Love Your Enemies

The Hard Command We Try to Escape

Sometimes as we read through the Bible — we've been going through the book of Luke — you come to a passage and Jesus says something that's really hard to understand. We've already seen this so far in the book of Luke. We've seen the parable of the wineskins. You read that and you go, on the first glance, on the first reading, no clue what Jesus is trying to say.

Sometimes, though, you're reading through the Bible, you're reading through the book of Luke, you come to a passage, and it's pretty clear what Jesus is trying to say. It's just really hard to swallow. It's just really hard to actually do it. You go, man, does he really mean that? It seems like he's saying this — is that what he means?

And that is the kind of passage we find ourselves in this morning. Our passage is in Luke chapter six, if you want to turn there. This morning we read Jesus's command to love our enemies. And that's one where you read it and you go, okay, all right, I see the words on the page — love your enemies — that seems pretty straightforward. But what do you mean by that, Jesus? Love my enemies. This is one of those commands, one of those teachings of Jesus that is truly a radical command, and one that we have a really hard time following. Think about how hard we try to wriggle out from underneath commands like this.

You remember Jesus often would spar with the Pharisees, and at one point they're asking him, "Well, what's the law, Lord? What should we do? " And he says, "Well, you should love your neighbor as yourself. " And the Pharisees, they know Leviticus 19. They go, "Yeah, okay, we agree, Jesus. Absolutely, we should love our neighbors as ourselves. "

"But who is my neighbor? " Immediately, the first thing our sinful hearts do when we hear a command from Christ is to go, "Well, do you actually mean that, though? Who is my neighbor? Let's just be real clear here, because I think my neighbor is this person. "

And of course, Jesus tells the Pharisees, yeah, everybody's your neighbor, actually. And in this passage, Jesus doubles down. He makes it even more clear, and he gives us a really hard command — not hard to understand, but hard to believe, hard to do — which is: love your enemies. Not just your family and friends, not just your neighbors, but your enemies. We're supposed to love them too.

If you're anything like me, the first thing you do when you hear a command like this is go, "Okay, Jesus, hold on — what do you mean, though? Who's my enemy? Are we talking about vague enemies out there, enemies of your church, false religion? What are we talking about? Love them? What does it mean to love them? I'll try not to hate them, God. I'll try not to say bad things about them, keep my mouth shut. " What do you mean by love them?

So we're immediately trying to get out of this command. And part of the reason why we struggle with commands like this is because we do know there is actually a line somewhere. Are we supposed to love our enemies at the expense of loving our family? No. 1 Timothy 5 tells us you have to provide for your family or you're worse than an unbeliever. So we know there's a line somewhere with loving our family versus our enemies. Are we supposed to support just random unbelievers on the street more than our church family? No. Galatians 6: 10: do good to everyone, especially to the household of faith.

Does a passage like this mean that we can never retaliate, ever? That there's never a time to defend ourselves, to defend others, or to seek justice? No, we know that. And we take that knowledge — the fact that there are these circumstances where we have to work out what this command means — and we go, "All right, so we just won't worry about this command. " We'll take the line and walk it all the way back. Well, it's love your enemies, but you gotta — who's your enemy? You gotta watch out for your family. We start making excuses, and we don't just do what it says, which is to love our enemies.

So in our passage this morning, Luke chapter six, we are going to see Jesus not let us get out of it. He's going to say love your enemies, and he's going to keep piling on — command, command, command — every time tightening the definition of, "Well, who really is my enemy, Lord, and what does it actually mean to love my enemy? " As we try to avoid it, Jesus is not going to let us off the hook. He's going to make it super clear. What does it actually look like to love our enemies? This week, when you walk out of here this morning, what should you be doing to love your enemies? Jesus is going to tell us this morning.

We're in this section of Luke which is known as the Sermon on the Plain, or the Sermon on the Flat Place. If you're in Luke 6, look at verse 20. This is where Jesus begins the sermon: "He lifted up his eyes on his disciples and said. " So Jesus is speaking to — he's just selected the twelve apostles — he's got a group in front of him that includes his twelve apostles, but then a bigger, larger group of his disciples, people following him, and then crowds behind them. But despite this giant group, Jesus is addressing this sermon to his disciples.

