Introduction: The Love Displayed on the Cross

They had just driven the spikes through his hands and feet. Blood ran down his face from a crown of thorns they shoved onto his head and splashed into the puddles in the mud below him. Soldiers mocked and spit at him, laughing as they gambled for his clothes as he was nailed naked to the cross. And in that moment, racked with unimaginable pain, Jesus looked down at the very men who were torturing him and killing him, and from a heart filled with compassion and love, he prayed these words that he meant from his heart:

“Father, forgive them.”

They mocked him again and again. “He saved others, but he can’t save himself,” they said. Jesus struggled to breathe. The pain in his hands, his feet, his back, his lungs, his head—every single part of him as his body hung there—was excruciating in its intensity. Yet this physical agony was nothing compared to the wrath that he was enduring from his own Father. Millions of eternities of judgment poured out upon him for sins he never committed.

Keep this picture in your mind. He could have saved himself in an instant. With just a word, he could have made it stop and come down from the cross. But he didn’t. Why? Because he was displaying the Father’s love, his own love, for rebels. The rebels who surrounded that cross and the rebels who are listening to my voice now. Every one of us deserving judgment but being shown grace.

Now open your eyes and back up three years. The same Jesus who would hang there on the cross is preaching the sermon that we’re studying. He knew that cross was coming. That’s why he was born. And he’s teaching his followers about his Father’s—and their Father’s—holiness and his radical love, calling them and calling us to reflect this same perfect love.

Now, with that radical love that led Jesus to the cross—don’t get comfortable with that reality. We say “the cross,” we say “God’s love”—don’t get comfortable with that. Stand in awe. Be in awe at God’s love.

The Text: Matthew 5:43-48

And let’s read Jesus’s words correcting the Pharisees, the hypocritical Pharisees that were around, the spiritual leaders that were miscommunicating God’s word and God’s standard to the people. Jesus stood there and he preached those words. Let’s listen. You can turn there, Matthew 5:43, read along in your own Bible or on the screen behind me.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 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. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43-48, ESV)

So, we’re going to break this part of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount down into things to be rejected and things to be reflected.

Reject Fake Love (The World’s Way)

We’re going to start with Jesus’s command to reject fake love. Reject fake love. This is what the Pharisees… remember we have said, if you remember, every single week when I teach, every single one of these phrases in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “You have heard it said,” and then he says a distortion of God’s word that the Pharisees were teaching. And then Jesus corrects it and says, “Let me tell you the true heart of the law that’s been hidden.”

And he does something here where in the past he was actually quoting a part of God’s word and maybe a misinterpretation of it. Here, he’s actually saying one part that is in God’s word and another part that’s nowhere to be found in God’s word. He says, “You’ve heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbor…’”—that’s actually in the Old Testament, right? That’s all over the Old Testament. That’s in Leviticus 19. We’ve quoted that a lot in this sermon series.

Leviticus 19 says, “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. 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 Yahweh.”

And do you hear what he said? He’s talking about the way that Israel must be among their own people. You’re to love your neighbor. You’re not to bear a grudge. You’re not supposed to take vengeance. So you know what the Pharisees did with that? They ignored the whole rest of the chapter where God told them how to deal with outsiders who came in. And they said, “Because Leviticus 19 says ‘you shall not hate your brother’ and ‘you shall love your neighbor,'” you know what they said? “Love your neighbor, hate your enemy.”

This was the way that the religious leaders in that day were teaching the people. It actually might be the way that you or I take God’s word when we say, “Love your neighbor.” Like, “Okay, I’ll love my neighbor.” Jesus said true love isn’t reserved just for your neighbor. It isn’t reserved for your brother only. It has to go all the way to your enemies.

So, you know, I’ve read how some of the old stuff that the scribes and Pharisees, some of their teachings were saved. I’ve quoted throughout these messages passages from their teaching on the Old Testament that shows these distortions. We actually see a little bit of this again. You remember we’ve talked about this—who remembers what the Dead Sea Scrolls were?

[Audience interaction about Dead Sea Scrolls]

Yeah, so a shepherd was sitting around some caves down by the Dead Sea and chucked a rock up into a hole. Some jars broke open, they went up there, and they found some old writing in there. It’s so dry by the Dead Sea, the writings were able to last for almost 2,000 years. And so they went up and they found copies of the Old Testament. Lo and behold, they’re actually exactly what we have the Old Testament to be. So that helps us understand that the Old Testament has been preserved. God’s word has been preserved. Remember we talked about that when we learned “What is the Bible?”

