Revenge Ain’t Sweet

Sermon Transcript

The world loves a story about getting back at your enemies. I haven’t seen the John Wick movies, but Wikipedia has informed me that the first movie begins with mobsters killing John Wick’s dog. To get revenge, John takes on the entire mob, killing, again as the internet informs me, 77 people.

The world loved that story so much that they made 3 more John Wick movies. The 4 movies together earned more than a billion dollars at the box office. Revenge isn’t just sweet, it pays.

But would the movie have been different if John called his Christian friend for advice before embarking on his killing spree? What if someone had said to him, “John, I know you loved your dog, but Jesus wants you to love your enemies. So give them your cat, then head to the bank and give them some cash, and don’t expect to get it back. Throw in your coat for good measure. Then, go home and pray for them”. John does all these things, and the credits roll. The run time of the movie is 23 minutes. It bombs on Rotten Tomatoes.

Nah! John would have said, “why the heck would I want to do that?” In this passage, Jesus tells us to do the exact opposite of the thing we want to do to our enemies! It doesn’t come naturally to anyone. 

Jesus commands, love your enemies. That’s the main point of this passage. In verse 27, he commands it. Then, he restates that same command different ways: do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If someone hits you on one cheek, turn the other cheek so they can hit you again. If someone steals your cloak, give them your tunic also. In verse 31, he tells us: don’t do what you want to do to your enemies by getting back at them, do to them the good things you’d want them to do to you! Then, he tells us to love our enemies again in verse 35. So that’s obviously the point of what Jesus is teaching. But if that sounds easy, just think about the last time someone cut you off while you were driving! Loving your enemies is totally against what we want to do, and even the kind of movies we want to watch. 

So, why the heck would you want to love your enemies? Well, Jesus gives you two reasons: to gain a better reward, and to be like your Father. After we talk about why you should love our enemies, we’ll talk about how to love your enemies: by loving them like God loves his enemies.

To gain a better reward

So, why would you want to love your enemies? The first reason is to gain a better reward. You can see this in verses 32-34.

The point is, loving people who love you doesn’t make you special. Sinners know how to be “nice”, because for the most part, being nice gets you a reward now. Jesus says that sinners will lend to sinners so that when they need a loan in the future, they’ll get one. If I scratch your back, you’ll scratch mine. Mobsters know how to make a deal. 

If the reward you want is the love of the world, you can actually get it by loving those who love you. You can get the things of the world, money, sex, power, influence, by giving those things to others who can give those things to you. You don’t get those things by loving those who hate you, or can’t give you anything in return. J.C. Ryle says, “Anybody can show kindness and charity, when he hopes to gain something by it. But such charity should never content a Christian. The man who is content with it, ought to remember that his practice does not rise and inch above the level of an old Roman or Greek idolater.”

Look, I much prefer to love in a world of nice sinners than a world of mean sinners. And it’s not wrong to love those who can give you something. We shouldn’t hate people just because they have money or influence. But don’t think that if you’re nice, that’s the same as being a Christian. Everyone knows how to love their friends. Christians love their enemies. If you spend your time and energy building relationships only with those people who can give you something back, you’re going to get a reward now. You might get influence, and even affection. But don’t expect to be rewarded by God for something any sinner knows how to do.

Jesus isn’t giving the command to love your enemies to those who want the love of the world. He’s giving this command to Christians. In the passage Pastor Mike preached on last week, Jesus proclaims that his disciples are blessed when they are persecuted for his name’s sake, because their reward is great in heaven. Then, he pronounces woes on those who have the reward of the world now – those who are content to be rich, full, to laugh now, and who are content when everyone speaks well of them. They have their reward now.

But the first words of our passage today, “But I say to you who hear”, show us that Jesus is not talking to the world, but to his disciples. They are to love for a different reward than to get back the love of the world. 

So if Jesus’ disciples aren’t to love to get a reward now, what kind of reward will they get? Verse 35 tells us that if you love your enemies, your reward will be great. We saw last week where that reward is. In verse 23, Jesus says to Christians who are persecuted, “Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven.” In verse 35, Jesus is simply reminding us of that great reward that he’s already spoken about. It’s the reward for those who refuse to seek contentment in this world. 

