Sermon on the Plain: Love Your Enemies - a podcast by Rev. W. Reid Hankins

Sermon preached on Luke 6:27-36 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 10/10/2021 in Novato, CA.















Sermon Manuscript







Today, we have a message from Jesus telling us to love our enemies. Enemies can come in various forms. Maybe as a Christian, you have not thought of many people as enemies. Or maybe, you’ve thought practically the whole world is your enemy. Enemies can come in various forms. Sure, they can be the very hostile unbeliever who hates you simply because you are a Christian. But likely you have various other more regular enemies – people you might not call an enemy to their face, or even think of as an enemy. It might be an associate or even a friend, yet who at points are in opposition against you. They can in such moments be a sort of enemy or foe. Whenever and for however you find yourself in opposition with someone else, Jesus here gives us this command to love them. Let us spend some time reflecting on this today. It can be a challenging topic, but he addresses this special call in verse 27, “to you who hear.” May God give us ears to hear this lesson today.







Let us begin in our first point to consider how Jesus calls us to do good to our enemies, looking at the first part of our passage in verses 27-31. This is how our passage starts out. After giving us the summary command in verse 27 to love our enemies, Jesus then goes on to explain what he has in mind. He begins by saying to do good to those who hate you, and the rest of this first section continues to explain what this looks like. Notice he gives various examples of people who might treat us badly. These are different ways that someone might act like an enemy to you. They might hate you. They might curse you. They might abuse you. They might strike you. They might take from you. They might beg you for a loan and not pay you back. They might flat out rob you. These are but examples, but it’s a pretty healthy list.







But see what Jesus is doing with these examples. He is pairing the evil thing the person is doing to you with something good he wants us to do in reverse. If they hate you, be good back to them. If they curse you, then you bless them. If they abuse you, pray for them. If they strike you, turn to let them strike you again. If they take from you, if they beg and don’t pay back, or even rob you, respond by giving to them. Jesus says to return their evil with good. That’s not our instinct, by any means. But that’s how Jesus says to fight back against them, so to speak.







It would be good to offer some clarification here. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus uses a teaching style that is often full of rather short absolute-sounding statements. Because of that, we might be tempted to simplistically apply them and come to some wrong conclusions. For example, we might incorrectly think Jesus is forbidding self-defense when he says turn the other cheek. We might incorrectly think Jesus is forbidding ever seeking justice when someone steals from you. We might incorrectly think we should never call the police when someone commits a crime against us. We might incorrectly think that Jesus thinks evil and injustice should just be allowed to go unchecked. I could imagine how people might think such. But Scripture has to interpret Scripture. One quick example of that is with Jesus himself in John 18:22 where he is struck by an officer during one of his trials. There is no record of Jesus literally turning his cheek to get struck a second time. Instead, Jesus as respectfully as possible rebuked the officer, calling the officer out for his injustice in striking Jesus without cause.







So then, we must appreciate what Jesus is and is not meaning here by these words. Following the principle of Scripture interpret...

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