WE now direct our attention to the teaching Jesus gives concerning loving our enemies. The trouble for us is that it is natural to hate our enemies, and we want to hit back at those who treat us badly or do harm to us. The fact is that we are motivated by self-interest. We desire to be happy and so we want to preserve our well-being. When someone acts against us and upsets our sense of well-being, we want to retaliate and hit back. Resentment against them rises in our hearts and minds. To love our enemies is not natural to us fallen and sinful creatures. The ordinary person in the world feels it quite right and natural to hate those who harm them, and the idea of tit-for-tat seems just. Jesus has already told us that we must not hit back, but rather return good for evil. Now he tells us we must also love our enemies.

This is so difficult! How are we to do this? Jesus gives us particular instruction. He tells us we must pray for those who persecute us. Praying means we must seek their well being and not their harm. This is extended for us by further instruction that is found in certain ancient manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, but not all, and not the best. However they are given us in the margin of the NIV and they are valuable. Jesus tells us we must bless people and not curse them, and he tells us we must return good to them and not evil to those who hate us.

This is loving as God calls us to love. We find this hard first of all because self wants to hit back at those who hurt us, but we also find it hard because our view of loving is that we must like people. We can�t see how loving can be shown without liking a person. The fact is that we are not called upon to like everyone, and it is not possible to like everyone. However we are called upon to love everyone, and it is possible to do this even when we don�t like them.

Love is something we do. Loving is how we treat people, and think of people, and act towards people. Loving is always seeking to do good to people, to help them, and treat them with consideration and courtesy. Loving is to seek the well-being of others, and provide for them when they are in need. Loving is to be kind to people. How this works out in practice varies with each individual case, but in each case we seek good for people.

There is a very obvious and powerful example of this in the Acts of the apostles. When Stephen, the deacon, was being stoned to death by an angry crowd, we find him praying for those killing him, and praying that God would forgive them. There is not hate in his mind and heart towards them. He wants them to know every good, and even the gift of God�s grace unto eternal life. This is love in action.

Why does God call us to act like this? The reason is that God is like this. God shows his love to everyone. Jesus speaks of this by saying that he causes the sun and rain to fall on all, whether good or bad. He treats people well, and he gives them time to repent. He offers them his free salvation from the deserving which their sins demand. He gave his Son to die for them as well as for us. We who have tasted the love of God in Jesus, and the free forgiveness and life he has freely bestowed upon us, should appreciate this most.

When we consider this instruction to love, surely we can see that this instruction is given by Jesus to Christians, true believers in Jesus. The instruction is good for all and good for society, but Jesus speaks to his disciples because only they have any hope of obeying his demands. What do I mean by this?

Notice what Jesus says in verse 45. He tells us to love, �that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.� Surely this must convince us that Jesus is speaking to Christians specifically in this Sermon on the Mount. This understanding of God as Father is something specially Christian. This is the relationship which God bestows by his grace. It is the relationship made possible by the work of Jesus for us, and the work of the Holy Spirit showing us our sins, and leading us to see Jesus as our Saviour and giving us the grace to trust him, and him alone for forgiveness and life.

When this work is done in our hearts by God�s grace we are raised to new life, and adopted by God into his everlasting family, and we become children of God by adoption and grace. This adoption is made possible because we have been translated from the Kingdom of Satan into the Kingdom of God, and given new birth where we are created to be like God in righteousness and true holiness. We have a new holy nature given us, and this makes it possible for us obey this command of Jesus to love our enemies. We are still hindered by the corruption of our old nature still in our earthly body, but this new nature gives us a hate of that corruption and the desire to be as God has made us in our new nature, and so we are able to fight sin, and pursue righteousness. We have the love of God in our hearts by this new birth. God has raised us to life with his holy nature, and so we desire to love as he loves us.

The argument Jesus is pressing upon us is that we should love as God loves and show that we are family. Because we have the nature which comes from God, and we belong to God as his children, we are called to preserve the honour of the family, and behave as God would have his children behave. So we are called to love as God loves and we want to love as God loves so that the glory of our Father may be revealed in our lives and God�s honour upheld.

Only true believers in Jesus can do this or begin to do this. The ordinary person has no new life. They are governed by their sinful self, and although they will not admit it, it is self that rules, and so it is impossible to love our enemies.