Love Your Enemies (Luke 6:27–35) | The Gospel of Luke (Part 48)

Transcript

JRNT 99
1/11/2026
The Gospel of Luke: Love your Enemies
Luke 6:27-35
Jesse Randolph


On the night of September 6, 2018, tragedy struck in an apartment complex in Dallas, Texas. A 26-year-old man, an accountant named Botham Jean, left work early from work that day to go watch a football game at home. Jean was sitting on the couch of his living room in his apartment, apartment 1478, and he was doing so with the door cracked open, with his laptop open, and a carton of ice cream open. It was at that moment that an off-duty police officer named Amber Guyger, who lived in apartment 1378, the apartment directly below Botham Jean, walked in. She walked in still in her police uniform and she walked in armed. Guyger, who had just finished a 14-hour shift for the police department, was exhausted. At the time she was distracted, she was on the phone with her love interest, and she was confused as her apartment and Jean's apartment, again they were stacked right on top of each other, shared the same exact floor plan. Well as she thought, it was her door that was cracked open and as she entered what she thought was her apartment, Guyger saw Jean sitting right in front of her and she believed Jean to be an intruder. So, she drew her weapon, she fired two shots into his chest and killed him. Guyger was arrested, she was charged with murder, she stood trial, she was convicted and sentenced to ten years in a Texas state penal system. Before the prison bus took her away, Guyger was required to hear the family's victim impact statements. One of those victim impact statements was given by Brandt Jean, younger brother of Botham. As Brandt would later explain, when he first heard that his brother had been killed, he was overcome with rage. He was punching holes in doors and walls; he was consumed with thoughts about how he would take revenge on Guyger for taking his beloved brother. Well, he was there attending Guyger's trial, Brandt was, like his deceased brother Botham, raised in the Christian faith. As he sat there during Guyger's trial, he felt his hardened heart begin to soften. He began feeling pity and sorrow for Guyger, realizing that her greatest need wasn't correction, and her greatest need wasn't rehabilitation. Rather, her greatest need was salvation through Jesus Christ. So, when it came time to get on the witness stand and look Guyger in the eyes and read for everybody to hear his victim impact statement, Brandt said this. “I can speak for myself, I forgive you. And I know if you go to God and ask Him, He will forgive you. I love you just like anyone else and I'm not going to say I hope you rot and die just like my brother did, but I personally want the best for you. And I wasn't ever going to say this in front of my family or anyone, but I don't even want you to go to jail. I want the best for you because that's exactly what Botham would want you to do, and the best would be giving your life to Christ.” Brandt then asked the judge for permission to hug Guyger, the woman who had taken his brother's life. The judge agreed. Brandt then stepped down from the witness stand, walked to the table where Guyger was seated, and they embraced before she was placed in shackles, placed on the bus and sent off to the state penitentiary.

Turn to your Bibles, please, to Luke 6. After a couple of months of being out of our normal verse-by-verse series in Luke, we're back in the Gospel of Luke and our passage for today is Luke 6:27-35. I'll go ahead and read it in full and then we'll work through it verse by verse. God's Word reads, “But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who disparage you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your garment, do not withhold your tunic from him, either. Give to everyone who asks of you and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back. And treat others the same way you want them to treat you. And if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount. But love your enemies and do good and lend, expecting nothing in return and your reward will be great and you will be sons of the Most High, for He Himself is kind to the ungrateful and evil.”

Because it's been a while, let's remember the context here. The words I've just read for you are the words, of course, of Jesus, and it is Jesus who the entire Gospel of Luke is about. You know Luke, in the Gospel which bears his name, was writing what he wrote to a man named Theophilus, and he was writing this account, he says in Luke 1:1, “of the things that had been fulfilled among us.” Luke is saying there in Luke 1:1 that this Gospel account is this God-breathed record of the life and the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, who came to fulfill various Old Testament prophecies about Israel's promised Messiah. Luke also in the introductory words of his Gospel in Luke 1:4 says this to Theophilus, that he wrote this Gospel “so that you may know the certainty about the things you have been taught.” Meaning he is aiming to write Theophilus to capture these various teachings of Jesus. So, the Gospel of Luke like the other three Gospels, Matthew, Mark and John, was written to offer an account of both the life and the teachings of Jesus. Now much of our time so far in our study of Luke's Gospel we've been tracking the narrative of this story of the events surrounding our Lord's life. That includes the birth of His forerunner, John the Baptist; that includes Mary's visitation by the angel Gabriel; that means Jesus's birth in Bethlehem, His presentation at the temple in Jerusalem, the account of His baptism, the account of His temptation in the wilderness, the account of the beginning of His public teaching ministry first to Nazareth and then later in Capernaum.

