Love notes from God, Luke 6:27-30

Last week we began looking at the Sermon on the Plain, a message that Jesus Christ preached which is very similar to the Sermon on the Mount.  It’s been called the manifesto of the Kingdom of Heaven.  Christ came preaching, just as John the Baptist had, a message of the need for repentance in preparation for the Kingdom of Heaven which He would usher in.  He was the King prophesied from the lineage of David.  He was the promised Messiah.  But as He told Pilate, and  contrary to what the Jews were expecting, His kingdom was not of this world, but was a spiritual kingdom.

But though Jesus is the promised King of this spiritual Kingdom of Heaven, He is also a prophet, as Moses prophesied centuries earlier Duet. 18 that “the Lord your God would raise up a prophet like me from among you, and you shall listen to Him.”  And just as Moses related the law to the children of Israel prior to entering the promised land and pronounced a blessing and a curse to the law, so now Jesus, who is greater than Moses, who is God in the flesh, speaks to those entering the Kingdom of heaven and presents a series of blessings and curses, and then goes on to establish the principles for those who will be part of this kingdom.

Though Moses was a great prophet in the eyes of man, yet he could only recount the law as given to him by God on the mountain.  But Jesus is able to expound the law, to explain the intent of the law, because He is one with God.  He is able to take the law of God and extrapolate  it  in a way that Moses never could have.  It was customary for the rabbis to read a portion of the law and then try to teach it.  And Jesus is following that custom as well.  But they showed by their traditions in the Mishna and the Talmud that they never understood the law, and in fact had added and subtracted so much from it, that it had lost it’s original power and intent.  So now we see Jesus taking the law, the things of God, the standards of God and explaining them and applying them in ways that the Jews had never heard before.

See, the Jews understood the 10 commandments and the rest of the law in terms of the negative;  you shall not commit murder, you shall not steal, you shall not commit adultery, etc. The religious leaders of the Jews, the Pharisees and scribes and lawyers, had examined the law of God basically looking for loopholes.  Looking to figure out what the minimum requirement was to be able to say that you kept it.  But Jesus is not looking at the minimum standards, He is looking at the maximum implications God intended the law to provide.

Some people today in the Christian community think that Christ came to abolish the law and replace it with the law of love.  They consider the law and the Old Testament as legalistic, old fashioned and obsolete .  They believe that all the law was wiped out by the overriding principle or law of love in the New Testament.  While it is true that all the law of God can be summarized by love, love does not wipe out the standards of God, it merely articulates them.

But Jesus said in Matt. 5:17 "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.”  See, Jesus did not come to do away with the moral law of God, but to keep it to it’s fullest component.  And so now as Jesus delivers this manifesto of His kingdom He will show his disciples what God’s full intent of the law is and He will do so by showing what God’s standard for love is.

Now when Moses reiterated the law to the children of Israel, the first commandment he reminded them of was "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” (Duet. 6:5)  Also in Luke 10:27 there is the story of the lawyer who came to Jesus and asked him what was necessary to enter into eternal life.  And Jesus said, what does the law say? He answered, “"YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF."  So all the commandments could be summarized by the command to love.  And so Jesus is explaining to the disciples what that love looks like.  What kind of behavior the laws of the kingdom were supposed to produce.

What this did for the people listening then was to make them aware of what the standard of God’s law really looked like.  If they thought the law was difficult before, they would understood it to be much more difficult now.  If entrance into eternal life, the kingdom of heaven depended on keeping even the first law, then Jesus was going to show them how impossible it was to do so in man’s natural state.  But Jesus did not come to make citizenship in the kingdom more difficult.  Jesus came to make it possible.

Now first of all, we need to be reminded that Jesus is speaking to His disciples.  These are people that are endeavoring to follow Christ, some for wrong reasons perhaps, but they are students of Jesus, watching and listening and learning from Him.  And He has started off presenting a series of blessings and woes, or curses, to delineate the difference between people who are relying upon their own goodness, or their own religious endeavors to gain approval with God.  He is establishing the fact that the entrance to the kingdom cannot be gained through self righteousness found in trying to keep the law, but is dependent upon God’s mercy and grace.