But they found some other things in those caves. Those writings were written by a group of people at Qumran—you don’t need to know all about that—but it was a group of Jewish, very, very pious Jews. And they found a lot of writings that were interpreting the Old Testament or telling them how it was—sort of like if we were to write down my sermons or our sermons, and they helped say what they believed. And they actually found in those caves, about 100, maybe 150 years after Jesus was teaching, they found this exact thing where they were taught, “Love your neighbor, love fellow Jews, but hate your enemies because if they’re your enemies, they’re God’s enemies and you should hate them.” That was the mark of religious people in that day, religious Jews.

And Jesus comes and he head-on attacks that false teaching, this distortion. Because do you know what that did? That created a fake, hypocritical kind of love that looks good on the outside to other Jews, to other people. We might do that in the church: love others in the church. You should love your brother. That’s actually the mark of a Christian. “They’ll know us,” Jesus says, “they’ll know you are my disciples by your love for one another.” It’s all over the New Testament as well as the Old. You’re to love your neighbor. You’re to love your brother and sister in Christ if you’re a believer. But that doesn’t mean that you’re off the hook on loving others who are outside the church, outside your family, even those who might hate you.

You see, these religious people, they had a love that looked good to them. It felt good because they said, “Yeah, I’m following God’s law.” God’s law said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Like, perfect. If somebody loves me, I’ll love them back. I’m meeting the law’s command. God says, “No.” You’re actually called to something far higher.

Reflect Your Father’s Love (God’s Way)

He said, “You’re to reject that fake love and reflect your Father’s love.” Listen to what Jesus said. This is stunning. You might be comfortable with this because you’ve heard it, but think about what it’s actually asking you to do, what Jesus is actually telling you that you are to do.

“You’ve heard it said this, but I say to you”—this was Jesus who, remember, was going to the cross. This was God’s Word incarnate, the one who spoke with power, the one whose words spoke everything into existence. And at the end of the sermon, people said, “We’ve never heard teaching like this. This one teaches with authority.” Jesus said, “I say to you, love your enemies, not just your neighbor. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons—not of Abraham—but sons of your Father who’s in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust.”

So listen to verse 44 again. He said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

I love what A.W. Pink says on this. He has a very good set of sermons on these. He said, “Imagine yourself on the hillside hearing Jesus preach and wanting to follow him.” And you’ve heard him say many impossible things up to this point. I mean, think of all the impossible things you’ve heard him say: cut off your arm, gouge your eye out, don’t even be angry with your brother, turn the other cheek, if somebody says go a mile, go two, don’t even look with lustful intent. And after this, he says, “Love your enemies. Pray for your persecutors.”

These were the Jews who had been conquered. They had Roman soldiers all around. They were waiting for the day—they thought Messiah was coming to set them free from Roman oppression. It hadn’t been long before this when Pilate actually killed somebody when they were going to the temple to make sacrifices. Pilate had the soldiers kill them, and their blood spattered and mixed with their sacrifices. These were the people who had enemies all throughout history. They had been taken into captivity, conquered many times. And they knew they were God’s people; they weren’t supposed to be conquered like this. They hated their enemies, and they couldn’t wait for God’s justice to come upon them.

And they hear this, and they’d be filled instantly with resentment. And they’d exclaim that this request is impractical and absurd. Do you think it is? Like, think about what that actually means in your life: to love your enemies. You might not have many enemies yet, but what if you did? What if somebody actually was attacking your family? What if somebody was actually causing you great harm? There have been tons of times throughout Christian history where there were enemies who wanted to kill Christians.

Jesus said this, and he lived it out from the cross as he was being killed. But it sounds a little bit absurd. We instinctively, automatically, inevitably, we resent it when somebody does something wrong to us. And it feels like God saying, Jesus saying, “Love your enemies”—that’s like, no matter how hard I try, I can’t change that resentment that wells up inside of me. It’s very natural when somebody says something mean to you, does something mean to you, for you to automatically be mad at them. We talked about that, right, with anger. It’s not natural for you when somebody hits you, insults you, saying, “Turn your other cheek, bring it again.” And God says this is the kind of love that you’re actually called to.

Feel it. It’s absurd to say, “Love your enemies.” It’s sort of like Jesus saying, “Forgive somebody when they sin against you 70 times 7″—times without end. They sin against you, you forgive them. They sin against you again, you forgive them. They hate you, they persecute you, you love them and pray for them.

That sounds, and it is, impossible when we have our eyes on ourselves or we have our eyes on our circumstances. Like, actually think about what that means. This is so simple: when somebody insults you at school, if somebody were to steal your stuff or hit you, your response should be love and compassion and prayer. That’s impossible unless your eyes are on the cross, unless you have the Father’s love in mind.