Well, at the time we took a break in our study of Luke, we had just launched into this exposition of the study of Jesus's words in the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6, which as I have maintained, is a different sermon than the Sermon on the Mount which is recorded in Matthew 5-7. In our last two sermons in Luke 6, we looked at these words of blessing, or beatitudes, which Jesus gave to those who were His true followers. Those are found in verses 20-23 of chapter 6. Then in our last time together we looked at Jesus's woes or curses. Those are in verses 24-26, and these are the woes that He declared on those who weren't His true followers. They were there in the crowd, but they were merely hangers-on, they were looky-loos, they were fake.

Now, in our text for today, starting in verse 27, we're going to pick up our study of the Sermon on the Plain, and as we do so we're going to see that this is really where Jesus starts to get into the heart of His message. He starts to get into the heart of those who were listening to this sermon and seeing into his eyes as He declared these words. He is really going to get into the heart of us here this morning as we read His words off the page. As we're going to see this morning, while Jesus's words in this sermon are easy enough to understand, they still can be very hard to hear, they still can be very difficult to receive. That's because the Lord's words in this sermon are not just convicting, they are worldview upsetting. They melt hardened hearts, they cut through rigid views of religion, they expose any non-committed views of what it means to follow Christ. There is a reason the actions of Brandt Jean toward Amber Guyger there in that Dallas courtroom seem so odd and so otherworldly to us. There is a reason we have a sense of awe and wonderment that a man like that would do something to a woman like her in that setting. There is a reason that story leaves us with a sense of conviction as we ask ourselves, Would I be willing to go that far? Would I step down from that witness stand and give that woman who did that to my brother a hug? I'm convinced of this fact, that the reason for our state of unsettledness over Jesus's words in this Sermon on the Plain is this: While our Lord has been abundantly clear in His word about what He expects of His followers, we don't take Him very seriously, we don't take His word seriously enough. We'll come up with every excuse in the book as to why we can't follow or why we won't follow what He has laid down for us plainly on the black and white pages of Scripture. Oh, Jesus was just talking to His disciples in the plain in that moment. He was talking to Jews, not Christians. All this took place before the Church Age began. He was not being literal here. No, He is being intentionally provocative to make a point. He knows I am a work in progress; He knows my heart. Yes, He does, indeed He knows your heart, and He knows my heart because He formed it, because He formed you. This same Jesus, what He said in this same sermon, just down the page actually in Luke 6:46 (talk about convicting), He says, we'll get to this in a few weeks, “Now why do you call Me Lord, Lord and not do what I say,” meaning Jesus in His Sermon on the Plain, it's not like He was holding a dandelion in His hand and just making a wish, you know, making a wish that maybe we would comply with His words as He closes His eyes and blows on the dandelion. He wasn't merely hoping that His followers would hear this sermon and grab onto a few encouraging nuggets of wisdom and take them and maybe get through another difficult week. No, He was laying down precepts and truth and a worldview which was and is otherworldly. One that does indeed require supernatural enablement by the Spirit to live out but one that we dare not throw out under the guise of well, that's just Jesus being Jesus. No, Jesus is Lord, He is sovereign, He is ruler, He is master. And when He lays down precepts like the one, He laid down in this sermon, we would be wise, like the original disciples who heard these words, to heed them.

There are a dozen commands in the nine verses we'll be looking at today, and not surprisingly at the core of these commands is the central command, the command above all commands, which is to love. You know, later in His ministry Jesus would say to the Pharisees of the day that the two greatest commandments were what? To love the Lord God with all your heart, soul and mind and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. The common link there is what? Love. Jesus would say to His disciples in John 13:35 that “the world will know you because of the love you have for one another.” Paul would say in Romans 13:10 that “love is the fulfillment of the Law.” James would say in James 2:8 that “love is the royal law.” John would say in I John 4:7, “Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” Peter would say in I Peter 1:22 that we are to “fervently love one another from the heart.” Now those passages in their own right aren't always the easiest to live out, and that's because sinners that we are, we have this natural tendency to drift from our duty to love others. The reason that we have this natural tendency to drift from the duty to love others is that we are so consumed with ourselves. Maybe put that a different way, we are so in love with ourselves. You know, no infant, no toddler, frankly no adult needs to be trained in the art of loving self. It sort of comes naturally, right? So, we need those reminders like Peter gave us in I Peter 1:22 to “fervently love one another from the heart.” And note, and this is where the conviction really starts to come, is that Jesus has set an even higher bar for His followers.

