"Loving Your Bullies” Series

Matthew 5:43-48. [43]"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' [44] But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, [45]so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. [46] For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? [47] And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? [48] You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (ESV)

Have you ever heard people argue about something they really don’t understand? Sometimes kids will argue about complex concepts that they only have a passing knowledge of. Tensions have been high during this recent election season. Hostility has erupted on campaign stops and frustrations have boiled over. For kids, we instruct them to deal with disagreements in a peaceful way. Hostility and bullying to get your way does not lead to productive conflict resolution. It leads to either escalating force on all parties or forced inequality and injustice. Only genuine love can transcend differences.

In Matthew 5, Jesus’ sixth, and last, illustration contrasts the false righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees with the true righteousness of God, Jesus contrasts their kind of love with God’s. Nowhere does humanistic, self-centered system of religion differ more from God’s divine standards than in the matter of love. Nowhere is God’s standard so corrupted as in the way the self-righteous scribes and Pharisees viewed themselves in relation to others. Nowhere was it more evident that they lacked the humility, mourning over their own sin, meekness, yearning for true righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, and peacemaking spirit that are to belong to God’s kingdom citizens.

How we regard those who are hostile to us is the ultimate test of our spiritual health. We can intellectually agree with the concept of love and even profess it, but when confronted with hostility, how do we react? Can we look back this month, or week and truly say that we have shown the love of Christ even to those who were most hostile to us? We must take care that we neither profess false expectations that everyone will be our friends or that we will not experience hostility. Often when we do the right things, we experience such conflict. Jesus certainly did. When we focus on what our actions and what our attitudes must be, and not making excuses based on what someone else has done, then we show ourselves to belong to God’s kingdom.

How can we love those who are hostile to us? Jesus shows us how in looking at 1) The Misinterpretation: (Matthew 5:43), 2) The Mandate (Matthew 5:44), and 3) The Motive: (Matthew 5:45-48).

We can love, even our bullies when we understand:

1) The Misinterpretation: (Matthew 5:43)

Matthew 5:43 [43]"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' (ESV)

The phrase beginning verse 43 is the only part of the tradition that was adapted from the Old Testament. Leviticus 19:18 requires that: [18] You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. (ESV). This command was often repeated in the New Testament (Matt. 19:19; 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Rom. 13:9; Gal. 5:14; James 2:8). Love for others, shown in sympathetic concern and actual care for them, had always been God’s standard for human relations. As in all the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is speaking here about personal standards of righteousness, not civil law. In the fullest sense an Israelite’s neighbor was anyone in need whom he might come across in his daily living. This relates very much to our Lord’s answer to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” in Luke 10:30–37.)

As in each of the five preceding illustrations, Jesus repeats the essence of the contemporary traditional teaching, in this case the teaching about love. Love, said the ancients, was to be reserved for those you get along with. Enemies were to be hated. Satan’s perversions of God’s revelation almost always touch on the truth at some point. A little truth makes deception more believable and acceptable. The rabbis and scribes had kept a part of God’s truth about love. In spite of such clear revelation, rabbinic tradition had perverted Old Testament teaching both by what was omitted and by what was added. Omitted in the tradition was the phrase to love your neighbor “as yourself,” which was a key part of the Leviticus text but could not possibly fit into their scheme of proud self-righteousness. It simply was inconceivable that they should care for any other person as much as they cared for themselves.