This is not just random commands for anybody to follow. He's saying, "All right, guys, you're following me now? You're my disciples. I've come to you, I've healed you, I've brought you into communion with me. You're going to follow me. Now, what does it look like to follow me? " That's the Sermon on the Plain. What does it look like to follow me?

Last week we saw, starting with those Beatitudes, that it is blessed — you are blessed — when people persecute you for the name of Christ, because they hate Christ, they hate you. That's actually a blessing. You'll be rewarded for that. So one part of being a follower of Christ is understanding you'll be blessed when you're persecuted. And in our passage this morning, here's the next thing. If you're a Christ follower, if you're a disciple — what happens to your enemies? You have an enemy. How should you treat them? That's what our passage is about this morning.

And I want to emphasize again: this is a passage for believers, this is a sermon for believers. If you are not already following Christ, you have no shot of following these commands. Because as we've been saying already all through this morning — in our Sunday school, in our songs, in communion, in our prayer earlier — we who were once lost, sinful, far from Christ: Christ comes, calls us to himself, and saves us. So for those of us here this morning who've repented and placed our faith in him, Christ is our Lord. He's our King, he's our Savior, and we follow him, and he's giving us our marching orders in this sermon. If Christ is your Savior, here's what your life should look like.

And the good news for us before we get into the commands is that he's enabled you to do this. He hasn't just left you to your own devices. He is in you, you are united with him. He's given you the Holy Spirit to enable you to do this. So don't get discouraged right off the bat this morning. If you're in Christ, he's enabled you to do this, and he's commanded you to do this. So what has he commanded us to do? Let's look at the passage, starting at verse 27. Let me read this first paragraph.

How should we treat our enemies? We should love them. It's actually that straightforward. As a Christian, your command from your Savior is to love your enemies.

Three Commands That Close Every Exit

Christ starts this part of his sermon in verse 27 with the phrase, "But I say to you who hear. " And when you see in a teaching section — but, and then something else — usually that's introducing a correction to a false assumption. Think of other spots where Jesus says, "You've heard it said this, but I'm telling you this. " I'm correcting your false assumption here.

There's nothing directly before this verse that he's contrasting, but I think that's still what he's doing. He's correcting a false assumption that his disciples have. They're hearing him say in the Beatitudes right before this, "Hey, people are going to hate you and you're going to be blessed because of that. " And you can imagine they're sitting there thinking, "Okay, people are going to hate me, I'm going to be blessed — so what should I do when people are hating me? Should I fight back? Should I run away? Should I curse them? " I think naturally, we get the wrong answer. Here's the supernatural, correct answer that Jesus is going to give us.

You love them. You have enemies, they hate you — guess what you should do? I'm telling you: love them. So that's how he starts. He's going to correct our wrong ideas about what we should do with our enemies.

He also says, "I say this to those of you who hear. " Here's another clue that these verses are for believers: when you read radical commands like this from Christ, if you don't have a softened heart and open ears to hear what God has to say, you're going to reject this. Love my enemies? No thanks, I'm out. But for those of us whose hearts have been softened, who are following Christ, we want to do what he says. We prayed this morning that we would have ears to hear this hard truth — that we need to love our enemies. So this is going to be tough.

It means exactly what it says, but Jesus knows our hearts. He knows that we're going to hear that and go, "Yeah, but what do you mean, love my enemies? What do you mean? " So for the rest of the passage, Jesus is going to keep narrowing down and drawing the lines for us. Who are my enemies, and how do I love them?

He immediately follows "love your enemies" in verse 27 with three quick commands: love your enemy, command, command, command. These next three commands are explaining what he means by "love your enemy. " Who is my enemy and how do I love him? Well, here you go — love them, do this, do this, do this.

How do we love our enemies? How far do I have to go, God? Can I just avoid them? Can I just try not to hate them? Can I just keep my mouth shut? Well, here he's going to tell you.

