And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On the other hand, there are passages that come quite close to what Jesus said about love of enemies: The prophet Elisha counseled mercy towards Syrian prisoners of war. Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect., Jesus said that when we love our enemies, we resemble our Heavenly Father, who is perfect and merciful.. J Because if its a new ethic, a new standard, what youre saying is it cant be found in the Old Covenant anywhere. Jesus began to teach a message very similar to the Sermon on the Mount. He knows the Bible pretty well. Hate Your Enemies or Love Your Enemies ~ The Bible Speaks to You As David Holwerda wrote of Luke 6:17-26: Thus both the beatitudes and the woes [of the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plains] are intended to shape the lives of disciples who live in this world as citizens of Gods kingdom., In both Matthew 5:44 and Luke 6:27, Jesus calls for believers to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Create a free PRAY account and we'll send you our Weekly Wisdom Devotional emails each Tuesday. That would be strange that God would correct himself and so who is he correcting? F In Matthew 5:43-48, Jesus says, You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. Love your Neighbor but Hate Your Enemy | Gospel Insights | Torah Portions . There is no transformation in such scenarios. God loves his enemies. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. What does it mean that the rain falls on the just and the unjust? The simple answer is that Jesus doesnt say that at all. What Every Christian Should Know about the Protestant Reformation. -Matthew 6:43-45. And you, O desolate one, what do you mean that you dress in scarlet, that you adorn yourself with ornaments of gold, that you enlarge your eyes with paint? I think anyone whos ever read the Old Testament knows that and so Jesus is correcting this idea thats so prevalent in his day that not only is it okay to hate certain people that you label as enemies, its commanded by God but it wasnt. Something went wrong when trying to add that email address. L I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word. For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you. This is a worthwhile act of empathy that anyone can do in any situation.. Sign up for a free PRAYaccount and youll begin receiving our Weekly Wisdom Devotionals, sent to your inbox every Tuesday. Dont misquote me on that. All rights reserved. Before we dive into examples, lets go into the difference between loving your neighbor and loving your enemies. "If you come across your enemy's ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to return it. 1 Corinthians 16:4 - Let all that you do be done in love. Every evil of theirs is in Gilgal; there I began to hate them. When we show respect to our enemies, we allow ourselves to become more like the Holy Spirit. We skipped over the third one, looked at the fourth one last time. We must always remember Saint Paul; he was the persecutor of the believers the enemy of the Saints who became the great Apostle to the Gentiles. Love Your Neighborand Your Enemies That's what this guide is all about. As an Old Testament scholar, the proposed contrast is like nails on a chalkboard. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. How could a loving God tell the Israelites to kill their enemies, even More insights from your Bible study - Get Started with Logos Bible Software for Free! 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if . Humans have feelings of hate, motivated by an idea that another person has harmed us in some way. A crowd awaited. Heres the story. What happened in the past cannot be changed. God is an unchanging God of love (cf. But some folks were saying that thats something that the world never heard before and that a new ethic, a new standard of morality. Jesus demonstrated love for his enemies by forgiving those who mistreated him. Thats not a quotation. Even when the Romans nailed him to the cross, Jesus said in Luke 23:34, Father forgive them for they know not what they do., Loving your enemies may seem difficult on the surface, but there are many ways to incorporate loving our neighbors into our lives, Despite all of this information on what loving your enemy means, its still hard to implement in everyday life. Sunday Welfare and Thanksgivng Service | Sunday Welfare and Thanksgivng The lessons for their life might not be the same as yours, and thats okay., There's something we have in common with everybody if we look closely enough. What does the Bible say about witchcraft? Wealth & Archaeology. Now we will come back to the third and the fifth but Im looking at the ones First of all, theyre the most obvious that make it so plain to us that the ethic that Jesus was subscribing to and conveying to his disciples was in every case Old Covenant ethics of morality. "Continue to love your enemies and to pray for those who persecute you." [1] In addition to ethical Docetism, attempts to see Jesus as a lone and subversive revolutionary often lead to the anachronistic claim that he taught something completely unprecedented here. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.. Oba 1:12). But the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love. What Does it Mean to 'Love Your Enemies'? And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. Is there an underlying reason for their attitude and actions? Luke 6:35-36 states, 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 is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Jesus teachings on loving enemies were woven from the richly varied threads of Scripture, which He heard, learned, debated and taught from a very young age. Hes referring to this commandment, Love your neighbor. Great question. And prepare for me delicious food, such as I love, and bring it to me so that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die., Because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.. Israel and Syria were locked in conflict (imagine!). However, we need to stop hating one another because hating one another is the easy way out. Hes not correcting the Law of Moses. Jesus said the greatest commands were to love God and to love our neighbor as ourself ( Matt. To subscribe to David Servant's periodic e-teachings, click here. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. The Queen of Sheba, Solomon, & Archaeology, Solomon's Temple and its Archaeological Analogies, Solomon's "Impossible" (?) Jesus taught that we, who were enemies of God, are now called friends of God, through Jesus Christ. I Matthew 5:43-48 ESV / 392 helpful votesHelpfulNot Helpful. Geocoding Turn to these in moments where forgiveness seems too difficult to manage., In 1 Corinthians 13:45, the Bible says, Love is patient, love is kind. The fault here, however, is not with Jesus or the Old Testament. To love your enemy means to try and understand them and behave toward them as you would like them to do to you. 5:14]; James 2:8, Leviticus 19:18 in all English translations, Luke 23:34; Acts 7:60; 1 Cor. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Love for ones enemy even extended to his animal. This is the proof right here. 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I will surely have mercy on him, declares the Lord. So, let's talk about what it means to love one's enemies, as well as some examples of how to do so. Just have loving feelings toward them and, if possible, express that through words, by doing something nice, or even with a smile. Publication date: Apr 27, 2023. Box 1353 |Nampa, ID 83653 USA1-800-803-8093, 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,, For example, Matthew 12:3, Matthew 12:5, Matthew 19:4, Matthew 21:16, Matthew 21:42 Matthew 22:31, For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven,, Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. No end was in sight. 43You have heard that it was said, (B)You shall love your neighbor (C)and hate your enemy. 44[a]But I say to you, (D)love your enemies, bless those who curse you, (E)do good to those who hate you, and pray (F)for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, 45that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for (G)He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. It is the belief that you should love your enemies. He's the inspirer of it, the . Psalm 136:1-26 ESV / 2 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful. And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? When Jesus said we are to love our enemies, He was creating a new standard for relationships. We are also concerned with Luke 6:27: 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 abuse you. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.. "But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. He keeps saying something and he says, And hate your enemy. In my Bible, And hate your enemy is not in all caps. That is a valid question because under the Old Covenant, God told Israelites in some cases to wipe out people and to be separate from certain people, not to associate with certain people because of their incredibly sinful cultures and lies. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and . Oh, okay. But it cannot be said that Jesus teachings on the subject of love for enemies repudiates or inverts the Old Testament. Other enemies are probably apathetic. Why is this message an important one? If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him. H Notice that Jesus actual words, you have heard it said, are replaced with the formula behold it is written. Now, whenever Jesus used the words It is written, in Matthew, He is always referring to the words of Scripture. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. You could also have similar jobs, common friends or family members, or similar personality traits., One surefire way to find common ground is by acknowledging your differences. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. No, the Old Testament never teaches to hate our enemies any more than the New Testament does. Your lovers despise you; they seek your life. 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. Pray for them. Well, no. I did a proximity search in my online Bible of hate+ enemy / enemies and could find only one passage even suggesting hatred of enemies: St. Paul cites and further interprets this teaching: Furthermore, not only is this ethical teaching found in the Old Testament and Judaism, but also in virtually all of the major world religions: C. S. Lewis noted that these affinities with other religions, along with various pagan precursors to Christianity far from being a, Definition of "Radical Catholic Reactionary": Dialogue, "This is, obviously, a very detailed paper on parallels for Solomon's Temple. Loving Your Enemies, Is That a New or an Old Testament Concept? For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. In the Old Testament, there is a verse in Leviticus 19:18 that states, "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people. Luke 6:35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Why will you still be struck down? Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. Save 15% for life! You dont have to love them like you love your parents or children or best friend. For the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. What Did Jesus Really Mean by 'Love Your Enemies'? M In other words, Gods character is loving and merciful. The passage in Luke 6 refers to Jesus Sermon on the Plains. The Lord Jesus had descended the mount after a night of prayer. The command to love your neighbors comes from Leviticus, and reads: You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord, (Leviticus 19:18). Give thanks to the God of gods, for his steadfast love endures forever. They and other unscrupulous figures who use their delegated authority from Rome to fleece their own people represent an existential threat to Israels identity. . In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 65:913; Luke 12:16, 17; Acts 14:17, NKJV, Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, Red Letter Edition: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture, NKJV, Spirit-Filled Life Bible, Third Edition, Red Letter Edition, Comfort Print: Kingdom Equipping Through the Power of the Word, NKJV, Woman's Study Bible, Red Letter, Full-Color: Receiving God's Truth for Balance, Hope, and Transformation, NKJV, Abide Bible, Red Letter Edition, Comfort Print: Holy Bible, New King James Version, NKJV Study Bible, Full-Color, Comfort Print: The Complete Resource for Studying Gods Word, NKJV, The Story: The Bible as One Continuing Story of God and His People.