Matthew 5: 43

43Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy: 44but I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; 45that ye may be sons of your Father who is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. 46For if ye love them that love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? 47And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the Gentiles the same? 48Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Forgiveness is the mark of a truly regenerate heart. When a Christian fails to forgive someone else, he sets himself up as a higher judge than God and even calls into question the reality of his faith.

Examining this passage of Scripture will reveal the transformed behavior that Jesus is after in each of us. The point is that Jesus does not want us to act like the world. He wants us to manifest a behavior that is based upon a supernatural principle of divine life. He desires that we live above the level of mediocrity by the power of His Spirit. He desires for us to live a life that in our own strength we cannot live.

What did the Old Testament teach?Did the Old Testament say anywhere hate your enemy? No.
Did it say love your neighbor? Yes.

Well, what is the sum of the teaching of the Old Testament? There is a statement in the Psalm, in Psalm 139 where David says “I hated them with a perfect hatred.” That is the only justifiable hatred in the Bible. That is the only justifiable reaction to an enemy in the Bible.
In other words, he said, God I hate them with a perfect hatred and if you search my heart, you will know that my motive is your glory, not my own personal injury. There is a place for that. But it is never a personal situation.

Words are easily Twisted

Mt 5; 43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.

Lev 19;18 Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the LORD.

Deuteronomy 20:17 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee:

As in all the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is speaking here about personal standards of righteousness, not civil law. The “enemy” spoken of in Exodus 23 is not the enemy soldier met on the battlefield, but an individual-whether fellow countryman or foreigner-who in some way or another is antagonistic. God has never had a double standard of righteousness. His “commandment is exceedingly broad” (Ps. 119:96), and in the fullest sense an Israelite’s neighbor was anyone in need whom he might come across in his daily living.

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, and the text does say, “Love your neighbor,” which raises the question, “Who is my neighbor?” 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.

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, 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. 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?

The scribes and Pharisees knew how well they loved themselves.

Matthew 6:2When therefore thou doest alms, sound not a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward.

5And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites: for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward

With that significant omission, tradition had narrowed the meaning of neighbor to include only those people they preferred and approved of-which amounted basically to their own kind.

The scribes and Pharisees had no such balance. They had no love for justice, but only for vengeance. And they had no love for their enemies, but only for themselves.

The scribes and Pharisees, by contrast, knew nothing either of righteous indignation or righteous love. Their only indignation was that of personal hatred, and their only love was that of self-esteem.

Jesus Gives a Correction

In five ascending statements Jesus proclaims the kind of love that God has always required of His people and that must characterize everyone who goes by the name of the Lord. But I say to you, love your enemies.

Here is the most powerful teaching in Scripture about the meaning of love. The love that God commands of His people is love so great that it even embraces enemies.

45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, “Do not waste your time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.”

Throughout history the worst persecutions have been religious. They have been the strongest against God’s people, because the divine standards He has given to them and which are seen in them are a judgment on the wickedness and corruption of false religion. God’s Word unmasks people at their most sensitive and vulnerable point, the point of their self-justification-whether that justification is religious, philosophical, or even atheistic.

Our persecutors may not always be unbelievers. Christians can cause other Christians great trouble, and the first step toward healing those broken relationships is also prayer.

Prayer is surrender, to the will of God and cooperation with that will. If I throw out a boathook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God. E. Stanley Jones,

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

HOW DO YOU LOVE, BY WHO YOU LOVE

46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

Tax-gatherers were renegade Jews who had sold out to the Roman oppressors and made lucrative livings by extorting excessive taxes from their fellow citizens. “Sinners”
The restriction of neighbor was not narrow enough. The scribes and Pharisees also despised and looked down on the common people.

The Scottish Reformer George Wishart, a contemporary and friend of John Knox, was sentenced to die as a heretic. Because the executioner knew of Wishart’s selfless ministering to hundreds of people who were dying of the plague, he hesitated carrying out the sentence.

When Wishart saw the expression of remorse on the executioner’s face, he went over and kissed him on the cheek, saying, “Sir, may that be a token that I forgive you” (John Foxe, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

Our “enemies,” of course, do not always come in such life-threatening forms.

Do not even the Gentiles do the same? (5:46–47)

If the scribes and Pharisees were certain of any one thing it was that they were far better than everyone else.

Loving our enemies in the context of the first and second great commandments. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor.’ ”

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.

We learned this from the prior section, v 20 and it carries on

verse 20 says, “For I say to you, that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven,”

Jesus is saying, “There is a way of life—there is an authentic, deep, unhypocritical way of life—that you must live if you want to arrive in heaven.”

He is not saying: I have an impossible standard of righteousness that you can never meet, and so stop trying to meet it, and trust in my righteousness. That’s not what he is saying.

He is saying, “If you will come to me, and trust in me, and receive the power of the kingdom, and be cleansed on the inside by the forgiveness and love of God that I offer, and bank your hope on all my promises, and let my ransoming death cover all your failures and imperfections,

then you WILL be able to live this way (not perfectly, but powerfully), and your life will be the light of the world that proves you are the children of God.”