it is important to remember that God, in his great mercy, sends his sun and his rain upon the just and upon the unjust.

This is not talking here about how God goes after his people. There are a lot of texts that do that, but that’s not what the issue is here. God, in one of the displays of his love, in one of the ways the Bible speaks, pours out sun and rain on the wheat fields of Russia and on the wheat fields of China and on the wheat fields of America. He does it upon nice farmers and upon nasty farmers. He does it upon good people and upon bad people.

This is not a mark of his immorality; it’s a mark of his gracious care even for those who shake their puny fists in his face and sing with Frank Sinatra, “I did it my way.” He is that kind of gracious God. So the question becomes.… Where, then, in our relationships do we display the character of God toward those who dislike us so evenhandedly without bitterness?

That does not mean there’s no place for discipline in the church. That’s another issue. But where it’s not a question of public discipline in the church or public discipline in society, then there is no place for the kind of personal vendetta, the personal vengefulness that keeps scorecards and bitterness and has an inside group and an outside group. After all, even pagans have their own inside group. Even tax collectors, who were disliked far more than our IRS …

They were disliked because they were tax farmers, and the whole system was massively corrupt. In addition, they often had contact with Gentiles, so they were ritually unclean. They were really loathed, but they could always have parties, at least with other tax collectors. Thus, amongst us we are not to be given to partiality. We are not to be given to bitterness or revenge … not ever … because we serve a God who loves his enemies and can pour out his sun and his rain upon just and unjust alike.

There is a sense, therefore, in which our relationships must transcend the petty claims of whether somebody likes us or not. Isn’t that one of the hardest things in the ministry? The people in our church who think we’re wonderful.… It’s easy to be very kind to them. The people who think we’re really awful.… It’s not easy to be kind to them, but that’s what simple faithfulness to this command requires, because we serve a God who loves his enemies as he loves his friends, in this respect.

This means, brothers and sisters in Christ, that such love will be manifested not least in prayer (verse 44). It is difficult to hate those for whom you pray. It is difficult for the Christian not to pray for those whom you love, so this becomes a test. This, too, is mirrored ultimately in the Lord Jesus on the cross, where he prays for his enemies. What conceivable pain or arrogance, what conceivable sloth or coldness or bitterness can justify our resentments and our prayerlessness with respect to those who really do not like us?

This is true not only of the little enemies who irritate us but those who actually go so far as to persecute us (verse 44), but in this matter of persecution it doesn’t have to be persecution as in the southern Sudan. After all, Jesus has already said earlier in this chapter that some persecution merely takes the form of a nasty tongue. Do you recall verses 11 and 12? “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad.”

The persecution may be merely the nasty kind of stuff that you face quite regularly in most local churches. It doesn’t have to be the bitter stuff that brings jail sentences and torture and the like. That is how we are to respond. Again and again in the New Testament this is picked up in various ways. First Thessalonians 5:15; Romans 12:17; 1 Peter 3:9 … All of these texts say, “Make sure no one pays back wrong for wrong, evil for evil.” That’s the idea.

Notice very carefully the one in Romans 12:17. “Make sure that no one pays back evil for evil, because God himself says, ‘It is mine to repay. Then the very next chapter begins with the importance of the sword of the state. [Inaudible] In fact, if you were reading the text of Romans, you would read the end of chapter 12 and go right into chapter 13. Then it becomes very clear.

Not paying back evil for evil, remembering that the Lord is finally judge, leaving vengeance ultimately to his justice, ends this personal vendetta section at the end of chapter 12, and this God who is just has then also ordained the sword of the state to effect justice. In other words, it’s not leading the command to love your enemies or not to pay back evil for evil into the realm of a kind of sentimental pacific notion that means there is no place to surrender what we already stated.

Now then, I have spent so much time on explanation that the text is in danger of losing its bite, so let me summarize very quickly with some application.

A) The Old Testament context and the New Testament repeated contexts show that the issue is vengefulness, bitterness.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, far from excusing us, that means we need to search our own hearts. This is not something to be feared, however difficult it may be. It is merely one more part of Christian discipleship.

B) It must, nevertheless, be acknowledged that this is not the only passage that depicts God’s stance toward his enemies.

After all, some texts in the Old Testament speak of God being very wrathful against his enemies and even hating liars and the like, and likewise in the New Testament. Read the end of Revelation 14 and remind yourself that God’s stance toward his enemies is not always neutral or beneficent.

It issues finally in the great winepress of God’s wrath in which people are stamped out in that press until their blood rises to the height of a horse’s bridle for a distance of about 200 miles. It has to be said that in the Old Testament sometimes believers themselves take God’s stance in exactly the same way. “Do not I hate them with a perfect hatred?” Or Paul says, “I have cast certain people over to Satan so that they may learn not to blaspheme.”

