Love Must Always Win

There is one vital mark of a real disciple. It is the greatest mark.

It is love for other people. ~ Stephen Dray

 

Scripture:  Matthew 5:43–6:15

 

Observation:  This week we have been talking about how Christ goes to the heart of the matter every time.  Today is no exception.  He calls us out to love.  We have studied this in past studies, but for those of you who missed it or need a refresher, there are several Greek words used in the Bible to translate “love”.  In English we might say, “I love chocolate”, and then turn around and say to our children, “I love you”.  Do we love chocolate and our children in the same way?  You might love your children enough to die for them which is the greatest love (that a man lay down his life for a friend), but would you die for some chocolate?  Some might say yes depending on the day (wink, wink), but we know that our children are much more important than chocolate (again depending on the day j/k). 

 

Here Jesus says to the Teachers, “You have heard it said …” and he goes on to expound on the second part of the Greatest Command which is to love your neighbor.  And then He goes deeper, “But I say love your enemies …”  The word there is AGAPE LOVE.  This kind of love goes beyond feelings and goes straight to a decision to love regardless.  It means regardless of how the other person treats you, what they say to you or what they do to you, you will make a conscious decision to LOVE.  They may insult us and hurt us, but we will not allow that to change how we treat them.  As followers of Christ we have to be different!

 

So when it says, “Then you will be perfect as your Father in Heaven ...” I believe it is saying when we love like this, with His love, then we will be perfect (teleios = wanting nothing, complete, perfect, full grown, mature).  It’s not a perfection in the sense of doing nothing wrong (because we are human), but it is the sense of having God’s perfect love in us and that love perfects or completes us.  It loves through us, not with our conditional love, but with His unconditional love which accepts us for who we are (while we were still sinning He died for us).  It accepts us, sins and all – with all of our imperfections and all of our junk.

 

Then He gives three examples of ways we can show that love:

 

1.       Bless them – eulogeo – celebrate them with praises, the opposite of cursing them, but wishing that they might prosper.  The picture here is that you speak blessings to those who are insulting you.  It’s easy to bless those who are nice to you, but not those who are yelling at you.  Sometimes my children get upset with me and tell me I’m mean because of a decision I made that they don’t like.  Certainly I deal with these kind of attitudes, but just because they are hurt and yelling at me doesn’t mean I have to hurt them back with my words.  Now it’s one thing for your children to do this, we are the adult afterall, but what if it not a child, but another adult who is mistreating you?  Not so easy, right?  Yeshua says, bless them, wish them well.

2.     Not only do we wish them well and even celebrate them with praises (which would be hard enough, right?), but He takes it a step further and says go do something nice for them.  (what?  It doesn’t say that does it?)  Yes!  “Do good to those that hate you.”  Do good?  This word is kalos and it means to do right and leave no room for blame.  We are to speak well of them and treat them with honor.  It means we aren’t to undercut them or go spreading rumors and talk bad about them, but to lift them up and leave no room for them or others to blame you.

3.     Lastly, we are to pray.  I say lastly because it is in the list last, but really it is the FIRST THING we need to do.  If you are going to love someone like this you’d better be doing it from your knees because it is going to take every ounce of humility you have to speak well of someone who is making you crazy!  It is going to take the Holy Spirit in you to resist speaking negativity over their life.  It is going to take a HUGE amount of grace to do good to and for them.  In Chapter 6 Jesus even gave an example of a prayer we can pray in “The Lord’s Prayer”.  In there we are to pray to forgive and be forgiven.  This is a good place to start when dealing with people who have hurt or who are even now hurting you.

 

Then as you turn the page to chapter 6 Yeshua takes it even deeper.  He goes into giving of alms (mercy, charity) or things you might do “for a reward” (including what we talked about above) and says don’t put yourself on display.  I think this follows the above advice because when we love like this we might be tempted to get puffed up.  Look at me, look how well I loved them and kept my cool when they were doing such and such to me.  No!  This is not for our glory, but His!  So when you treat people well or give to various charities or when you pray – let it all be done before the Father’s eyes alone.  You don’t have to let everyone know everything you are doing or make yourself “look good” for the sake of gaining approval or affirmation.  God sees! 

 

Application:  Please comment and let’s discuss the following questions.  Do it ‘secretly’ (6:34). ‘Let your light shine’ (5:16). These two verses seem to be opposite in meaning. How can they both be true?

 

Prayer:  Heavenly Father, thank You for going straight to the heart of the matter again and teaching us about the right attitude we are to have in this life.  It is not easy when we deal with people who don’t treat us the way we think they should or to deal with people who seem to be making our life more difficult because they don’t do things the way we would.  They may even treat us bad or say hurtful things to us because of our differences, but You taught us a different way – which is love.  Help us to love and bless and do good things for EVERYONE that you allow into our lives.  I pray that You would love through us.  I pray this love would draw people to You.  Through Christ, our example, I pray.  Amen & Amen

 

Going deeper:

 

I could do a whole teaching on The Lord’s Prayer, but we can save that for another time.  I just want to give you a quick overview and would encourage you to study it out further.  I have been to three day conferences on Prayer and could talk for days about what I have learned.  The movie “War Room” about prayer is probably one of my favorites right now.  Prayer is vital!  I hope it is a vital part of your life as well.

 

According to Stephen Dray’s commentary, The Lord’s Prayer is complete. It includes everything.  It includes references to:

 

· God’s glory [or rule] (the first 3 requests)

· things that we need (the last 4 requests)

· physical needs (request 4)

· spiritual needs (requests 5, 6 and 7)

· present, past and future needs (requests 4, 5 and 6) and

· other people’s needs. (Notice the words ‘our’ and ‘us’.)

 

Jesus included all of these things in 7 brief requests. This is a perfect model for our prayers.