Brothers and sisters, you don’t want the reward of the world. That’s a reward that sinners can get. You want the reward of heaven. Don’t lend only to those who you expect to pay you back. Even banks do that. But lend for the heavenly reward, and you’ll have treasure that no thief can steal and no stock market crash can take away. Don’t just love those who love you. Love those who hate you, and you’ll know that you’re loved by your Father in heaven, who is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

To be like your Father

The second reason to love your enemies is to be like your Father. Jesus says in verse 35, “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.”

You can’t make God adopt you and become your Father by loving your enemies. And you can’t annul your adoption by your heavenly Father when you fall short of loving your enemies. Adoption is the gracious act of God where he declares you to be his son because of your union with Christ, the eternal Son of God. You can’t trick God into adopting you by acting like him. Loving your enemies can’t make you God’s son any more than going to a Phillies game, doing a silly dance, and dying your skin green makes you the son of the Philly Phanatic.

Yet, when you act like your father, you show yourself to truly be his son. My dad has a certain way of laughing where he doesn’t just laugh, but actually bounces up and down a little bit. When I laugh, as my wife has pointed out to me, I do the same thing. I don’t stop being my dad’s son when I’m not laughing, but when I do laugh, you can’t help but notice that I am my Father’s son. And although I’m not sure if he’d say it, I think my dad is pleased that I laugh like him. He could pick me out of a crowd and say, “that’s my son”. 

So when you are kind to the ungrateful and the evil, you are a son of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. And your Father is pleased with that. When you love the ungrateful and the evil, it’s like God turns to the angels in heaven and says, “that’s my son. That one right there”.

If you’re a disciple of Jesus, you’re a son of the Most High. You can’t help but be like him. And just think about what he is like! He is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Loving your enemies is the family trait of God’s family.

Think about it: when we were God’s enemies, at the right time, he sent his Son to die for the ungodly. 

And what did that true Son of God, the one who commanded his disciples to love their enemies, do, when he came to die for the ungodly? He loved his enemies. When he was struck on the cheek, he did not strike back. He blessed those who cursed him. He prayed for those who abused him. He prayed for Peter when he knew that Peter would deny him three times. When he was crucified, he did not curse his enemies, but asked his Father to forgive them. And by becoming a curse for us by dying in our place, for our sins, he secured for us the blessing of sonship. Because Jesus, the true Son of God, was kind to us, the ungrateful and the evil, we have been adopted as sons of the Most High. So we can’t help but be sons like him, sons who are kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

You can love people who are ungrateful and evil because Jesus Christ loves you when you are ungrateful and evil.

If you think it sounds crazy to love your enemies, or you recognize that you really just don’t want to do that, it may be because you don’t know the love that Jesus has for you. If you are content with being nice to those who are nice to you, but you want to get back at those who hate you, that is not what it means to be a son of God. If that’s you, I beg you, consider the love that Jesus had on the cross by dying for his enemies and asking his Father to forgive them. Confess that you are an enemy of God, believe that Jesus died for you on the cross, and you will be made a son of God, and your reward will be great. But if you are content with the rewards of the world, with helping others so that they will help you, with everyone loving you for what you can give them, know that that is the only reward you are going to get. You are not going to get a reward in the next life if you only love those who love you. 

But to those who hear, who know that God loved us so much while we were ungrateful and evil that he sent his Son to die for us on the cross, how much more should we, who have been graciously adopted as sons, be kind to the ungrateful and evil? How much more can we look forward to that heavenly reward? How much more can we rejoice when we have a chance to show ourselves to be God’s sons by loving our enemies?

So, because Jesus has so loved us, we’ll finish by looking at how to love your enemies: by loving them like God. We’ll look again at verses 27-31, and those commands that seem impossible from a worldly perspective become things that we actually want to do in light of how God has loved us. 

 

Like God loves his enemies

To those who hear, Jesus tells you how to love your enemies. We love by loving better than how we’re treated, loving everyone, and loving in prayer.

To love like God has loved you, love your enemies better than they love you. Love in a way that doesn’t depend on them, but on the love you have received from God. Look again at verses 27-31 and how Jesus describes how we are to love our enemies: Jesus says “do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you”, to the one who takes your cloak from you, give your tunic to them also. To the one who demands that you give them your goods, don’t demand them back. Since the love you have comes from God, it doesn’t depend on how you’re treated. It depends on God. Remember, sinners love so others will love them. Disciples love because we’ve been loved by God.

Look at verse 31: “And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them”. Love your enemies like you’d want to be loved if you were in their position. Give them better things than they even demand from you! Isn’t that how you’ve been loved by God? Were you looking for salvation? Were you looking for adoption as God’s child? No! But he gave those things to us anyway.