First, at the end of verse 27: do good to those who hate you. So who are our enemies here? We're talking about someone who actually hates you. This is not like you and this other guy don't like each other that much. Here's somebody who hates you. Maybe you have a neighbor in your neighborhood, on your street — an actual next-door neighbor — who has a rainbow flag waving in their yard, and you've talked to him about it. You've said, "Hey man, that is against what the Lord says. " And that guy hates you. It's not like, I don't really like — he hates you. He thinks you're a bigot. He hates what you believe. He thinks you're dumb. He can't stand you.

How do you love that guy — the bad neighbor, the one who's intentionally a bad neighbor to you because he hates you? Are you just supposed to ignore him? Just hope you don't run into him outside? According to Jesus, you're supposed to do good to him. Loving someone is not just warm, fuzzy feelings about them. Loving someone is actually doing things that are good for them — actually taking actions that will benefit that person who hates you.

So if you have a neighbor who hates you, be a good neighbor to that person. Remind them that the trash goes out tomorrow. Wake up early and shovel their driveway before they get up. Bring their packages in out of the rain. Do the normal, good-neighbor things that you would do for someone you like — do it for the person who hates you. Loving means not just kind of avoiding them, trying not to dislike them. It means doing good to them, doing things that are good for them, even as they're in the midst of hating you.

Just when we think that's hard enough — okay, people who actually hate me, I'm supposed to do good to them? — Jesus doesn't let up. He keeps pushing on.

Verse 28: bless those who curse you. So your enemy here is somebody who, with their mouth, is actually cursing you. Maybe you have somebody at school who hates you for whatever reason. They know you're a Christian. They think that you're dumb for believing the Bible, and they let you know it with their mouth. You pass them in the hallway, and they're making fun of you. They're belittling you. They're calling you names. They're actually using their mouth to harm you, to hurt you, to cut you down. That's your enemy. What do you do to that person who's using their mouth to hate you?

You use your mouth to bless them. To love them is not to stay silent, not just to say, "All right, I won't say anything mean about them. " To love them is to actually bless them with your words. The word in Greek in verse 28 is eulogeo — and maybe you can hear that we get our word eulogy from that same root. What is a eulogy at a funeral? Hopefully, you're saying good things about the person who has died. You're remembering their life and the good things they did. That's what it means here. It means to use your mouth to speak well of the other person, to do good to them instead of harm. They're doing you harm with their mouth — how do you respond to that as a Christian? You do good to them with your mouth. You encourage them. Find a way to give them a compliment. Find a way to speak well of them. Use your words to build them up, even as they're using their words to tear you down.

Jesus doesn't let up. All right, I have to do good to them. I have to actually speak good to them also. What else do I have to do?

Pray for those who abuse you, end of verse 28. So your enemies — we're talking about real enemies here — they hate you, they're cursing you, they're actually abusing you. It could be physical, but it's also just mistreatment in general. Maybe you have a coworker who hates you, and it's gone beyond words to actual mistreatment. They have power over you at the company, and they're trying to demote you. They lie about you to the boss. They try to sabotage your projects. They're reporting you to HR for nothing. They hate you, and they're actively trying to harm you. What do you do to that person? What does it mean to love that person?

Far from ignoring them or even just trying to be nice to them, what you do for that person is you pray for them. We pray for the people we love — that's just natural human instinct. Think about the person you pray for the most. It's probably your spouse, your kids, your friends, your family members, your fellow church members, because we love them. We want to see good happen to them. We want God to bless them. We want them to repent and come to Christ. So we fall on our knees and we beg God, "Please help my friend. "

That same level of prayer — if it's for people you love, do that for your enemies. Love your enemies. When they're actively trying to harm you, you are in that moment praying that God would bless them, that God would bring them to repentance, that God would change their heart. Praying is one of the most loving things we can do for someone.

So really, it all boils down to what we knew it was at the beginning. Love your enemies means exactly what we think it does. The people who hate you, your actual enemies — what should you do to them? You should love them the same way you try to love the people you like. The same way you try to love your family, you should love them. We can't get out from under this command.

