Mat 5:48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
My first thoughts were I have never really seen that verse before, perfect, oh no, must be perfect, how am I going to explain that, be perfect! That means we have got a get out clause, we can't be perfect, oh Mammy, Daddy what am I going to do. Well a look at the word in a little more detail and you find the word means : Be complete, be consistent, it don't mean sinless or holy as God is, it talks of being or having uniformity, a completeness, no parts missing, consistency and it's was a word used or applied to machinery that was complete, in all it's parts and in this case we are being asked to be complete Christians, do not be incomplete or in want but be followers of Christ and fulfil this duty of loving your enemy as God does. And you know enough to know how God love his enemies.
So nothing too scary in that verse now we know what that means, perfect and consistent in your lovingness towards others. And we do it because He asks us to do it. Not because it saves you nothing you do can save you, Christ does the saving, it's not tied up in I need to do this it saves me or I'm doomed, nothing of the sort but certainly it will be one of those thing that showed whether or not you conformed to the likeness of Christ.
Why am I smiling at that? Because I remember Derek's lesson a few weeks past, it means as long as I'm truly on the road to conforming, as long as I follow Christ as long as I love God first and others second I'm allowed to get it wrong sometimes. Because it will not condemn me as long as I'm in Christ Jesus. Now if I wilfully disobey, that's a different matter.
So Christ says to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. It couldn't be any plainer. Love your enemies, something we all know about, the thing that we should be doing, but I'll bet not the first thing that comes to mind when you suddenly find yourself confronted with or in the company of one of them, oh yeah got to love you. Not the first thing of the top of your head when you come across someone hostile to you and showing it. No, you bite your lip retire to a quite place and pledge sincerely to kill them or maim them or if your in anyway half decent, just to hate them for the rest of your life...
Hopefully not a position you have ever been in, having an enemy or if you have been in one, hopefully not long. But it can happen. And it can be a painful place to be in and to recover from.
Let me read you this.
In an emotionally charged courtroom, a South African woman stood listening to white police officers acknowledge their atrocities.
Officer van de Broek acknowledged that along with others, he had shot her 18-year-old son at point-blank range. He and the others partied while they burned the son's body, turning it over and over on the fire until it was reduced to ashes.
Eight years later, van de Broek and others returned to seize her husband. She was forced to watch her husband, bound on a woodpile, as they poured gasoline over his body and ignited the flames that consumed his body. The last words she heard her husband say were "forgive them."
Now, van de Broek awaited judgement. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission asked the woman what she wanted.
"I want three things," she said calmly. "I want Mr. van de Broek to take me to the place where they burned my husband's body. I would like to gather up the dust and give him a decent burial.
"Second, Mr. van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him.
"Third, I would like Mr. van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him, too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real."
As the elderly woman was led across the courtroom, van de Broek fainted, overwhelmed.
That's an extreme case.
The reality is that if your hurting and that hurt my be less a physical hurt more a emotional and stressed induced kind were you are powerless to do anything and you have to sit it out, while your world is ripped asunder and yet you got to love that person...
Love for your enemies doesn't come easily, but when it does come and it must come! When it does come it springs from the heart. Love doesn't spring forth from a void, nor a spiteful disposition, love can only come from a loving place. You have to have love or be willing to posses it, or get it, pursue it, beg for it, pray for it, or have been subject to receiving it in enough quantities and have hopefully absorbed and or be on the road to being loving before you can love. You can't give away what you don't have.
And this command / request from the Christ says love your enemies. There ain't no two ways about it, that side of you has to develop, you have to be complete.
So we do it as Christ does it, as God does, as complete well rounded Christians who are willing to conform. And by the way that word completeness and well roundedness is not just about loving enemies it's about being the same anywhere, any time inside church and outside it. It means not just being only a Christian at church but in the work place or any where else, it means being a consistent Christian no matter where, when, who, why, what.
Be consistent and completely a follower of Christ. So how would we love our enemies? There are a multitude of ways to love them, your old enough to work that out, some of it will be in the doing when you get the opportunity, sometimes you won't get near them or dare not go near them and that loving will be at a distance but you need to understand you have to get the heart right first and the rest will follow and your heart won't be perfect unless it contains this love for your enemy .
And also we have to pray for them. It would seem the easer part but maybe not, but pray we must and thus we become more complete.
Christ also said
Mat 5:46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
Consider all that has been said before, consider this verse, as well as
Mat 5:47 if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
We are call to be more loving, more sincere, to love our friends, our neighbours and our
enemies, there is a whole constancy, completeness to our lives and as he has loved then shouldn't we?
Look I don't doubt for one min that we have any problem with the idea, the idea is great
but living it! Well.
It goes against the grain of just about everything you see out there!
The world will think you some limp wristed, pee brain, weak God freak! They won't get it
because they can't get it! You will not get most of the people to accept this unless they have tasted Christ, you will be looked at as weak and airy fairy! They don't understand, it seems like foolishness, but isn't that the the problem? They just don't get the gospel or they would have chosen Christ long ago, the whole thing seems like madness.
So ask yourself do you want to be a complete, full functioning, well rounded, Christ loving,
sincere, light bring, joyful, hopeful, patient, kind, enduring, faithful, forgiving, loving follower of Christ?
Then remember to love, to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
In this action you will be more God like.
In this action you will preach loudly the gospel.
In this action you will say, not my will God but yours be done.
And You and me, we, can take this giant, no not step forward but leap forward in god -like -ness by loving your enemies and praying for them and doing them good.
So to love your enemies is part of being complete Christian. So the verses says much about love but it has something to do with not hating. Living with hate everyday is more punishing for the one that holds it. And you can't serve two masters. Hate blights the life of the one who wears it, lives with it. Take away hate and replace it with love is to be a tree planted by a river. To live with love is to live with God. Because God is love
One other thing before I finish, there is also the redemptive side to love, and we are recipients of that ourselves and when we love our enemies we allow this opportunity. So here we have it I've taken longer than Christ to simply say love your enemies, he didn't launch into a whole bunch of reasons why, he just asked we have allowed ourselves this little diversion.
so before I end let Him have the last word.
Mat 5:44 I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
Mat 5:45 so that you may be sons and daughters 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.
Mat 5:46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
Mat 5:47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
Mat 5:48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Be strong, be complete.