So the question becomes this.… Can we preserve likewise, by his grace, as his disciples and his sons, a genuine lack of partiality, a genuine freedom from bitterness, a genuine love for other people, while still, when it is required, turning people over to Satan so they can learn not to blaspheme? God doesn’t turn his love on and off with different switches. All of his perfection is operating all the time.

There is a sense in which Christian ethics must be the same way. We do not say, “Well, in this case I really don’t have to love them, because this is a case of church discipline.” No, this may be a case of church discipline, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to love them. It may not be a case of church discipline and you still have to love them, because to act in such principled ways is to reflect something of the glories of God himself.

C) This is not a higher form of love, this loving of enemies, as many contemporary critics say.

I don’t know how many contemporary commentators and critics I’ve read say, “Well, Jesus taught us to love our enemies. By the time you read 1 John, you’re just supposed to love one another. It doesn’t say anything about loving your enemies.” How do you answer that?

We’ve been brainwashed into thinking that loving your enemies is the supreme virtue, but if that’s the case, then you cannot [inaudible] with intra-Trinitarian love. Do you really want to say that God’s love for his enemies that brings him to the cross is created in the Father’s love for the Son … or is better than? In fact, the whole thrust of the passage we studied last night was that it is precisely the intra-Trinitarian love of God that is the fount of all of God’s redemptive purposes in history.

Likewise, the fact that there is supposed to be a special absorbing, healing, mutually endorsing, loving, forgiving, forbearing, rich love of brothers and sisters in Christ, in Christ Jesus, that is made finally on God himself does not mean, therefore, that somehow love for enemies is a higher love than that or exactly the same as that.

There are different domains in which we speak. Interestingly, in a passage I eventually left out last night for want of time, it is God’s Trinitarian love that is tied to Christian love. Do you recall the words at the end of John 17? “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” If you ever start thinking that genuine Christian love in the church is somehow inferior to love for enemies, you insult the triune God.

Finally, even after all of these things have been said, even after all of these matters are put in place, just to get the balance of biblical teaching right, let us be clear …

D) What is demanded here is not easy.

It can be achieved only by grace, loving obstreperous family members, obstreperous church members, sometimes active opposition that is really vile. Do you know the biggest problem on most mission fields? Missionary relationships, certain neighbors that are really obstreperous with their loud music or their gross tastes or whatever.

Even in the realm of evangelism this is where we find ourselves today, is it not? In the early church, the church was perceived to be on the front end of social transformation. At the end of the second century, for example, the great Tertullian, when the church is going through massive persecution, writes to the emperor and says, “Do you not know that we Christians are feeding not only all of our own people but half the empire as well?”

The Christians were self-sacrificing and giving, so Christians were widely perceived to be on the front end of social reform. Today, because the church is in decline and the nation is moving in moral directions away from the heritage of the gospel, we are perceived to be on the back end of social transformation.

So rightly or wrongly, how we talk about homosexuals is as important as what we say, because if we are perceived merely to be hating all of the people we disagree with, we do not present the fact that God stands over against every nation in judgment, but he also stands over against us in love and commands us to come.

We must never, ever take the stance that somehow, because I dislike this particular social grouping, when it’s admitted sin, biblically condemned sin, that I have the right to be mean-spirited or nasty to them. Where does love of neighbor come in there? And this even for evangelistic purposes.

To be able to say something is wrong, something is evil, something will face the judgment of God, and say it with tears in your eyes and a catch in your throat is fundamental to the obedience to this command, as it is fundamental to evangelism. Otherwise, we come across merely as angry young men … that’s all … on the tail end of social transformation and bring the very character of God to disrepute while we think we’re standing up for morals.

Do not flinch on moral issues, but beg God for the compassion to deal with moral issues not only with courage but with the most profound compassion. People must believe that you love them, even while you disagree with them. Does the name Tim Keller mean anything to you? Tim Keller is a Presbyterian pastor in New York City. He’s Reformed, a good man, and has exercised a wonderful ministry in the great borough of Manhattan.

He has seen several thousand people come to know the Lord in the life of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in the last 20 years or so and planted another 10 to 12 churches. Manhattan is not a place with a lot of crypto-Presbyterians just waiting to be found. This is conversion growth. One of the things I like about Tim is he is extremely capable in getting across what sin is to modern biblical-illiterate postmodernists. He really does a very good job of getting what sin is across to people.

The last time I saw him, a couple of years ago.… In fact, it was 11 days before the towers came down. I was at Princeton and took the train to New York City, and we spent some time together. I know he always has at least one evangelistic Bible study running through Mark or something that he runs himself. He doesn’t want to get so far removed from talking with people that he becomes sort of the senior pastor and a long way away, so he always has one evangelistic group that he’s running himself.

So I said to him, “Tim, tell me about your evangelistic group this time.” He said, “Oh, I have 12 lesbians.” I said, “Well, that’s great. Obviously, they know what you think, don’t they?” “Oh yeah, they know what I think, but they trust me. They trust me to treat them with respect.”