The Hyperbole That's Meant to Wake Us Up

Jesus continues to show us exactly how much we should love our enemies. He continues in the next two verses, where he uses four somewhat hyperbolic illustrations of this command in action. And Jesus often uses hyperbole as a rhetorical device — it's there to shock us. Think of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, "If your eye causes you to sin, rip it out. " None of us in here are missing eyes, as far as I know. So either we're not obeying that, or the point is to shock us into going, "Oh man, am I actually fighting sin? I need to wake up and kill this thing. I need to do whatever it takes to kill this sin. " That's the point of that.

Same thing here. Jesus is going to take it to the max — just go all the way. And it seems like, "Whoa, are you sure we're supposed to go that far, Jesus? " The point is to wake you up and go, "Hey man, this is what love looks like. " And you actually know, deep down, that this is what love looks like, because you do it for your spouse, for your friends, for your fellow church members. But he's saying: yeah, this kind of love also applies to your enemy.

Look at verses 29 and 30. "To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also. And from one who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you. And from one who takes away your goods, do not demand them back. " Again, he's not giving any caveats. He's not saying, "Well, what about this situation? What about that situation? " He's just saying, "Look man, here's what love looks like. "

Someone strikes you on the cheek — which I think is more of an insult than an assault, someone smacking you in the face, a backhand, a huge insult. What should your loving response be? Not to immediately insult them back. It should be, "Okay man, all right, you can insult me if you want. "

How about someone takes your cloak? Someone steals your cloak. What should you do? What does love look like when someone takes your cloak? Just give them your shirt too. And again, I say this is hyperbolic because — I mean, I don't know how many cloaks and tunics these guys have. It's not like we have fifty coats. He's taking your stuff. Don't worry about your stuff. Let him have more of it.

Give to everyone who begs from you. Somebody asks for something — give it to them. No conditions attached, give to them. That's what a loving person does. And someone takes your goods, they're stealing from you. What do you do to love them? Not just go back and demand it back from them, not drag them through court for ten months trying to get all your stuff back. Go, "It's okay, man. You can just have it. "

At first, these seem like a departure. Wait, I thought we were talking about loving enemies — now we're talking about giving to anyone who begs from you? What are we talking about here? All four of these illustrations are about how radical our love should look, what our love should actually be like.

Altogether, all four mean that love should be unconditional. Love should be selfless. To love someone is to think of them, not of your own wants, needs, desires, or pride. When you're insulted and you rise up in anger immediately and insult them back, that's your pride being wounded. And he's saying, love is not about you. True love is unconditional. It's selfless. It has nothing to do with you — it has to do with that other person. That's the collective point of these four examples. Love — and we know this, actually — is selfless. True love, good love, the love like God has, is to love that person unconditionally, not expecting anything back, not demanding your rights, but doing good to them and not worrying so much about yourself. That's what love is.

And Jesus is saying: yeah, do that to your enemies. People are stealing from you. Love them unconditionally. There's a lot more we could say about how that works out in practice. But Jesus ends this section in verse 31 with the so-called Golden Rule: "As you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. "

This is not a trick to try to get people to love you more — like, "All right, I wish this guy was nicer to me, so maybe I'll be nice to him and hopefully that'll turn him back nice to me. " No. We're talking about enemies, remember? These people hate you. There is no, "I'll just make them like me a little more. " They hate you. What should you do to them, though? You should treat them like you wish to be treated. Think of your worst moments, when you're lacking grace and mercy. Do you wish people could have a little bit of mercy with you, a little bit of grace? That's what it's saying. However you wish people would treat you — do you wish that people would do good things for you? Then do good things for people. Not to manipulate them, not to try to get them to help you back, not to try to get them to like you. It's about returning evil with good. It's about always giving out good, not reciprocating evil.

This is unconditional love, and this is what Jesus commands us to do as his followers. If you've been saved by him, he's your King, he's telling you: think of whatever enemies in your life who hate you, love that person. Do good to them, bless them, pray for them. Think of them, not your selfish wants and desires.