With eyes on the cross, love for your enemies isn’t absurd. It’s the only right response for those who receive such love. Think back to what we talked about two weeks ago. You remember the story of the unforgiving servant? Remember the pictures we had up here and the story? And the guy who owed 10,000 lifetimes of debt—so much he could never repay—and he was forgiven. And his neighbor came and said, “Here’s my list of what I owe you.” And the servant who’d just been forgiven 10,000 lifetimes of debt said, “Pay what you owe!” It doesn’t make sense. Why would you say, “Pay what you owe,” if you’d just been forgiven an infinite amount?

And I’ll tell you what: love for an enemy is impossible apart from God. But when you’ve received as much mercy and love as we have, if you’re a Christian, from the Father, there is no other possible response than to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. It actually should be the description, the picture of what a Christian is. And every single person here should feel, “Oh, that’s not me. I fall so far short of that.”

The Father’s Example: Common Grace

And so Jesus doesn’t just say, “Hey, do it. Love your enemies.” He points us to the Father’s example. What is he saying? The Father… what was the example he gave of God the Father’s general love? He doesn’t even point to the cross here, which is his special love for his children. But what does he point to? You guys see it? Look down, look at the text.

He says the Father makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust.

Have you guys ever been surprised that good things happen in the world? We get asked the question a lot, and Christians are like, “Oh no, how do I answer it? Why do bad things happen? Does this mean that God isn’t good?” You’ll hear this all the time when there’s a flood or an earthquake or bad things happen in the world. They say, “How could a good God let that happen?” That’s the wrong question. This is the question we have to be asking: Why does the sun rise every day? Why did the sun rise? This whole world, ever since Adam, stands and we’re all shaking our hands at God saying, “I don’t want you.” You’re no different, right? From the day that you were born, every chance that you’ve had, apart from God’s grace in your life, you’ve tried to get out from under God’s rule. You actually—every person hates God so much that if they were powerful enough, and this includes you, you would kill God if you could.

Think about it. If you could put yourself in the place of God and say, “God, I don’t want your rules. I actually want to be God instead. I want to live the way I want to live. I don’t want your consequences.” You would kill God if you could. And we did. God came to the earth, and we killed him.

When God looked down at man before the flood, he saw every intention of man’s heart was only evil continually. And that is true of every single one of you from the day you’ve been born, unless you’ve been saved by grace.

This common grace of the sun rising, the earth—we shouldn’t have that. God should have—he would have been right to just be done with it from the day that Adam sinned, just to say, “Alright, we’re done. We’re wiping this out.” And he would be right if this morning he said, “Alright, the sun’s not coming up today. You guys are done.” And he was right when he sent the flood that killed every single person, everything living, except for Noah and his family and those in the ark.

And yet, every day the sun rises and the rain falls and crops grow. Every single morning when the sun rises, you and I should be reminded: that’s another day we don’t deserve. That’s the Father’s love towards a rebellious world. Not only me generally, but think about all the people in the world who deny that God even exists and they hate him, right? They simultaneously say “There is no God” and they hate him from their heart. That’s humanity. And God’s sun still rises, and he still provides food.

Take a big breath in. Feel how good that feels. Sometimes you don’t know how good it feels to breathe until you can’t. You know, you had a bad cold this flu season, you know how good it feels to breathe? You didn’t deserve that breath. That’s God’s grace.

And God goes further than even this, than the sun rising and the rain falling. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” That’s the way that God loved the world. If you’re a believer, you can say along with Paul in Galatians 2:20, “God loved me and gave himself for me.”

Or 1 John 4:10, listen, this is true: “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son”—this is talking about the Father’s love—”he loved us and he sent his Son to be the payment, the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another”—and not one another only, but also our enemies.

Romans 5:10 says that “while we were enemies… Christ died for us.”

This doesn’t mean that God’s general love, that his patient love, will keep going on out into eternity. We heard this morning of the day when that runs out, right? We’re at the end of Revelation 19 in the morning service. There will be a day when God’s general grace, where the sun rising on his enemies and the rain falling on his enemies, there will be a last day for that to happen. But for now, it reminds us of his patience. And you know what? It also reminds you that when somebody sins against you, you know God will make it right. Right? There will not be any sin that goes unpunished. If somebody sins against you, God saw it. Don’t worry, it will be handled.

So that’s why it says in Romans 12, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God.” Right? If somebody sins against you, you can say, “God didn’t pay me what I owe for my sin. I’m not going to pay them.” But that sin will be paid for. Think about it. That sin—if somebody sins against you, even in a great way, and you just find it so hard in your heart to love them, you’re like, “Oh man, they sinned against me. They stole my stuff. They insulted me.” Take it all the way to the worst examples: “They killed my family.” That’s happened. And God still calls the Christian to love them.

