PODCAST
Love My Enemies
March 2nd, 2016
Matthew 5:43—6:4
“Love your enemies”: Fine, but love my enemies? Jesus said a lot of challenging things, but none more so than when His topic was love. Jesus commands, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (v. 48). That is stunning: we are to love our enemies the same sincere, selfless, and sacrificial way that God loves us.
This may sound good in the theoretical, but in the personal, things start to get sticky. Like Linus, in the Peanuts comic, we want to shout, “I love humankind; its people I can’t stand!”
Consider God’s example: He loved us, each of us, while we were His enemies (Romans 5:10). His love reconciled us to himself through the death of His Son on the cross (Ephesians 2:14-16). The God who loves us that much, can help us love our enemies. Only God’s divine grace can help us display that kind of love. That’s why it is “perfect”; it is His love working through us.
Author: Duane Brush