So we've made it through this first paragraph — lots of commands, there's no way to escape it. Jesus is saying, this is what it looks like to love your enemies. Which leaves me with the question: why, though, Jesus? Why? This is hard. You're telling me that the people who hate you, hate me, try to harm me, try to hurt me — you're telling me I have to love them? Why? I get what you're saying. Okay, fine. It means actually loving them. It means doing good to them. It means praying for them. Why, though? Why do you give us this impossible command? It feels impossible. Why would we do this?

Why God Loves His Enemies — and Why We Must

Well, that's what Jesus tells us in the next paragraph. Why we should love our enemies. Why should we have this crazy, radical, unconditional, selfless love for the people who hate us? What Jesus tells us in the next section is that we should love our enemies because God loves his enemies. Look at verse 32.

This is the point of the whole passage. It's deceptively simple — command and reason. We're supposed to love our enemies because God loves his enemies. It's that simple.

Remember, we're talking to disciples here, we're talking to Christians. And part of what it means to be a Christian is actually baked into the word. Christian — a little Christ, a disciple of Christ. As we are saved by him, as we devote ourselves to him as our King, as our Lord, we're supposed to look like him. God commands in the Old Testament and the New, over and over again: be holy as I am holy. That's what we're signing up for when we come to Christ. We recognize, "Wow, I'm not holy, I'm sinful. " Jesus saved us, and then the command is still the same: be holy as I am holy.

So what we sign up for when we become Christians is to become more like God, to be sanctified, to be more like God. And in this case, here's one specific example of the way in which, as Christians, we're supposed to be striving to be like God. God loves his enemies. So we should love our enemies. That's why. That's the motivation.

And Jesus gives it to us in two pieces. He starts with the negative side of the example. He's like, "All right, you're my disciples, I've called you out of the world — so don't look like the world. " This is what he does with these three "if" questions in verses 32, 33, and 34. This is the negative side. Because you're a follower of Christ, you should look like God, not like the world. Here are three examples of how everybody on earth loves. This is what natural people do.

Verse 32: if you love those who love you, even sinners do that. Picture the worst sinner you can imagine — a mob boss, a hit man, he murders people for a living. He loves people who love him. That's what Jesus is saying. Everyone does that in our natural state. That's selfish love — hey, you do good to me, I'll do good to you. We agree.

Verse 33: if you do good to those who do good to you, who cares, man? Everybody does that. The worst sinner you can think of — some horrible dictator who's killed millions of people — yeah, he does good to those who do good to him.

How about if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive? This is like, "I'll scratch your back, knowing that one day you'll give me back. " It's selfish. Everyone does this, he's saying. Everyone, the worst sinner you can think of, goes, "I'll help this guy out because I know he's going to help me back out one day. " It's selfish motivation. It's exactly what the world does. It's worldly love. It's not really love at all. It's selfishness.

So Jesus is saying, "Guys, I called you out of the world. I've redeemed you. I've changed you. You're a new creation. So don't act like them. If your love looks no different than theirs, something might be wrong. Your love should look like my love, which is totally different than the world's. It's selfless love. "

You see that in verse 35: "But I say to you" — there's that formula again. You're thinking, "Well, God, how come I can't just love people who are good to me? " He's going, "Everybody does that. Here's what I'm telling you to do. " Verse 35: love your enemies. He just repeats it again. Do good, lend, expecting nothing in return. Literally, have no hope of getting anything back from them. This is the command.

He's given us the negative example. Why do we have to do this? Why do we have to love our enemies? Because Christ has saved us out of the world, so we're supposed to imitate Christ. We're supposed to look like God, not look like the world. So as you're thinking about whatever enemy you might have in mind — who hates you, who does not like you, who curses you — why should you love that person? Because Christ has saved you. You're not in the world anymore. You're imitating him. You're supposed to love with the love that Christ has, that God has.

That's the negative side. Now here's the positive side. If we're not supposed to look like the world, what are we supposed to look like? We're supposed to look like God. In verse 35: "Your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. "

The reason we have to treat others this way is because God treats people this way. You've been saved, you're out of the world, now you're supposed to act a certain way. He empowers you to do it. It's to look like him. It's to be holy like him.

