We will continue to look at the lifestyle that Jesus puts out there for his in Luke 6. We will look at verses 27-36 today. Again, much of this parallels the Semon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. Jesus has already deliver a part of his message with a series of blessings and woes that seem counter-intuitive to the way that we tend to think. Now, in verse 27 Jesus says, “But I say to those of you that will listen.” The heart of Jesus' message is challenging, a message that not everyone will listen to.
His message begins with ‘Love your enemies.’ This is a hard sell, right there. We all have reasons that we would consider someone to be an enemy. Whatever those reasons might be, they would make it hard to love someone. In fact, there are likely people in lives that we find hard to love, and don’t even consider them enemies. Making the idea of loving someone who has deeply wronged, is a challenge and an upward call.
But Jesus doesn’t stop there. As his message continues, it all seems very contrary to our nature:
- Love your enemies.
- Do good to those who mistreat you.
- Bless those who curse you.
- Pray for those who abuse you.
- Turn the other cheek.
We tend to be the opposite of this: Blessing those who bless us, but cursing those who curse us. That is more our nature. Jesus says that this is a very low bar. Everybody does that, and doing that doesn’t make us special.
Jesus follows this in verse 31 with a well-known statement. I translated like this: "And the same way you want people to do good things to you, do those things for other people.” We often refer to this as the Golden Rule. Jesus uses the Greek word Ποιεῖτε (poiete) which means 'do.' In this form Ποιεῖτε is an imperative. So this is a command. To obey this command, we have to be the initiator in doing good. We treat people as we want them to treat us, not necessarily how they have treated us.
In the verses that follow, Jesus spells it out for his audience. If we only do good for those who do good to us, we really haven’t done anything special. Everyone does that. To follow Jesus, and be like him, we must do good to all people, especially to those who would do us harm. The call here is to love all people, even those that we would consider our enemies. Following Jesus is a high call. Think about these two things he asks of his followers in verse 35:
- Love your enemies and do good to them, That's a hard one. It goes against our nature, which is to seek revenge on our enemy.
- Lend without expecting repayment. This is a hard one, too. There are very few things that we protect more than we protect our money.
But, Jesus says, if we do these things, we will have great reward and be children of God. Why? Because when we act in this way, we are being like God. The end of verse 35 tells us that God is kind, even to those who are ungrateful and to those who are evil. God is full of mercy and so Jesus calls us to be full of mercy as well. Truth be told, it is hard to be kind to those who should be grateful to you, but are not. It makes us angry. To be like God, we have to continue to be kind, even in the face of ingratitude.
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