Love Your Enemy (Matthew 5:43-48) 43"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your

neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those
who persecute you, 45that 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. 46If you
love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing
that? 47And 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.”

Salam 1Malaysia! We are continuing a series of sermons based on the Sermon on the
Mount where Jesus spells out what it is like living as the people of God’s Kingdom, what
it means to be a community that follows after Jesus as their King. He is challenging the
kind of empty religion that looks good on the outside but is corrupted on the inside. Many
people think, “I’m morally okay since I’m not a serial killer or I don’t sleep with
someone else’s wife. When I swear in God’s name, I don’t break my oath. I’m basically
quite a good person lah.” But Jesus goes deeper than the outward, external action. He
zooms in to our inner hearts, our hidden motives and secret intentions. “No, that’s not
good enough. You have heard that it was said that… But I tell you this…”

You should not commit murder in your heart with hatred. It is a sin to commit adultery in
your heart with lust. Your word is your bond. Tell the truth in what you say. Don’t need
to swear at all.

Again we see how radical Jesus’ message was to his original audience and to us today.
He is not abolishing the Old Testament Law by lowering the standard. Instead He is
fulfilling the purpose of the Law by going to the root of the problem. Sin must be dealt
with radically in our heart. And this is the “righteousness that surpasses that of the
Pharisees and the teachers of the law”. It’s not just following the letter of the law, but
also keeping the spirit of the law. It is obedience that comes from the inside out.

In the passage we read just now, Jesus does the same thing again. You see, the
commandment to love your neighbor as yourself is not something new. It’s also found in
the Old Testament. In Leviticus 19:18, it says, “'Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge
against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.” But as time went by, the
people in Israel began to limit love only to their fellow Israelites. Who is my neighbor?
Only my own people. My relatives. Those who share my race and religion. So I’d love
them exclusively. The rest are not my neighbors so I can hate them. Some folks (like the
Qumran community famous for the Dead Sea Scrolls) would go around saying, 'Love
your neighbor and hate your enemy'. But they heard it wrong. The part on ‘hating your
enemy’ was not there in the biblical text.

So Jesus sets the record straight: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute
you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.” In that famous parable we call “The
Good Samaritan,” an expert of the Law asked Jesus this very question: “Who is my
neighbor?” Then Jesus told him this parable which most of us know by heart: “A man
was robbed, stripped, beaten and left half dead. A priest happened to walk past, and when

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he saw the man, he quickly moved on. Then a Levite who works for the temple saw him
but ignored his needs as well. Lastly, a Samaritan stopped and took pity on him. He took
care of him and paid for his medical fees. Now who is a neighbor to that victim?”

In those days, the Jews did not associate with the Samaritans due to many racial, religious
and political reasons. Hmm… If that sounds strangely familiar to us in Malaysia, it’s
because we too have different ethnic and religious groups living side by side with each
other but with precious little contact and understanding in between. By telling the
parable, Jesus subversively expanded the definition of a ‘neighbor’ to go beyond friends
and families and include even the Samaritans. A neighbor is anyone in need whom you
can help.

So He broke down the walls of hate by including even outsiders as a neighbor to be loved
as well. Instead of rejecting sinners, prostitutes and tax collectors, He ate with them in
fellowship meals. This is how the Kingdom of God looks like. To those who think “I’m a
loving person. I love my own people”, Jesus says “Your love is too narrow. It’s selective
on who you want to love. Don’t pick and choose. Love your enemies also.”

But it’s so hard, almost impossible to love our enemies, right? Pray for those who
persecute me? Are you serious? This is something that I struggle to learn as well.

On a personal level, there are people who purposely hurt us or anger us for no good
reason. Some play office politics and give us an unfair deal. How can I love someone
who offended me, betrayed me, insulted me and broke relationship with me? Do you
know someone like that?

In certain societies, the decision to follow Jesus may mean losing your job, your loved
ones and even your life. Persecution is the cost of discipleship. Although in Malaysia, it
has not come to the point of martyrdom, we still experience milder forms of persecution
like the destruction of church buildings, the ban on the word ‘Allah’ in our Bahasa
literature, restrictions on the liberty of conscience for some Malaysians and so on.
Sometimes persecution can come in the form of the insults, ridicule, false accusations and
gossips.

So how should we respond when we experience things like that?