So Jesus said, if you want to be blessed, that is gain citizenship in the kingdom of God, then you must first recognize your spiritual poverty, that you are spiritually bankrupt and as a beggar would beg for mercy, ask God for mercy to save you.  Secondly, He said another characteristic is the need for repentance, a mourning over your sinful condition and asking God for mercy to forgive you. And thirdly, a characteristic of a citizen of the kingdom will be a hunger for righteousness.  A realization that our righteousness falls short of the kingdom, and we need the imputed righteousness given through the grace of God if we are to be able to enter.

So those were the requirements for citizenship in the kingdom of God.  All of them dependent upon our recognition that we need the mercy and grace of God.  And then Jesus changes gears from requirements for acceptance to manifestations of being a citizen.  If you are a citizen, then this is what you will be doing.  And the defining characteristic of a citizen of the kingdom of God is that of love.  Jesus said in John 13:35 "By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." So Jesus is going to spend the next section of his message explaining love, not from man’s perspective, but from God’s.

As a young boy and even as I grew into adulthood, I often felt guilty about my love for God.  I was a preacher’s kid.  I literally grew up in church.  But I would hear other people talk and sing about loving God and I would know deep in my heart that I did not love God the way I should or the way I thought I should.  I knew that I loved Ralph, my dog.  I loved my parents.  I loved playing football.  I loved hunting.  But I couldn’t really truthfully say that I loved God the same way.  And it took me a long time to understand that a lot of the difficulty I had was because of a misunderstanding of the word we use for love.

And the principle reason for that misunderstanding comes from the fact that there are 3 primary words in the Greek used for love, but they all translate into one word in English.  The first  word will sound familiar, eros, which means erotic love, or romantic love. Next is phileo: family love, or brotherly love from which we get the word Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.  And the third is agape.  And this is the one used predominately in the New Testament.  It is the love that God has for us, and which we are required to have for one another.  It’s  not based on attractiveness or merit. It’s not based on natural attraction or an emotional response. And most importantly, agape love is not dependent upon a favorable reaction from the other person.   It’s given, whether or not it is possible to be reciprocated.

That’s the kind of love that we are required to have, because it’s the kind of love that God had for us. Rom. 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  A couple of verses later, Paul explains that being a sinner made us enemies of God, and yet He sent Christ to reconcile us to God.  Agape love is God loving us while we were yet enemies of God.

Now, note that in vs. 27, Jesus says, “but I say to you who hear…” and the implication there is that this is addressed to believers, those that are disciples who hear the word of God and obey it and have been reconciled to God by His mercy.  These are the true disciples, and as we follow Christ’s example, this agape love will be  the characteristic of true discipleship.

And Jesus gives a simple statement that sets the standard of God’s love.  It raises the bar far above romantic love or family love.  Jesus said, “But I say unto you, love your enemies…” Now a normal person may say that may be a simple statement, but it’s an oxymoron.  You can’t love your enemy or they wouldn’t be your enemy.  But the answer to that riddle is to go back to our definition of love.  Agape love doesn’t require that I like someone, that I have an affection for someone or want to get something from them, but that I give something to them.  Agape love requires that I do, not that I feel. To obey, whether I feel like it or not.

And that is exactly then what Jesus expounds next;  Do this, do that, do this and you will show God’s love to an unbelieving world.  Now we can debate until the cows come home whether each injunction Jesus gives is to be taken exactly literally or not.  But to debate each detail would be to lose sight of the forest for the trees.  The point is that loving God requires loving people and loving  people God’s way requires not getting, but giving.  Not requiring affection, but even loving them even when they are enemies.  Not looking for reciprocation but doing good even for those who hate you.

Vs. 27, “do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either.  Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back.”

Now let me show you how those standards of love are fleshed out.  Look at 1Pet.  2:21, “For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, WHO COMMITTED NO SIN, NOR WAS ANY DECEIT FOUND IN HIS MOUTH; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously;  and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.”

And consider Isaiah 53.  “He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth.” “But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.”   Did you get that?  God caused our iniquity, our sins, to fall upon the innocent Son of God.  God crushed Him for our transgressions, so that we might be made righteous.  See, love doesn’t mean that God stopped counting sins, but that God counted our sins upon Jesus.

So these exhortations of Jesus about loving your enemies are perfectly realized in Jesus Christ. Jesus was hated of men, but He died for them on the cross.  Jesus was cursed by men, yet He provided blessing for them through His death. Jesus was mistreated by men, yet He prayed, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  Jesus was struck in the face and body by men until He became a bloody pulp, yet He willingly offered Himself as a sacrifice for our sins.  Jesus was stripped of His robe and hung naked on a cross by men, yet He offers His robe of righteousness to us.  Jesus gave up His life, so that we might have life abundantly.