Let's get back to our text here in the Sermon on the Plain, starting in verse 27 with this first command. Our Lord says, “But I say to you who hear,” meaning I say to My followers, I say to those who are truly Mine, I say to those who are of My flock. Look at these words, “Love your enemies.” You know as the Lord has continued to grow me and refine me and convict me and sanctify me over the years, I have found over and over that the clarity of Scripture and the conviction that it brings are really close cousins. Over and over again the Lord delivers some of the most profound and piercing truths in these simple, yet impossible to argue statements like this one—love your enemies. Now those words weren't delivered in a vacuum. You know, Jesus didn't come down from glory in His incarnation and start from scratch and just come up with an entirely new set of rules out of whole cloth. No, turn with me to Matthew 5. Matthew 5 again is the beginning of the account of Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, and look at Matthew 5:43, these are the words of Christ in His Sermon on the Mount. He says, “You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” Now in the part of that that's in all caps, all capital letters, Jesus is quoting from Leviticus 19:18. Now the rest of that where it says, “and hate your enemy,” that's coming from a certain rabbinic tradition or interpretation of the Jewish tradition that had arisen by this time. What the people of Israel had done at this point by Jesus's day is they had taken that love your neighbor command of Leviticus 19 and recast it to mean love the children of your people, meaning if someone was loving the children of their people, if someone was loving someone of Israel, they were fulfilling the command. But implicit in that is that if you hated everybody else, that was fine. It was like God was giving you license to hate anybody who was not of Israel. Well, Jesus completely eviscerated that teaching. Look at the next few words of verse 44, Matthew 5:44. “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” There is that same expression again, the same expression that we see in our text, you can turn back with me to Luke 6, “Love your enemies.” As you do so, as you love your enemies, note that He is not saying here that we are to be committed merely to loving our friends. We're not to be committed merely to loving the lovable or loving those who reciprocate with their love. No, true followers of Christ, whether it be the disciples there on the plain or followers here today are called to love their enemies. And to love one's enemies doesn't mean merely refraining from engaging in hostile acts toward them, it doesn't mean sort of passively tolerating them. To love one's enemies isn't merely about sentimentality, which is the way that the world thinks of love, nor is loving one's enemy about limiting how one feels about a person, it's not boxed into one's feelings towards a person. This is not about going from being hot with anger towards someone to eventually cooling off. It's not about being icy towards someone and then eventually thawing out. No, loving one's enemies involves taking action. It's an overused expression, love is a verb, but it's absolutely true. The type of love that Jesus is speaking of here, agape love, is that others-oriented, self-sacrificing, pouring out of oneself type of love. It's love of the unlovely, it's love not based on the merit of the one loved. Instead, it is rooted in a willingness to love, a choice to love one who hasn't earned the right to be loved. Again, it takes action. It takes action toward the one whom we perceive to be our enemy, whether it is a spouse who hurt us or a friend who betrayed us or a church member who slighted us or a pastor who offended us.

Speaking of pastors, Jesus's words here, “love your enemies,” always remind me of a pastor hero of mine named R. C. Chapman. Robert Chapman of England lived in the 1800s and there are a lot of stories about Chapman out there and the seriousness with which he took words like these in his life and in his ministry. The one I'd like to share with you now involves Chapman's dealings with a disgruntled member of his church. This member of his church didn't like Chapman. He was bitter toward Chapman, and he was telling everybody who would hear him how much he disliked Chapman. In fact, this man had been very public about his vow to never speak to Chapman again. Well, one day Chapman, knowing that this man felt this way about him, ran into this guy. They were walking literally in the same direction and on the same street in the town in which they lived. Chapman could have done in that moment what we would all be tempted to do—turn your back on the man, go down some back alley, run to the other side of the street and pretend that you didn't see him. Right? Chapman did none of those. Instead, knowing fully what this man had been saying about Chapman, he walked right up to him, he hugged him, and he said, “God loves you, Jesus loves you and I love you.” In that moment the man melted and so did his animosity and there on the spot through tears he asked Chapman to forgive him.

The love that Chapman showed that man on the street, the love that Brandt Jean showed Amber Guyger in that Dallas courtroom a few years ago, those are both beautiful examples of this otherworldly love that Jesus commanded His disciples to have here in verse 27 when He said, “Love your enemies.” This command to love one's enemies, otherworldly as it sounds, it is ultimately rooted in who we are in Christ. The love that we are to show our enemies is a representation, a visual representation of the love that God has shown us, we who once were rebels against His will, we who once were His enemies, when He sent His Son, the Lord Jesus, into this world on that mission to die for our sin. Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates His love,” same word, agape. But note, He demonstrated His own love, He acted upon His love. He demonstrated, He acted upon that love toward us “in that while we were yet sinners,” while we were opposed to Him, while we were His enemies “Christ died for us.” Aren't you glad that the love God demonstrated toward us wasn't the shallow, superficial version of love that is pitched by the world? Aren't you glad that God's love toward us isn't rooted in some sort of syrupy sentimentality? Aren't you glad that God's love toward us didn't simply end with Him reflecting on His warm and fuzzy feelings for us? Aren't you glad that God acted on His love by sending His Son into the world to die for you? And knowing that God loved us with such a sacrificial love, a love which involved the sacrifice of His only begotten Son, is it really all that much to ask us to love our enemies the way that He did for us the way that Christ commands us to do here in this text? Is it really too much to ask of us to love our spouse, let's say, when they are not acting all that lovable? Is it really all that much to walk up to the brother or the sister here in the church that you are at odds with right now after church and to hug them and say, “God loves you, Christ loves you and I love you?” Love your enemies. Anyone can love their friends, it takes supernatural enablement, true Spirit-directed living to love one's enemies. That love is the true mark of a follower of Christ.