Do you remember that Star Wars movie called “Return of the Jedi”? I watched it as a kid
and one of Soo Inn’s ecommentary uses it as a helpful analogy. In the movie, the hero
Luke Skywalker tried to avoid fighting the bad guy Darth Vader, who was also his own
father. But when Darth Vader threatened to turn Luke's sister to the Dark Side, Luke went
crazy and chopped off Vader's mechanical right hand. Then the evil emperor, who was
observing this duel, made a tempting offer: "Good! Your hate has made you powerful.
Now, fulfill your destiny and take your father's place at my side!" (Finish him off!)

And the evil emperor is right – there is a kind of power that comes with fear, anger and
hate. To those who have a tidak-apa attitude when it comes to suffering or injustice in the

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world, they may never get angry at anything. And if we are too engrossed with the
comforts of life to care much for the suffering around us, then probably we need to be
more concerned about what God cares about and be more aware of what’s happening out
there.

But for some of us who care deeply about social justice, poverty, human rights… it is
often easy to get angry, depressed and furious at unjust things happening in our country
especially when those responsible often don’t pay for what they have done. And it’s
tempting to surrender ourselves to rage and hatred. At first, our righteous anger is
directed against real injustice… That righteous anger gives us motivation and power to
fight evil. But when we are angry, it can also quickly lead to unrighteous anger and
careless decisions… Soon we draw the line between good and evil along the lines of us
against them… of one race against another (we are the good guys, they are the bad guys)
when in reality, the line of good and evil cuts across every human heart. When hatred and
anger consumes us, we are drawn towards the Dark side.

At the climax of that Star Wars movie, young Luke Skywalker refuses to choose the dark
side. He refused to deliver the final blow. Instead, he threw away his light saber and
chose to suffer and die for being true to the Light. Yet it is his very "weakness" that
inspires his father Darth Vader himself to love once again and to reject the dark side in
his final moments. The Jedi knight saved the galaxy through his weakness.

When Jesus says: Love your enemies, He didn’t ask us to do anything that He himself is
not prepared to do first. And He already did it on the cross when He forgave and prayed
for those who crucified him saying “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do.” (Luke 23:34) Come to think of it, aren’t we all in fact sinners who have rebelled
against God and we were once His enemies? Yet Christ died for us that we may be
reconciled.

This does not mean that our Christian response to evil must be passive. In Romans 13, we
know that the state is granted authority by God to bear the sword and punish the wicked.
So Christians can and should use all legal means at our disposal to fight evil and
corruption.

But we are not to repay evil with evil, but with good. Darkness cannot drive out darkness;
only light can do that. Jesus is calling us to let go of our bitterness, vengefulness and
personal vendetta. The path of the kingdom is love (even to our enemies), prayer for
those who persecute us and the willingness to suffer for Christ.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who suffered so much in Nazi Germany during World War 2, said
"This is the supreme command. Through the medium of prayer, we go to our enemy, we
stand by his side, and we plead to God for him."

Still, this is not something easy to do. Where do we get the power to do the impossible?
We cannot do it unless by the empowering grace of the Holy Spirit.

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In the Bible passage today, I think we can find some powerful reasons or motivations for
us to love our enemies. The first motivation is found in verse 45: “So that you may be
sons of your Father in heaven.”

What does that mean? John Piper explains it this way (and I quote) “This does not mean
we can earn our way into God's family by loving our enemies. Rather it means that when
we love our enemies, we prove ourselves to be in God's family. If you love your enemies
the way God loves his enemies, then you show that you ARE a child of God. You are
seen to be a child of God… You can't earn the status of a child. You can be born into the
family or you can be adopted into the family. You can't work your way into it. Jesus
means that loving our enemies shows that God has already become our Father, and that
the only reason we are able to love our enemies is because he loves us first...” End quote.

And how did we become part of God’s family in the first place? How did we get adopted
as a child of the Father? It’s through forgiveness… By grace, God in Christ has forgiven
us (His enemies) even though we don’t deserve it… When we look at the horror of our
own sin and then look at the holiness of God, we see our utter hopelessness. But the good
news is Christ has taken our punishment on the cross so that we can be reconciled with
our Father and be adopted into His family. Our wrongs have been freely forgiven through
faith in Christ.

Have we not experienced God’s forgiveness and grace? If we have been forgiven so
abundantly by God, how can we not forgive others? If we have truly known God as our
Father, surely this relationship ought to overflow in love for our enemies as well. How
can we not forgive after having been forgiven so much?

The second reason or motivation to love our enemies is this: It’s because God causes
his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the
unrighteous.

In other words, we are called to imitate our Father in Heaven who makes no distinction
between the just and the unjust when sending good gifts of His creation. His kindness is
lavished on both moral and immoral people. He sends rain and harvest to the padi
farmers in Kedah, the farmers in Kelantan, the pineapple farmers in Sarawak – it doesn’t
matter if they voted for Barisan Nasional or Pakatan Rakyat, it doesn’t matter what they
believe or don’t believe.