As we consider the ultimate sacrifice that Christ made for us, we can know the measure of what God’s standard of love is. Jesus was the standard of righteousness in every respect.  And I hope that as you look at Jesus you say, I could never love like that.  I could never love God like that.  I cannot love my neighbor like that.  And that is where you need to start.  With your spiritual poverty.  With recognizing your inability to be able to attain to the standard of God’s righteousness.

Because God, having set the standard and knowing how far we fall short, provided a substitute for us, Jesus Christ, who would keep the law perfectly. And 2 Cor. 5:21 says that “God made Jesus, who knew no sin, that is He was perfect, to become sin for us, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”  When a man comes to God in repentance and in desperation hungering for righteousness, then according to that faith, God transfers  our sin to Jesus Christ, and transfers His righteousness to us.  We become holy, righteous, sons of God by grace and mercy.

That supernatural transaction makes us holy.  It is totally by grace; a free gift from God in response to our faith and repentance.  And once we are made holy by grace, we are able to be reborn by the Spirit of God.  He indwells us, causing our spirit to be born again.  We enter the state of blessedness.  We have intimacy with God.  We become sons and daughters of God.  We become citizens of the kingdom of God.

And as citizens we become representatives of God.  We become ambassadors of God.  And we become slaves of God.  We forego our purposes in order to serve God’s purposes.  Now having been transformed, we are a testimony to the world through our lives that reflect Jesus Christ to the world.  We are different, not just because we look different or act differently, but because we have the mind of Christ dwelling in us, directing our paths and our response.  He writes His laws upon our minds and hearts.  His law now is our desire.

And that makes it possible for us to love the way God loves us.  Because we now have the mind of Christ, the Spirit of Christ to be our helper, we can love the way God intends us to love.  The love of God constrains us because we know how much God loved us. 1John 4:19 says,  “We love, because He first loved us.”

Now we can do what Peter said earlier, follow the example of Jesus Christ.  Before we could only look at the law and say, “that’s a nice ideal, but there is no way I can achieve that.”  But the Bible says that the law is supposed to be our tutor, to show us that we need a Savior.  And having been supernaturally endowed with the gift of love, that love of God having been poured out in our hearts causes an overflow of love to others as we realize that we weren’t worthy or deserving of God’s love.

The message of the gospel is a message of love and forgiveness.  “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) God loved us when we were ungodly.  When we were enemies of God.  He loves us even though we are sinners.  And He made it possible for us to be reconciled to Him.

For those that are reconciled, having been supernaturally made holy, righteous, adopted as sons of God, citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, we are called to be ambassadors of God, representatives of Christ to the world, to live out God’s love in our lives so that the world might see Jesus.  But as we go out into the world proclaiming this gospel, we need to understand that we are shedding light in a dark world that loves darkness, that loves their sin, and aren’t necessarily going to like us.  Our transformed life is going to make enemies.  People are going to hate you, like they hated Christ. Revile you, like they reviled Christ.  Persecute you, like they persecuted Christ.

But we need to respond like Christ responded to us when we were enemies.  Remember vs. 22? "Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man.”  That’s the secret to loving your enemies. You’re not suffering because you acted like a jerk. You’re not suffering because you retaliated against someone.  But when you are suffering for the sake of Jesus, for the sake of the Kingdom, then vs.23 says "Be glad in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven.”

And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?  Are we seeking the Kingdom of Heaven?  If we are, then access is granted to those who realize their spiritual bankruptcy and calling in faith and repentance for mercy, God imputes righteousness to their account.  Having been made holy and righteous, God graciously gives them citizenship in heaven, and a spiritual deposit of the Holy Spirit who is our helper, so that we might be able to do the will of God.  We become transformed, by the renewing of our minds, that we might live out the perfect will of God.  And living out His will in our lives, others might see the truth of the gospel and be saved by our testimony to the transforming power of Jesus Christ, to save sinners.

The good news is that if you are seeking the kingdom of heaven, then God has prepared a way to be reconciled to Him through faith in Jesus Christ.  It’s a free gift from God.  Jesus said in Rev. 3:18 “I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.  Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.”