Still in verse 27. As if loving your enemies wasn't a tall enough task, Jesus next said this, “Do good to those who hate you.” If you look up the page at verse 22, these are the beatitudes again, and Jesus said this in Luke 6:22, “Blessed are you when men hate you and exclude you and insult you and scorn your name as evil for the sake of the Son of Man.” See, the sad reality is that we will, on account of our faith, be hated by the world. Jesus said that. In John 15:7 after telling His disciples that He was commanding them to love one another, right after that in John 15:8 He says, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own, but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.” In other words, Jesus promised that we would be hated by the outsider, by those who are out there in the world. Now sadly because sin exists not only in the world but it does exist in the church, there will be occasions where there are seeds of hatred and animosity which pop up between members of the church, even though we are members of one another, as we're told in Romans, and even though we are going to be worshiping Christ our Savior together in glory there are these occasions, as James 4 puts it, we fight and we quarrel. We do so, that same passage says, because of certain untamed passions or desires which are taking root in our hearts. Even in the body of Christ we are harboring hatred, anger toward fellow believers, fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord. Well, if there is anyone here this morning who might find themselves on the receiving end of those sorts of feelings—hatred, animosity—Jesus gave this command. Verse 27 again, He said, “Do good to those who hate you.” In other words, don't move to a different section of the auditorium to avoid them. Don't, when you see them stranded on the side of the road on Highway 2, blow right past them and say, somebody who they like will help them. No, in the same way that you are called to love your enemies your Lord Jesus calls on you to do good to them as well. “Do good to those who hate you.” The same principle comes out in other places as well. Proverbs 25:21 says, “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.” Or Romans 12:21 says, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

I have another R. C. Chapman story for you if I may, if you'll allow me to indulge for a moment here. So, by all accounts this R. C. Chapman guy, go buy this book called Agape Leadership, it's wonderful, it's a short little read full of nuggets like this. Chapman was this genuinely sweet, humble man, but not everybody liked him. In fact, there were quite a few in his church and a few in the community who didn't like him at all, who even expressed their hatred toward him like the guy that we looked at earlier. Well, one of the people who didn't like Chapman was this grocer in town, and this grocer was so upset with Chapman and his preaching and the conviction he brought through his preaching that at one point this grocer physically spit on Chapman in disgust. He was so incensed, so livid with Chapman that he spit on him as a sign of his disapproval. Not only that, but he was also saying all sorts of nasty things in the community and in the church about Chapman and his reputation and all that. Well Chapman labored on, he labored on in his pastorate and when an opportunity came to bless this grocer, he took it. As the story goes Chapman had a relative in from out of town and this relative looked in Chapman's cupboards and saw that they were bare, they were empty. And so, this relative said, “I’m going to buy your groceries” and Chapman said, “Great, I'll take you up on your offer. Only one request, you go to this certain grocer in town and buy the groceries from him.” And which grocer was that? The same grocer who had spit right in his face. So, the relative makes his way without Chapman over to the grocery store, he places this large order. The grocer asks him, “Where do you want these groceries delivered?” He writes down the name, R. C. Chapman. The grocer says, “You must be making a mistake here, we're at odds with each other, we don't get along. You must be in the wrong grocery store.” The relative says no, Chapman asked me to come here to place this order. The grocer then delivers the groceries to Chapman and in doing so he comes to his doorstep and immediately asks for forgiveness. He knew that Chapman had sought to bless him, the one who had been so opposed to him, so publicly opposed to him. And that day he sought forgiveness, and the account goes that he gave his life to Christ on Chapman's doorstep that very day.

An amazing story involving an amazing man, R. C. Chapman, but the undergirding truth, the truth that Chapman was practicing in that moment was this one—Do good to those who hate you. Whether by offering a cup of cool water or a cup of coffee or help with homework or simply a nice hello, again you are reflecting the character of God Himself who was so kind to us and demonstrated such goodness to us when we were in opposition to Him, when we were His enemies, when we hated Him. Titus 3:3 says this, “For we ourselves also once were foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, despicable.” That word can also be translated as it is in the NASB, hateful, “hating one another. But when the kindness and affection of God our Savior appeared, He saved us.” We were once hateful, we hated God, we hated others, we indeed were hated by others, but God showed His immense kindness toward us, He showed His immense goodness toward us as it says there in Titus 3, when “He saved us.” Now we are called by Christ to do the same—to do good toward those who hate us. We don't repay hatred with hatred. No, we repay hatred with goodness. We repay hatred with true unselfish love. Is that difficult to do? You bet it is. Is it impossible to do with the Spirit's help? No.