So we love our enemies because that is how God treats His enemies. He causes his planet
to rotate for the evil and the good, and produces oxygen for the righteous and the
unrighteous. John Calvin describes it as a divine kindness that is common to all. Some
people call it ‘common grace’. But this grace is not saving grace. It does not mean that
God will not punish the wicked and reward the righteous one day. Of course, He will
ultimately do that.

And it’s important to keep this in mind. Because what makes it so hard to let go of our
anger is the overwhelming sense that the person who offended us does not deserve to be

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forgiven. If the hurt is deep and great injustice was committed against us, there is a valid
sense of moral outrage. We feel that if we forgive this person, we trivialize the
seriousness of that wrong he has committed. This evil must not be forgotten or ignored.
So how do we resolve this tension of unconditional love on one hand and the cry for
justice on the other?

Part of the answer is found in God’s promise of final judgment. Because God alone is the
perfect Judge, we are freed from the personal craving for revenge. The question is: “Do
you trust God to set things right? Do you believe He sees the issues and the offender’s
motives far better than what we can see? His justice is purer and wiser than ours. We
can’t improve on His judgment. And He has promised there will be a day of reckoning…
Will you trust Him as the perfect Judge?”

Consider Romans 12:17-21 “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is
right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace
with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for
it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. On the contrary: "If
your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing
this, you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome
evil with good.”

We don’t take justice into our own hands because the ultimate Punisher is God. Our
motives are mixed at best. Our judgments are limited in perspective. But He sees all and
His eyes are pure. So don’t take revenge, leave room for God to repay.

In fact, this is also the example of Christ Himself. 1 Peter 2:21-23 “When they hurled
their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead,
he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.”

So leave room for God’s wrath. Entrust yourself to God who judges fairly. Justice shall
be served but in the meantime, we need to be set free from the craving for revenge. We
do so by imitating God who shows His kindness to both the wicked and the righteous.
We do so by trusting in God’s promise to deliver justice. Be perfect just as our heavenly
Father is perfect. The word ‘perfect’ doesn’t mean we can be 100% without sin in this
life. It actually means: Be “complete”, be “all embracing” in your love just as God is
merciful and all-inclusive in His love.

The third motivation to love our enemies is this: If we love those who love us, how are
we different from the tax collectors? And if we greet only our own brothers, do not even
pagans do that?

Don Carson gives us some background on tax collectors: In those days, a Roman citizen
can literally buy a territory in the Roman empire and he would have rights to collect taxes
from that place. Then he can outsource the collection to the local “Ah Long” or ‘Mafia’
type of people. They in turn outsource to others to collect taxes from the rakyat. These
tax collectors would have a quota to hit, and they can keep skim off the rest of the money

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for themselves. Corruption goes all the way up this multi-level tax ladder. As a result, tax
collectors were despised as traitors of their own people.

But even tax collectors have friends. At least they can have lunch with other tax
collectors. Despicable though they may be, they have their own ‘in’ group. Even the
pagans (those who do not worship Yahweh) greet their own brothers, so how is the
church any different if we only love and greet those who love us in return? It is when we
love our enemies that people will see something peculiar in the church.

To be salt and light in the world, we must live as a radically different kind of people. If
we only love people who are lovable and beautiful, how are we any different from
everyone else?

Loving our enemies displays the distinctiveness of the Kingdom in a fallen world that has
seen too much of violence, hatred and bloodshed. It’s a radical counter culture.

OK fine – But is this Christian ideal of loving your enemy practical or not? Does it really
work in a fallen world like ours? Chairman Mao Zedong once said (The Little Red Book,
1964): “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” You want social change? Use force,
violence and the will-to-power. So can this message of Jesus about loving our enemy
really change the world?

I think it can. Let me encourage you with the real life story of Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
He was a pastor and civil rights activist who struggled against racial segregation and
discrimination. Do you know that in the 1950s there was a custom in the southern parts of
America that African-Americans had to sit at the back of a bus? On the 1st of December
1955, Mrs. Rosa Parks, an African-American woman was arrested by the police for
refusing to stand and let a white bus rider take her seat. It would be the spark that lights
up a revolution. Martin Luther King, a pastor in the city and other community leaders
called a meeting and a big crowd came to the church. The decision was made to boycott
the bus company in protest. For 381 days, they would walk or carpool to work instead of
taking the bus. This is an example of civil disobedience.