So when verse 35 says, "You will be sons of the Most High, " it's not saying that to become a son of the Most High, you've got to love people, and then once you love enough enemies, God will go, "Now he's acting like me — come on in. " No, that's impossible. We can't love our enemies outside of Christ. The whole book of Luke up until this point has been telling us: you just come to Christ and he heals you. There's no prerequisite. You just come to him. So it's not that when we love our enemies, then God will let us in, then he will adopt us.

It's that God has adopted us. God has taken you and made you his son, made you his daughter, and now you're supposed to act like your Father. So when we love our enemies in a way that's crazy, that no one can believe — someone hates you so much, and you're loving them, and people are saying, "How is this possible? " — that's because you're acting like your Father, who adopted you, who loves everyone.

And it tells us in verse 35 that we will be rewarded. Children get rewarded when they do what their parents tell them to do. God will reward us for following him as our Father.

And how does God love people? It tells us in this verse: he loves all of them. Even the most evil people, he has mercy on them, he's kind to them — the most ungrateful, the most evil. Think about whoever you can picture as the worst enemy of Christ in this world. Think about false religions, the atheist YouTubers out there trying to make everybody doubt their faith, the people who are actively opposing God in the world right now. God is loving those people. He's merciful to those people.

People openly flaunting him, saying, "Nobody created me, nobody created me" — they're flaunting God, they're high-handedly sinning against him. And God is showing them mercy. God would be completely just to wipe them off the face of the earth. It would be completely right for God to go, "Oh, you think no one created you, and you don't care about me, and you hate me? Gone. " He could easily do that. But instead, what does God do?

He's kind to them. He has mercy upon them. God actively gives breath to his enemies. God could just stop sustaining that person and they would no longer have breath. But God, in his great mercy, sees a person who hates him and has mercy on him, has kindness on him, and allows him to continue to breathe — allows the sun to rise on him, sends the rain on the righteous and the unrighteous — because God is kind and merciful toward even his biggest enemies.

God's enemies are far worse to him than our enemies are to us, right? People can be mean to us, people can sin against us — I'm not trying to diminish that — but we have people out here who are completely ungrateful for the fact that God has given them breath at this very second. They are sinning against the holy, righteous creator of the universe. He is infinitely sinned against by his enemies, and in his great mercy, he blesses them. Some wicked people have riches and everything else. God is merciful to all of his enemies. He allows them to remain breathing, that they might come to repentance, instead of just wiping them off the face of the earth.

So Jesus summarizes this whole passage in verse 36. Again, you could just stop at verse 27 — love your enemies — that's the whole thing. But here's verse 36, summarized again: "Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. "

As Christians, we are to love our enemies because that's what God does. God looks on people who hate him and has compassion on them, has mercy, feels sorrow for them, and wants them to come to repentance — and so he loves them. This is the why. We know it's hard. God, why do I have to wake up tomorrow, go to school, and see this guy who hates me? Why do I have to do good to that guy? Because God does good to them, and we are his children, and we are to act like him. We are to be holy as he is holy.

I think that's the whole passage. That's the whole thing. Love your enemies because God loves his enemies.

How This Is Actually Possible

But I'm left with a question after studying this, after thinking through it, after reading through it. Maybe you feel this too. I told you at the beginning not to get too discouraged because God enables us to do this, but man, this is hard. How is it actually possible? I understand the motivation — all right, I'm supposed to love my enemy because God loves his enemies. Okay, I get it. I'm going to go with that motivation. I'm his child. I want to act like him. I want to get rewards from him. But it's still impossibly hard, right? I mean, somebody hates you and you're supposed to do good to them? That is so counterintuitive to us. It's so against our sinful nature that we have such a hard time believing this is even possible to do.

So I think what we need to realize, at the end of the day, when we read this passage, is that the only way we're ever going to be able to follow this command is when we realize that this is the same unconditional, unfathomable love that God first showed to us.

