Jesus said: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you.

Luke 6:27

There are a lot of great and important passages in the Bible about love, including the one found right at the beginning of today’s gospel reading: “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies.”

Before we get to that passage, though, I want to step back and share with you a few other great passages in the Bible about love. One of the most important themes in all of scripture. 

So here are ten key scripture verses about love. And, to me, putting them together in this way paints a vivid picture of what scripture has to teach us about this great theme. Here they are: 

1. God is love. (1 John 4:8)
2. We love because God first loved us. (1 John 4:19)
3. God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. (Romans 5:5)
4. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. (Deuteronomy 6:5)
5. Love your neighbor as yourself. (Leviticus 19:18)
6. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. (John 3:16)
7. Love one another. Just as I have loved you (Jesus said), you also should love one another. (John 13:34)
8. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)
9. Maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8)
10. Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13)

When we put all these together, we get a picture of what love looks like, according to Scripture. First of all, God is love. Just as I am human, and this building is a church, God is love. That is simply who God is, and who God will always be. And because of that, God loves us, and always will. God cannot do otherwise. It would go against God’s very nature. So God loves us unconditionally. Because God is love. 

And we love, scripture tells us, because of that love that comes from God. Yes, scripture commands us to love the Lord our God, but not to earn God’s love; instead, to return God’s love. We love because God first loved us. God’s love has been poured into our hearts. That is why we can love God. And that is how we can love one another, just as we are commanded to do. 

We don’t always do that very well, of course. We sin. But God’s love remains. And in fact, God so loved the world, and God so loves us, that he gave his only son, Jesus, who loved us, who died for us, and who taught us how to love. 

We are taught to love others as Jesus loved us. And in fact, we are taught that our love for one another is what will show the world that we are followers of Jesus. And our love for one another will cover all sorts of sins. 

Whatever else our shortcomings, if we love one another, we know that we are on the right track. Because the greatest of all of God’s gifts, and God’s commands, is love. God is love. God loves us. So love God. Love our neighbor. Love one another. And yes: love even our enemies. 

Love Our Enemies?

Today’s gospel reading is asking a lot, isn’t it? It seems like it takes all of this talk of love to a whole new level. 

Love our enemies, Jesus tells us, by doing good to those who hate us, blessing those who curse us, and praying for those who mistreat us. 

Jesus is asking a lot of those who follow him. These teachings just seem so difficult, and, frankly, so misused over the years, that it’s tempting to ignore them. Or, perhaps, just boil them all down to the Golden Rule, which appears in the middle of all these teachings. 

It’s tempting just to focus on that wonderful rule, to treat others as we want to be treated. Can’t we just stick to that one? Or maybe just stick with the greatest commandment, to love God and to love our neighbor? Why do we have to love our enemy? And what does that even mean?

And yet, Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms to do just that. And we can’t just cut and paste the things that Jesus said that we like, or that we find easy to do. We also have to tackle the harder things, too. We have to wrestle with what it means to love our enemies, and do good to those who hate us, and bless those who curse us, and pray for those who mistreat us. 

Why? Because that is what Jesus did. That is who Jesus was. And that is who we are meant to be as well. People who love everyone, even those who don’t love us back. 

Who Are Our Enemies?

As I was preparing this sermon, I spent some time thinking about what it means to love our enemies. Not just what it means to love, but also who it is that we are supposed to love.

Who is our enemy? And why does Jesus want us to love even our enemy? It seems to me that we often call someone our enemy to justify not loving them, or even hating them. But Jesus does not give us that option. He asks us to love all, even those we would rather hate.

And this is a striking teaching. Everyone who was listening would have expected Jesus to encourage love of neighbor, but not love of enemy. Jesus wants to push our love past those who look like us, or think like us, or act like us. Past those who love us back.

What credit is that, he asks, if we simply love those who love us? But like the Good Samaritan, we must love those who are incapable of loving us. Love without agenda or expectation.  

So what Jesus is really talking about here is that we should just love indiscriminately. We shouldn’t stop and think about who deserves our love, or who needs our love. Love our neighbor and love our enemy. Love all.

And there is something very freeing about this, isn’t there? We just love. And let God sort out the rest. When we live by this teaching, life gets simpler. We are not trying to figure out who to love, and who to be angry at. We are not trying to figure out who to condemn, and who to forgive. 

We let God sort all of that out. We just resolve to love everyone. And that is so much simpler, isn’t it? Not easy, but simple. 

Learning from Jesus – A Love Rooted in Faith

But also, perhaps, a little vague. So what does it look like, more specifically? 

And the best example, to me, is always Jesus himself. He lived what he taught, in a perfect way. So looking at his life can show us how to do as he taught. 

When I think about Jesus loving his enemies, I think first of his motivation. It begins, even for Jesus, with his deep sense that he is loved by his heavenly father. When Jesus is baptized, he hears a voice from heaven that tells him how loved he is. It all starts there. Even Jesus loves because God the Father first loved him. 

But why could Jesus love everyone, even his enemies? Not just because of the love he felt, but also because he believed with all his heart that his heavenly father was in charge of his world. And Jesus believed this regardless of what was happening in his life, or in the world around him. 

Believing that God is in charge helps us to relax a bit, and trust, and from that we can love even those who do not love us back, and love even those we disagree with. 

We can do this because of this deep inner conviction that God is in charge of his world. It is a simple but life-changing belief.

And that is what Jesus did so well. He believed that God was in charge of this world. And so he chose to love his enemies, even when they mocked him and spat upon him. He was determined to do good to those who hated him, even when they cried out for his crucifixion. He opted to bless them when they cursed him, and he prayed for them when they mistreated him. Even when hanging from the cross, he forgave those who put him there: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Learning from Jesus – Keeping the Tank Full

But I want to offer one other learning from Jesus on how to love those who don’t love us back. If we are going to do that, we need to keep our love tank full, you might say. And this is something that Jesus did throughout his earthly ministry. He took the time to fill up on his heavenly father’s love. And he did this in a variety of ways. Sometimes, he would sneak off by himself to pray. Other times, he would go to dinner with his friends. He would even take naps when he needed to, trusting his heavenly father to take care of him as he slept, even in the midst of storms. 

Jesus took time to care for himself, for his friendships, and for his spiritual life. And he could love his enemies, those who did not love him back, because he did not rely on their love to keep his tank full. 

Jesus taught us that we do not create this love – we receive it from above, until it overflows. 

And once it overflows, we don’t worry about where it goes. We love indiscriminately. Loving even those who do not love us back. Just as Jesus did. 

With his heart full of love, taking time for himself, and with the faith that God was in charge of this world, Jesus lived fearlessly, loved courageously, and forgave endlessly. And aren’t we thankful for that? 

Because that love and forgiveness is for all, including us. The truth is that sometimes we need not only Jesus’ love, but his forgiveness. When we are not loving him back, in the way we know we ought to be. When we are not sharing that love, in the way we know we are taught to be.

It is then that we hold onto the good news that Jesus loves us all, always. It is who he is, and what he does. Because he is love. 

Closing

The world will know we are his followers by our love for one another. That is what Jesus said, and that is what I believe. But perhaps it is also true that the world will become convinced of this love when we love everyone, just as Jesus taught us to do. And that includes those who do not love us back. 

So let us love God, and love ourselves, and love one another, with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. But let us also love those who will not love us back, just as Jesus did, until all the world knows the love that we are blessed to have in the one who is love, the one who will never stop loving us, to the end of the age. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.