Next, verse 28 Jesus says, “Bless those who curse you.” So, it's “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you.” Now the word curse there has a specific meaning. It doesn't mean being unkind to somebody, it doesn't mean being generally cruel or nasty to someone. To curse here means to actively wish misfortune on another, to verbally express one's eagerness to see one fail, to see them trip up, to see them get hurt, whether physically or spiritually. Note the call that Jesus gives on His disciples here. When we are on the receiving end of being cursed, when we are being vilified, we refuse to repay evil for evil. Yes, we might be tempted to yell back or to bite back or even to return the favor to the one who has cursed us or vilified us. But we can't do so. Christ instead has called us to bless. He says it so plainly, “Bless those who curse you.” There will be some here I'm guessing this morning who might yet want to raise their hand and object because you are a red-blooded American. Right? And you know that you live in a free country and the first amendment is out there and the first amendment says that I have a right to speak my mind and say what I want. I can do whatever I want. No, you can't. No, you can't. Though the Constitution might protect you legally to say whatever you want to the person who curses you, Christ tells you that you don't have the liberty to say whatever you want. Jefferson and Madison may have given you the right to curse those who curse you, but Jesus Christ who is your life if you are following Him, He gives you only one option which is to bless those who curse you, to speak well of those who speak ill of you. That's a command that is repeated elsewhere in Scripture, by the way. Romans 12:14 says, “Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse.” I Corinthians 4:12 says, “When we are reviled, we bless.”

Back here to the Sermon on the Plain, next in verse 28 Jesus gives this command. “Pray for those who disparage you.” So not only are we not to take revenge against our enemies, not only are we not to seek that pound of flesh from those who hurt us and those who hate us, we are to pray for them. We are to pray for their repentance. We are to pray that their disparaging conduct would come to end and we are to pray that if that disparaging conduct shows that they are not believers in the first place that God would use conviction here to bring them to salvation. So, question. If you are being disparaged, let's say when you are disparaged, when you are being abused and mistreated and slandered, do you strike back? Do you reciprocate? Do you allow the resentment that's been growing in your heart to fester? Or do you pray? Do you pray for the offender? Do you wrestle with God on their behalf, though the very one who is causing you grief? Do you intercede on behalf of the one who is trying to tear you down? Think of Stephen in Acts 7. Stephen is often referred to as the church's first martyr and he is standing before the Sanhedrin and he is going back and forth with them, and he is going through all the Old Testament history with them and then they get to the place where they are finally stoning him, putting him to death by stoning. As that is happening, as he is drawing his last breaths, in Acts 7:60, first he says, “Lord Jesus receive my spirit.” He is ready to die, and then it says, “and falling on his knees he cried out with a loud voice, Lord do not hold this sin against them. Having said this, he fell asleep.” Stephen, in other words, was acting this out. He was praying for those who disparaged him, he was praying for those actually who were gnashing their teeth at him as they threw stones at him. Then there is Jesus of course. In fact, you can turn with me to Luke 23, Luke 23 records the events surrounding the crucifixion of our Lord. Luke 23:33 says, “When they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified Him and the criminals, one on the right and the other on the left. But Jesus was saying, Father, forgive them, for they do no know what they are doing.” Jesus then prayed not only for those who were disparaging Him, He was praying for those who ultimately would execute Him. You know, I have found, you can turn back to Luke 6, I have found, and I know I am not alone in this, that it is incredibly difficult if not impossible to stay actively angry or hostile toward someone for whom you are regularly praying. Haven't you found that to be the case? It is almost impossible to hold onto the root of bitterness, that seed of bitterness as you are taking the person you were once bitter toward, to the throne. Well, Christ your Savior is calling you to do just that. To tap into His divine storehouses of heavenly power through prayer on behalf of those who have set themselves against you, those who are hostile toward you.