Next, to love like God has loved you, love everyone. Isn’t our Father wonderful? He is kind to the ungrateful and evil. He makes his sun shine and rain fall on the just and the unjust. He freely offers salvation to the Jew and the Gentile, the rich and the poor. So we should love everyone.

People who persecute you for your faith by striking you on the cheek and taking your stuff? Check. People who beg from you? Check.

Living in a city where you’re often being asked for money, you might be wondering, “does this mean I have to give to every panhandler?” That’s a good question, and different Christians will make different decisions about this. Some Christians will always give the first time they see a homeless person, and then a second time, offer more help. Some Christians will never give money, since you have no idea how the money will be used and could actually be used to inflict harm on themselves or others, but will always give food. Some Christians excel at stopping to talk and finding out more about the person’s needs. In our own church benevolence policy, we’re usually pretty quick to give small amounts of money the first time someone asks, but believe that the best way to truly help folks after that is to make further assistance conditional on things like accepting help with budgeting, applying for jobs, and pursuing community at church.

The bottom line is that Jesus really does say to give to everyone. But think again about how God has loved us.  Our Father in heaven does not give us what we ask for when he knows it will destroy us. But he always gives us what we need. Did we ask him for the blessings of salvation? No! But he gave them freely to us, while sometimes denying the things that we prayed for, like that job, or that husband or wife.  Bede, a Christian living in England in the 8th century, has wide words for 21st century Christians in Philadelphia. Bede’s advice is that we really should give to everyone who approaches us for help. But he also warns us that giving someone money to destroy a poor person, or to spend on debauchery, is not really loving them! He says, “Thus you will give to everyone who asks you, although you will not always give what he asks for. And sometimes you will give something better, after you have corrected the person asking for things that are not right.” So having received this love, we should seek to give everyone what they ask for, or better! Sometimes, money is the best way to help someone. Other times, its helping someone to see that there are deeper issues that they have, and offering to help. But if you let the love of Christ be your guide, you will give to everyone who begs of you, and will always give more than they ask, not less.

Notice also that Jesus commands us in verse 28 to pray for those who abuse us. So we love our enemies in prayer. At first glance, it’s easy to miss how radical an idea this is. But there is not higher love we can have for our enemies than to pray for them.

Frankly, there is a counterfeit way of being nice to our enemies, not out of the great love that we’ve received from our Father, but to get worldly benefits now. We can sometimes be nice to our enemies or those who beg from us to get them to go away. We can be nice as a kind of revenge, to “kill them with kindness”. We can be nice to our enemies to feel good about ourselves, and be proud of going high when they go low. 

But when you pray for your enemies, you’re doing something more than merely being nice to them, you’re truly loving them. And you get absolutely no worldly benefits from doing so. You can’t fake praying in secret for your enemies, to your Father. There’s no earthly reward for that. When you pray for your enemies, they don’t go away, but move to the front of your mind. You can’t get revenge on someone by praying for them. And when you’re face to face with God asking for mercy for your enemies, you can’t fake it and feel good about yourself. To the worldly person, prayer is a waste of time. But for the Christian, prayer is the real test of whether we love our enemies.

So isn’t it wonderful to know that Jesus prayed for you that way when he went to the cross? That he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?”. That he is interceding for us right now at the right hand of the Father? Jesus prayed for us, so we should love our enemies by praying for them.

If you’ve had the experience of praying for those who have wronged you in some way, you can’t help but go to the cross. You can’t help but remember how Jesus loves you, though you are ungrateful and evil. I contend with you that it is impossible to remain angry when you pray for your enemies and go to the cross for them, though it may take many tears to get there.

What greater good could we possibly seek for our enemies than to pray that they would be blessed by God? That they get not what they deserve for their deeds, but the same grace that we’ve received, not according to our deeds, but according to God’s mercy. 

To the world, loving your enemies seems like a crazy idea. I don’t want to be a punk, I want to be John Wick. But you are not of the world, and you don’t want the reward you can get by loving those who can give things to you. You love to gain a better reward than the earthly reward of sinners. You love to be a true son of your Father in heaven. When you think about how God loved you when you were his enemy, loving your enemies doesn’t sound so crazy after all. And as you love, you will participate in the love that existed from eternity past between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the love which was extended to sinners like you and I, and the love that we will rejoice in for eternity future when we enter heaven, that world of love.