In retaliation, his home was bombed by terrorists. His wife and their baby daughter
escaped without injury. When he arrived home he found an angry crowd waiting to take
revenge. But Dr. King told them to go home: "We must learn to meet hate with love".

Eventually in 1956 the Supreme Court declared that local laws for racial segregation on
buses were illegal. The boycott was a success. As a symbol of reconciliation and victory,
Dr. King and a white minister, Rev. Smiley, shared the front seat of a public bus together.

Throughout his career, he was jailed and beaten many times. In the end he was
assasinated at the age of 39. Through it all, he did not retaliate with violence but with
forgiveness. The legacy of his life transformed a whole nation without causing bloodshed
and continued to inspire civil rights movements all over the world. This is not an
idealistic pie in the sky … It can be done. It has been done.

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Of course, his example is not perfect but I think we Malaysian Christians can learn a lot
from his model of balancing the New Testament ideal of unconditional love with the
prophetic justice of the Old Testament. It is not enough to just talk about love we need to
also care deeply for justice. It is not enough to get angry over injustice we need to
promote righteousness in a way that loves our enemies.

With this story in mind, listen to these famous words by Martin Luther King when he
preached on the same Bible passage on loving our enemies. Listen for its prophetic
relevance to how the church should live in Malaysia today.

(I know it’s hard but try to imagine Martin Luther King is now speaking in CDPC) He
said: “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never
get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of
enmity. By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates
and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.

The relevance of what I have said to the crisis in race relations should be readily
apparent. There will be no permanent solution to the race problem until oppressed men
develop the capacity to love their enemies. The darkness of racial injustice will be
dispelled only by the light of forgiving love. For more than three centuries American
Negroes have been battered by the iron rod of oppression, frustrated by day and
bewildered by night by unbearable injustice and burdened with the ugly weight of
discrimination. Forced to live with these shameful conditions, we are tempted to become
bitter and to retaliate with a corresponding hate. But if this happens, the new order we
seek will be little more than a duplicate of the old order. We must in strength and
humility meet hate with love… Time is cluttered with the wreckage of communities
which surrendered to hatred and violence. For the salvation of our nation and the
salvation of mankind, we must follow another way. (What is this other way?)

He goes on: While hating segregation, we shall love the segregationist. This is the only
way to create the beloved community.

To our most bitter opponents we say: "We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering
by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with spiritual
force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good
conscience obey your unjust laws because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral
obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb
our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded
perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave
us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down
by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom but not only for ourselves. We
shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process and our
victory will be a double victory." End of Quote

This is the way of the cross. This is how we setup signposts of the Kingdom that points to
a different way of being human. Not through hatred but through love for our enemies.

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Bringing this closer to home, I wonder how can we apply this in our Malaysian context?
Recently we hear of disturbing news of intolerance in our country like the famous cow-
head incident. There was a protest against the proposed construction of a Hindu temple in
Shah Alam where some irresponsible people stomped and spat at the head of a cow, a
sacred animal for Hindus. It was a clearly provocative act, with threats of violence.

Or the recent case of two Muslim journalists who sneaked into a Catholic church as spies
to take Holy Communion, then spit out the host (bread) and took photographs of it to be
published some more. This is a sacrilegious act to Catholics who believe the host to be
the real body of Christ. And the internet went on overdrive with angry condemnations.

For such a time as this, how should we as Christians respond?

I don’t have any easy answers and this may sound naive but just wondering (and I invite
you to imagine with me. Maybe you can come up with more creative and better ways of
doing it). I wonder: What happens if the Church or individual Christians issue a calm
statement that what these people have done is wrong, and relevant authorities should
investigate and charge if any law is broken. But at the same time, we also say, “We
forgive you for what you have done. You may have been manipulated by people with
vested interests. We would like to meet you personally, sit down over coffee and listen to
what you have to say and why you behave like that. Maybe we can find a win-win
solution”. I wonder how the society would react when we respond in love and respect
when insulted and provoked like that? Would it make Malaysians sit up and take notice:
“These Christians are really out of this world lah”?

For such a time as this, the world is watching. They are asking: “Which community has
beliefs that make its members treat people in other communities with love and respect- to
serve them and meet their needs? Which community's beliefs lead people to demonize
and attack those who violate their boundaries?" (Keller) For such a time as this, the world
is looking for answers.

When we encounter intolerance, fear and racial tension in our beloved country, may we
also receive wisdom and courage from the Holy Spirit to find creative ways to love our
enemies and pray for those who persecute us… This is the way of the cross.

Will you be part of this culture of peace in a time of racial polarization? Will you follow
Him even if it costs a great deal?

Let us pray.