Well speaking of those who are hostile toward us, look at this next command that Jesus lays down here in the Sermon on the Plain. Verse 29, He says, “Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also.” So now the one who is mistreating us, the one who is hostile toward us, the one who is naturally difficult for us to love is resorting to physical violence. “Whoever hits you on the cheek” and by the way what is being described here is not like an open-faced slap the way that we might think of it. This is like a closed fist punch; this is like getting socked in the jaw. That's what Jesus is saying here. When someone socks you in the jaw, don't give into your natural human response, don't go into fight or flight mode, don't wind one up and get ready to land one in return, don't meet their aggression with more aggression. Instead, be willing to expose yourself to further evil, further injustice and even pain for My sake. And know that when you do so, you are following My example. And indeed, to heed that command, to turn the other cheek, as we often hear it, is to follow the example of Jesus. In fact, in the account of His arrest in Luke 22:63 we are told that the men who were holding Jesus in custody were mocking Him while they beat Him. So, our Lord was beaten, physically beaten, He was experiencing blows on our behalf. But there is no record at all of Jesus ever swinging back. Instead what we have is the record in I Peter 2:21-23 where it says, “For to this you have been called since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps, who did no sin nor was any deceit found in His mouth, who being reviled was not reviling in return, while suffering He was uttering no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously.”

Now I think it's important that I at least mention this because when we see the turn the other cheek passage all sorts of questions pop up about what does this mean culturally, societally, those sorts of things. When we see this turn the other cheek language, Jesus wasn't weighing in here on a man's right, let's say, to protect his household. The Sermon on the Plain is not a second amendment sermon. Nor was Jesus in this sermon laying down principles for future kings and nations about what they can or cannot do when an outside king or nation seeks to invade them. This is not a sermon about pacifism in general. No, what He is conveying here is the simple spiritual truth that's being delivered within the contours of normal, earthly, human, one-to-one relationships. In that context what He is saying is that when we are opposed by our enemies, even when it rises to the point of being physical, we're not to return fire with fire, we are not to have a retaliatory spirit, we are not to seek to exact revenge. Romans 12:19 says, “Never taking your own revenge, beloved, instead leave room for the wrath of God.” In other words, the Mosaic principle, the Mosaic Law of lex talionis, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, those principles don't apply to our individual one-on-one relationships today. Rather, as believers specifically, we are governed by what is called in the New Testament the law of love, which means following the example of Jesus Himself. So, when we are hurt by others, even swung on by others, we are called on to show a willingness to suffer even more injury than they have brought upon us. Our motivation for doing so is love, our motivation for doing so is our desire to win them over so that they might come to obey or in some cases know Jesus Christ.

Along those same lines, look at the next part of verse 29 where Jesus said this to those in the crowd. He says, “And whoever takes away your garment, do not withhold your tunic from him either.” There was a provision in the Law at this time in Exodus 22:26 which said if you ever take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun sets for this is his only covering. It is his cloak for his body.” Jesus here is expanding on that idea, He is describing someone who is having their garment, their outer robe, their cloak stolen from them. Note what He says, rather than scratching and clawing to retain their garment and rather than fighting off the one who took their garment from them, rather than chasing the one who took their garment down the street with a broomstick, the person whose garment was stolen should also offer the thief their tunic. That would be like his undershirt underneath the gown, the cloak that the person would be wearing, the underlayer. In other words, the person whose garment is stolen as they are facing the one who took it from them, they are to say something like, “Hey, you took my jacket! Why don't you take my shirt, too?”

Now I must wonder, I think I know a little bit about human nature and human response to difficult words to hear. I must imagine that about this point in the sermon there might have been some who were checking out. There might have been some who were about ready to go home. Now remember the context here are folks who had come to gather to hear Jesus teach and perform miracles and exorcise demons and all the rest. Now, they are being told they have to take hits not just on one side of the face but on the other. And they must be willing to not only give up their garment, their outer garment that keeps them warm, but the tunic underneath. Well, what this crowd had to remember as do we today was this major principle that Jesus was teaching through this command. Again, He wasn't making some sweeping statement of social policy for 21st century America, He wasn't preaching socialism or communism or the forced redistribution of private property. He wouldn't be supportive of you walking into a Walgreen's and just taking whatever you wanted off the shelf and walking out without paying for it. What He was proclaiming, though, again, is that in our one-on-one relationships as those who are called to project His light into this dark world, that we can't live with the mindset of always wanting to level the playing field, seeking revenge. That is not acceptable, that is not the way of Christ, that is not the way we engage with those who are hostile toward us. Instead, for the sake of loving our enemy, for the sake of the one who seeks to do us harm, in this case for the one who seeks to take the coat off our back, we must recognize that we have an opportunity to showcase the kindness and the goodness and the forbearance of God. We must be willing, He is saying here, to lose everything, to keep nothing, to forego our rights, to submit to wrongs that are being done to us, to deny ourselves completely even if that means we are left shivering out in the cold.