Pray for Your Enemies

And not only to love them but to pray for them. Think about that prayer where if you say, “God, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. God, forgive them like you forgave me.” When Jesus calls you to pray—you see there’s two commands here? You see what they are? There’s one command: love. There’s another: pray. There’s two commands.

It’s really hard to truly pray for someone who you hate. But love and prayer—it’s saying it from your heart. Jesus doesn’t want just you to show them fake, outside love, right? He said reject that fake love. Love them from the heart and pray for them from a heart that truly wants their good. It’s a command for radical heart transformation, genuine love that wants their good.

What kind of prayer would you pray for them? Somebody who’s been forgiven as much as you, if you’re a Christian, what kind of prayer would you pray? It’d probably sound a lot like Jesus’s: “God, forgive them. God, forgive them. They sinned against me. Don’t count that sin against them. I take that one on, Jesus, just like you did mine.”

You know what? Somebody who loves like that is the kind of person that God would love to use to save your neighbor, to save your enemy. Do you remember what he said—you remember back to the salt and light sermon? That was a long time ago. Jesus said, “Salt, light.” Do you remember what was distinct, what the importance of salt and light was? Is that it stands out, right? When you put salt in your food, you taste it. When you put light in a dark room, you see it. Do you know what will stand out in the world? This. Nobody does this on their own. And when a Christian does this, this is why Jesus said, “Let your light shine before men, so that they may see your good works and glorify who? Your Father in heaven.”

That was the last time that Jesus mentioned that. This is the kind of thing, when they say, “What? How do you love me like this?” “Well, let me tell you about my Father’s love. It’s a love that this world doesn’t know. It’s a love that transcends this world, that comes from heaven. That’s where I’m going. You come too. It’s in Jesus.”

And so this is the kind of love… What did Jesus say when he was on the cross? “Father…” This language. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them.” And do you know what it says here? It actually says, “…so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.” Do you guys see how huge that is? How could us, who are his enemies, think to say, “Oh yeah, my Father’s in heaven”? The only possible way is because God takes his enemies and he adopts them as children. He makes us his children. If you’re adopted, you know how amazing it is to say, “This isn’t my family by blood. I have no claim to this family, but I’m part of it because I was made a child.” God does that for you. While you were his enemies, he makes you his child, if you would only believe.

And then he makes you like him. So what he’s not saying here is, “Hey, if you love your enemies, I’ll make you my kid.” Right? He’s not saying that. He’s instead saying, “Love your enemies and prove yourself to be what you are: a child of God.” And the flip side is true. If you don’t love your enemies, what are you showing yourself to be? Not a child.

So do you earn God’s love? Do you earn God’s love when you love somebody else? Absolutely not. You must know that. Did the unforgiving—did that servant earn God’s love if he had forgiven his fellow servant the hundred denarii? No. He’d already been forgiven. And that’s the situation you and I find ourselves in. If you trust God and say, “God, make me your child. Make me your child,” he will. If you say, “God, forgive me,” he will. And then you and I have the amazing opportunity to reflect our Father’s love.

So I want you to think about one person in your life now, the person who’s the hardest to love. The person who’s done maybe the most bad things to you. The one who you just—man, I hope I don’t run into that guy, that girl. How would treating them with genuine kindness and love look? You can’t muster that up or try hard enough to do that. That will only come from putting your eyes on the cross.

I said at the end of last week’s message, we can’t ever grow tired of looking at the cross, remembering the cross. You and I can’t ever get too comfortable with that gospel message. This is why opening up your Bible first thing in the morning and reminding yourself of who God is—that’s the first question we ask: What does this teach me about God? And then what’s question two? “What does this teach me about God?” is question one. Who remembers question two?

[Audience Interaction: How does this affect me?]

Yeah, how must this affect me? Do you see what this is? What is this teaching about God? Oh, God’s patient. God loves, loved me. God sends his Son—or sends his sun and rain on the just and the unjust. How must this affect me? I have to love my enemies. I have to pray for those who persecute me.

Loving Like the World vs. Loving Like the Father

What does it show if you don’t? Next point: it shows that you are just like the world, right? Loving those who love you is nothing special. And that’s what Jesus says: “If you love those who love you, so what?” You don’t have to know God to love like that, right? Everybody in the world should love like that. That’s just natural. If somebody’s really, really nice to you, you love them. If somebody gives you stuff, you love them.

