Who Can Love Their Enemy?
Pastor Tan Thai · Oct 1, 2021
This sermon based on Matthew 5:43-48 explores Jesus' teaching on loving enemies and praying for persecutors. The pastor analyzes the difference between God's agape love and natural human emotions, showing that loving one's enemy is a decision of the mind and will rather than a feeling.
The sermon opens by situating Jesus' teaching in Matthew 5:43-48 within a sermon series on the Fruit of the Spirit. The pastor recalls that in Galatians 5:22-23, Paul uses the singular 'fruit' to indicate that all nine characteristics – love, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – form a unified whole. Genuine love must be accompanied by all the other qualities; otherwise it is not truly the love of God.
The pastor then analyzes what the people had heard before the Sermon on the Mount, arguing that the teaching 'love your neighbor, hate your enemy' resulted from gradual distortion over time – like a whisper game where the original message becomes unrecognizable. The Old Testament actually taught much more clearly: Leviticus 19:18 commands loving one's neighbor as oneself without taking revenge; Exodus 23:5 instructs helping even the animals of one's enemy; Proverbs 25:21 commands feeding a hungry enemy. God never commanded hatred of enemies – that was a misinterpretation by teachers and hearers alike.
The central section analyzes four Greek words for love: storge (family affection), eros (passionate romantic love), philia (deep friendship), and agape (God's unconditional love, based not on emotion but on reason and resolve). Jesus uses agape when commanding love for enemies. This means that even when emotions are entirely opposed, a believer can and must act kindly, pray for enemies, and refuse to let hatred take control.
The pastor cites the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment to illustrate how negative emotions escalate when unchecked – guards who began by acting eventually developed real hatred and became truly violent. The story of Romeo and Juliet is also mentioned as an example of the destructive consequences of sustained hatred between two families. Conversely, if believers actively practice kind behavior even when unwilling, hatred will diminish over time.
The closing section issues a practical call to the congregation: when angry emotions arise, confess them to God and ask the Holy Spirit to restrain them; even when feelings have not changed, choose to act rightly according to Scripture; actively pursue reconciliation and do not let anger linger. The image of a bee stinging a driver near the ear – causing the car to crash fatally – serves as the closing illustration: hatred is like a small sting in the most vulnerable place, capable of destroying the one who carries it. Jesus' teaching on loving enemies ultimately brings the greatest benefit to the one who practices it.