Well, the difficult to swallow truths keep on coming. Look at these next words in verse 30. Our Lord says, “Give to everyone who asks of you.” Well, let's just stop there for a moment. That command traces back to a couple of Old Testament texts, you can jot down Deuteronomy 15:7. That says, “If there is a needy one among you, one of your brothers, in any of your gates of the towns in your land which Yahweh your God has given you, you shall not harden your heart nor close your hand from your needy brother. But you shall freely open your hand to him and shall generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks.” Then there is Proverb 21:26 which says, “The righteous gives and does not hold back.” In other words, there was an Old Testament foundation to what Jesus just said here in verse 30. But we can't lose sight of the fact that there is an immediate context to His words as well here. When He said here in verse 30 to give, He's right in the middle of describing how His disciples are to engage with those who are hostile toward them. Meaning by saying “Give to everyone who asks of you,” Jesus is actually intensifying those Old Testament principles from Deuteronomy 15 and passages like that. He is saying you are not only to be generous in giving to those who are needy, you are to be generous in giving to those who are needy who have been hostile toward you. I think a modern day comparison would be something like anybody can throw a couple of quarters into the empty guitar case as you walk downtown; you are called to throw quarters into the guitar case of the guy downtown who is strumming but he is also the guy who made a pass at your wife not too long ago, he's also the guy that staged an operation to overturn your empire, whatever the case may be. He is hostile toward you. You throw your quarters into his guitar case. They are difficult words, I grant, humanly speaking, to obey. But when placed against the backdrop of God's being a generous giver toward us and specifically being generous in His grace toward us, especially at that time when we were so openly hostile to Him when we were dead in our sin, we quickly start to see how much sense Jesus's words make here, and we quickly start to feel that pinch of conviction about how much growth we each have to do.

Well in the second part of verse 30 Jesus takes it up another notch in terms of the level of commitment He expects from His followers. He said to those gathered around Him on the plain, “Whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back.” What Jesus was describing here was theft of personal property. What He is saying is that if someone takes an item of personal property from you, if they've stolen an item that belongs to you, whether it be your saw or your hammer or your coffee mug or your serving spoon or your car, if they refuse to return what they've taken away from you, if they refuse to give it back, let it go, let them keep it. Now it's not as though Jesus here is advocating for outright lawlessness or theft or anarchy or a sluggardness on behalf of the person who steals. Not at all. As it relates to the wrongdoer, the one who took, the thief, we all know from Scripture God will deal with that person. God has placed in authority those who wield the sword and they will face his justice at the right time. Jesus here, though, is speaking to His disciples, the followers, the one who has had something taken from them, the one who has been personally wronged. In that context He is saying they need to keep the supreme virtue of love of both God and neighbor at the forefront of their minds. They are to heed the words of Proverbs 24:29 which says, “Do not say as he did to me, so I shall do to him.” Instead, they are to heed the words of Romans 12:19 as they “leave room for the wrath of God.” Again, they are to heed the example of Jesus who, when His own life was being taken from Him, He didn't try to yank it back. Right? He didn't force His way down off the cross. No, He kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously and that's what He calls us to do. For the sake of love of our brother, for the sake of love of the lost we must be willing to forego our rights. If that hammer never makes its way back into our workspace, if that coffee mug or that serving spoon never makes its way back into our cupboards, we're going to be just fine. Why? Because we have Christ, we have eternal life. I can't help but think of the lyrics to A Mighty Fortress, that part where he says, “Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also.”

Moving on, look at these next few words, familiar words for sure in verse 31. He says, “And treat others the same way you want them to treat you.” We know this, of course, as what? The Golden Rule, it's the rule which countless moms have laid down for squabbling siblings at the breakfast table, it's the rule that entire systems of morality and ethics worldwide in history have been laid upon. The basic idea is this, we are to treat others with the same kindness and consideration that we would like to receive. A person should ask themselves what treatment would I like to receive in a certain situation and they are to impart that very treatment to the one who has aggrieved them. Now again these words have a context, there is a reason they appear here in the Sermon on the Plain in the middle of these commands about loving one's enemies and doing good to those who hate us and blessing those who curse us and the like. What Jesus was saying and articulating what would later become known as the Golden Rule was this. He was saying that the world operates by one moral standard, the world operates by a certain set of rules, the world communicates this message, that you are to do to others what they've done to you. When they punch, you punch back; when they steal something from you, you take it back; when you are wronged by them, you return the favor. But as followers of Christ, we operate according to an entirely different standard. We don't do what they've done to us; we don't treat them the way they treated us. Think about this, if Jesus had operated from that standard of treating us the way we had treated Him, how would that have worked out? We would all be ruined forever in hell, that's how that would have worked out. That's not what Jesus did, though, and neither ought we. Instead, we do something entirely different, we take the way that we would like to be treated and of course that means well. We all would like to be treated well, and we treat those who offend us according to that same standard. That's the main idea undergirding what is said here in verse 31, to be Christ-like, to follow in His steps, to be distinct from the way that the world handles being treated.