It's really easy when you read "love your enemies" to start thinking about other people. This guy, that guy — oh, this guy hates God. But do you realize that God being merciful to even the most ungrateful and evil people applies to us as well? We were enemies of God. Outside of Christ, if you are not in Christ, you are his enemy. You are against him.

This is everywhere in scripture, but if you want to check Romans 5: 10, we are God's enemies. James tells us that friendship with the world is enmity with God. Outside of Christ, we hate God. We break his laws. We don't thank him for giving us breath each day. We go, "God, I see that you created all this, and clearly this is wrong, but I don't care — I'm going to do it. " We sin against the holy God and are at enmity with him. We are his enemies.

But thanks be to God that God loves his enemies — unlike we can. God actually loves his enemies so much that he saves them. He takes people who hate him, who have nothing to offer to him, who've never even thought about him, and saves them. He loves them with such unconditional love that he takes them from being enemies to sons, enemies to daughters. God loves in the most unconditional, selfless way possible the most evil people.

While we were still hating him, while we didn't care about him, he reached out to us to save us. While we were still sinners, God sent his Son to save us. God sent Jesus to take the wrath that was owed to us when we didn't care at all — we didn't care about Jesus, and he's taking the wrath upon himself. And then he doesn't just leave us there — he sends his Spirit, opens our eyes, opens our ears so we can hear passages like this and believe and do it. He takes his enemies. He adopts them.

That is what this passage is about. It's about taking the love we've been given as God's enemies and sharing that with our own enemies.

It Has Been Done Before — and Can Be Done Now

And this is possible, church, this is possible. It actually is. I know it is because Christians have been doing this for 2, 000 years. Here are just some examples.

What does it look like to love your enemy? What does it look like to see a person who hates you and love them so much that you do good to them, you pray for them? Think about Stephen in the book of Acts — very similar to Christ. As he's being killed, he's praying for the people killing him, because he loves his enemies.

Think about the Apostle Paul. What could possess Paul to keep going and preaching to people who are trying to kill him? He gets mobbed, stoned, flogged, shipwrecked. You can go read the list of all the things that happened to Paul. What possibly could drive Paul to get back up after being stoned so badly that everybody thought he was dead, and go back and keep preaching to people who hate him? It's because he loves his enemies, because he's been shown love.

Some more modern examples, not just from scripture but from church history. What does it look like to love your enemies? Is it possible — can you do it? Think about missionaries like Jim Elliott, Ed McCully, Nate Saint. They went down to the jungles of South America to reach a tribe that had never heard the gospel, and that tribe killed them. They loved them, they wanted to see them be saved, and they killed them. Imagine being their family members — their spouses, their kids. This is a real enemy, man. They killed your husband. I don't know a better definition of enemy than a man who killed your husband.

And Elizabeth Elliot and the other wives and family members of those men who died — instead of sitting at home going, "I love my enemies, God — are you sure I've got to love them? I'll just try not to think bad thoughts about them" — no. They went back to the jungle and evangelized the same people who killed their families. That's loving your enemies. That's doing good to the people who hate you.

This is happening right now, all over the world. Regular Christians every day are doing this. Here's just one example happening in the city of Chicago right now. There's a group called Love Life — they're a pro-life group. We're actually going to do a prayer walk with them later this year, so you'll get to meet these guys. But there are these two full-time missionaries, Juan and Joseph. Every day, they go to the busiest abortion mill in the state of Illinois, they stand outside, and they preach the gospel.

And let me tell you — these guys are hated. Hated. You can go watch; they post the videos of it. People screaming at them, cussing them out, spitting on them, physically assaulting them, punching them in the face. They're hated. And they go back every day to preach the gospel to these people who hate them. Why? Because they love their enemies. They understand the grace, the love that God has poured out on them, and they want to see that same love go to the people who hate them, who can't stand the sight of them when they show up there on the sidewalk every day.

They're trying to save lost people. So when they see an enemy, instead of focusing on what that enemy is doing to them, they focus on the lost person who needs the mercy of God that has been shown to them.