Think about the world. Social groups are generally made up of loving—you say, “Hey, I want people around me who are going to make me more popular. I want somebody around me who’s going to give me something. I want people around me who are nice to me. I want people around me who make me feel good about myself.” Those are the people you naturally love. You should love them. But that’s what he says when he says, “If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same.”

What was he saying there? Even those who don’t know God—right, this was for Jews. The Jews were God’s people. They were supposed to know God. They had all the Old Testament. They’d been shown God’s special covenant love. Do not even those who don’t know God greet their brothers and love people who love them back? There’s nothing supernatural there.

But the kind of supernatural love that would be like salt in a bland meal or light in a dark room, to cause people to glorify their Father in heaven, is the kind of love that Jesus calls you to.

The Standard and the Promise: Be Perfect

And so next, he ends—this is the culmination of this whole section of his sermon:

“You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

You’re not only supposed to love like your Father loves; you’re actually called to the standard of your Father’s perfection. Oh no. We don’t meet that. We don’t meet that.

But there’s actually something here. This is a command: “You are to be…” It’s also a promise: “You are to be…” You will be, if he’s your Father. You will be perfect.

First John says this effectively. 1 John 3:2, listen: “Beloved, we are God’s children now,” he says, if you’ve believed in God, you’re God’s child now, “and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.”

That’s the standard: God’s perfection. The promise is God’s perfection. But we’re not there yet. Obedience still matters. Earlier in that same book of 1 John, John writes, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” He hung on the cross and said, “Father, forgive them.” And now he stands in heaven and says, “Father, forgive them.”

“He is the propitiation for our sins.” Who knows what propitiation means? It’s a big word. Who knows what propitiation is? We have to know these big words because they’re in the Bible.

[Audience interaction about propitiation: substitute payment]

Substitute payment. Yeah. He says, “I’ll pay instead.” Jesus stands in heaven and he says, “I paid for that.” And he is—he has the righteousness that is demanded at the beginning of all of this. Back in verse 20, he says, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” And now he concludes, basically, unless you’re perfect, you’re not getting in.

And Jesus, the one who hung and said, “Father, forgive them,” gives us his perfection too, his righteousness. “For our sake he [God] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21). We are judged as if we’ve never sinned, and Jesus is judged as if he sinned every sin of everybody who would trust in him.

And not only that, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9). He doesn’t leave us in this state where we are left in our sinfulness, but he actually changes us from the heart, makes us like our Father, takes out your old dead heart and gives you a new heart, molds you over time into his image. And one day, when we see him—if you’ve trusted him—one day when he comes back, after you die, or when he brings you to him, you’ll be made like him in a moment. You’ll actually accomplish—you’ll actually be made to this perfect image, just like he requires, just like he provides.

This is amazing. You will be made perfect. You’ll be made holy, set apart from your sin. You’ll be made perfect in love, integrity, truthfulness, mercy, and forgiveness.

Responding to Our Imperfection

And we are called to that same perfection now. So if you’re a Christian—or if you say, maybe you’ll say, “I don’t know if I’m a Christian.” Say, “I want to be, but when I look at my life, I don’t love people like that.” What do Christians do? If you’re saying, “God, I want to love like you loved me, but I don’t.” If you realize today you’re like, “God, I don’t love like you do. I actually got mad at my friend when he sinned against me. I hate that person.” What does a Christian do when they find themselves—when they find sin in their lives, when they say, “I don’t meet this perfect standard, and there’s a sin in my life and I see it”? What does a Christian do?

I’ll tell you what a non-Christian does. A non-Christian tries harder, says, “I’ll clean that up.” Or maybe a non-Christian says, “I don’t care. It’s not that big of a deal. Everybody does it.” Non-Christians say lots of things. But what a Christian does is a Christian says, “God, that’s sin. Will you forgive me? God, that’s sin. Will you cleanse me from that?” They confess it. And then they repent. Do you guys know what repent means? It means if I’m walking this way towards hating my enemy, I turn the other way. Repent just means turn around, go the other way. Stop doing what you were doing. Confess that as sin and turn and start loving your neighbor and love your enemies, so that you may be children, sons of your Father who is in heaven.

So pray. Pray that God would make you love like this. Pray thank God for this love. And pray. Pray that God would show the same reconciling, forgiving love to your enemies.

Conclusion and Discussion

This is the mark of a Christian. This is the way that we must love. And this is the way that God loved us. So let’s go to our discussion groups. Keep your eye on the gospel. There are going to be lots of good questions. Go through discussion groups and then talk to your parents. Talk to your parents about what you’ve been learning and how you can walk in this.