As followers of Christ, we are to demonstrate a distinguishing form of love, one which distinguishes us from the world. In fact, that's what we see in verses 32-34 where He says, “And if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount.” We'll take all of what's being said here in one big bite, and we can do so because these three different examples that Jesus lays down in these three verses, they are collectively conveying a single principle. That single principle is this: if you are committed to doing merely the easy thing, to love those who love you to do good to those who are good to you, to lend to those who you reasonably expect will pay you back, what good is that? How does that distinguish you from the rest of the world? By your doing so how does that make you any different than the average sinner? Different from the irreligious, the heathen, those who have no regard for God's standards? The reality is unsaved people are quite good at loving those who already love them. Unsaved people are quite good at doing good to those who do good to them. Unsaved people are capable of making risk-free loans. That's natural behavior, that's common behavior. Any unsaved rebel can do that.

Well, what Jesus is saying to His followers here in these three verses, 32-34, is He's not calling us to imitate humanity. He's not calling us to engage in self-interested moralism. He's not calling us to imitate the world. He called us out of the world so that we would now imitate Him and follow in His steps. What this section, then, of the Sermon on the Plain does is say to the one who says they are following Christ that they better not congratulate themselves on how virtuous they are if the virtue that they are embodying is no different than any rank-and-file sinner would do under the same circumstances. Instead, as followers of Christ, the One who loved sacrificially, the One who embodied goodness perfectly, the One who gave of Himself freely, were held to a much different standard, a much higher standard. We are not satisfied with treating others the way they've treated us. In fact, we are not even truly satisfied with treating others the same way we want to be treated in the basest form of the Golden Rule. Instead, we go a step further and we treat others the way they haven't treated us. They haven't loved us, so what? We still love them. They haven't been kind to us, so what? We're still kind toward them. They haven't been good to us, so what? We still demonstrate goodness toward them.

Verse 35, He says, “But love your enemies and do good and lend, expecting nothing in return.” Did you catch that? “Expecting nothing in return.” Talk about an otherworldly principle, talk about living completely contrary to the world's ethic of living for #1 and when we do so, note these words. “Your reward,” Jesus says, “will be great.” Not necessarily in this life, but certainly in the life to come when He hands down rich, eternal rewards. Then He says this, “You will be sons of the Most High.” Now that's not saying that by being kind, by being good, by being loving, by living out the Golden Rule that that makes you a son of the Most High. That's how most world religions operate, if I keep the Golden Rule I'll go to heaven. That's not what He is saying here. One becomes a son of the Most High, one becomes a child of God by believing in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. What He is saying here, though, is that true believers will prove to be sons of the Most High, the One who “is kind to the ungrateful and evil,” when they demonstrate the kind of character that He has laid out for us here in this Sermon on the Plain.

Well, I'll close with this. Since our God, as we've seen in those last words of verse 35, is kind to the ungrateful and evil. Since our God is loving and gracious and generous even to those who are His enemies, back to Romans 5:8. Since He “is kind to the ungrateful and evil,” we should, as those who have been made new in His Son, we should, as those now who have His indwelling Spirit through faith, strive to do the same. That's what Jesus is communicating here in His Sermon on the Plain to this crowd at Capernaum. That's our takeaway here this morning. As those who have professed faith in Jesus Christ, as those who would now claim to be in the family of God, do we bear His likeness through our lives? Do we love sacrificially like God? Do we show otherworldly kindness and goodness like God? Do we show love toward others who spurn us and hate us, like God? Would we be like Brandt Jean in that courtroom, coming down from the stand to give a hug to our enemy? Would we be like R. C. Chapman, walking down the street right up to our enemy and saying, “God loves you, Jesus loves you and I love you” as you embrace them.

Father, thank You for this time together in Your Word this morning. Thank You for the truth it contains. We thank You for these principles which are convicting to read as we measure our lives against them. But we do ultimately know that by Your enabling and empowering Holy Spirit, You have given us the ability, if we have put our faith in Christ, to live in light of these truths and to live out these principles. God, I do pray that we would take these truths to heart, that we would not dismiss them, that we would not forget them. That we would not allow the tyranny of the urgent today to crowd out what is really important, which is to live like Christ in the world in which You have placed us. Help us instead with Your Spirit's help to take these truths to heart and apply them to our lives now, today. God, we love You, we thank You for sending Your Son into the world, we thank You for His offer of salvation. God, I do pray if there is someone here who has come here this morning as a visitor or they are a long time attendee who has been deceived as to the status of their soul that they would realize that it is not keeping the Golden Rule that makes one a believer, it's not keeping the Golden Rule that secures the hope of eternal life. Rather, it is faith in Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross, His death, His resurrection. That's the means by which a sinner is converted and made right with you. God, please work in our hearts this morning. Please be glorified through our lives. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.