Love Everyone
02/23/35
This week I will be discussing the beginning of the lesson Jesus teaches to a large crowd in the Sermon on the Mount. I will be looking at Luke 6 27 - 38. In this passage Jesus is telling the people who are willing to listen what it takes to live in the kingdom of God. Jesus knows that not everyone who hears him will actually be listening, some of them have gathered only to see his miracles. Many of the people gathered want to be healed in the present world, but are not thinking beyond their immediate needs. While he did heal many of their sicknesses in the moment, this message was about how to live a transformed life that would raise them above just earthly living. However, this message was not about heavenly living after they died, Jesus was telling people how to live in the kingdom of God right then and forever. Living in the kingdom of God centers in our relationship with Him but the primary way that we are able to experience that relationship is by how we treat all the people around us.
You may remember from last week, Jesus opened his message with hyperbole. He created the wide distinction between the rich and the poor, the sick and the healthy. Now that he is moving into the message he drops the exaggerated language but on the first hearing we may want to think he is still speaking in extremes. He spoke to those who will listen and he said to them “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you”. We want to think this is just an attention grabbing statement. Surely Jesus does not expect me to Love someone that hates me, does he? To answer that directly, yes, Jesus is telling those that will listen that we are to love everyone.
To love everyone is a big directive. To understand it we need to understand what Jesus is talking about when he says love. In the Greek language there are many words that get translated to love. The three most common are Eros, Philia, and agape. Eros is romantic love, the love between couples. Philia is the love of deep affection and friendship. It is the love we think about within a family and with our close friends. Agape is the broadest kind of love. It is a selfless love not based on specific relationships or even on the worthiness of the person being loved. It is also not based on a reciprocal relationship of being loved by the other. Agape is a love for the sake of connection with the world around us.
Initially we may thank that agape, being so broad, is somewhat superficial. That is not the case, not with real agape love. While it is offered most broadly, it is also deep and meaningful. Agape comes from a place of inner understanding that the world and every person and thing in it is created by God, and as such, deserves the honor and respect that God deserves. While agape is broad, it is also deep, prompting us to hold a place in our heart and mind for everyone.
Agape is the love that Jesus is directing his hearers to have. Jesus continues by giving examples of how we treat people that we love. He says we bless and pray for them, we take offense from them, we support them and we give to them. All these things we may do freely with our friends and family. A person can not live in a family very long, or even with a close friend, without being hurt by their words or actions. This can be physically hurt but most often it is emotional and spiritual. The love of a friend or family member, philia, will help us endure those hurts. We can overlook them and continue to try and support and help them. It may be our duty to take a little emotional abuse from a hurting child in order to help them recover from their own hurts.
In this passage Jesus states plainly, “if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?” I don’t believe this means that we are willing doormats to those that we are in a relationship with. I think it means that we have an understanding that the pain in others can often lead to actions that create pain in us, and that we choose to endure it, to be merciful to them and help them ease their own pain and maintain the relationship. Jesus continues to give examples of showing love in our filial relationships and says “For even sinners do the same”. This statement is saying that even those who are outside the kingdom of God can be patient with those that they have a shared loving relationship with. These acts alone are not what is required to move beyond the earthly experience to a divine experience living in the kingdom of God.
Jesus uses the word enemy in a broad sense. It may not be a person we are in direct conflict with, although it may be. He is telling us to think of all those outside of our romantic partner and our friends and family as still deserving of our consideration and our mercy. He tells us “do good, lend and expect nothing in return” even to those outside our relationships, even to our enemies. The result of this type of love he tells us is “you will be children of the Most High”. Fellowship in the kingdom of God is the result of our being able to treat the world as God treats them, with mercy.
As he approaches the end of this part of the lesson Jesus says “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” This mercy is shown by compassion and tenderness. It is an active mercy that does more than just recognize and sympathize with those who are hurting, it reaches out to help and to comfort. He challenges his hearers to not only love as God loves, but to love who God loves, which is every person that he has created.
To have that agape love requires us to first open our hearts, as God’s is open, to His creation. We have to see each person, each creature, as something God has created and placed here with us. We have to respect the divine origin of even the simplest thing and even the most difficult people that we encounter. Once we see things for what they really are, then we may have a chance of loving them the way God loves them. It has to start within ourselves and how we view the world. Even those that we are in direct conflict with are loved by God. Not because of how they are, but simply because they are his creation.
We are called by Jesus to see everything the same way, as a member of God’s family. Seeing those that we disagree with as a child of God can help us show mercy towards the things about them that we disagree with. We can see and relate to the child of God in them and show grace and mercy toward them. That is the journey into the kingdom of God. To love as God loves and as a result to draw closer into our relationship with God.
Thanks for reading.
David
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