There is a part of me that wants to take three or four sermons to get through this text. The Golden Rule in verse 31 is worth a couple by itself. Who knows when we’ll be back to look directly at these imperatives? Who knows how many disciples of Jesus today understand what following Jesus requires?

This section of Jesus’ sermon requires love. Love is the key word. Love is commanded, and love is illustrated by other behaviors that show what love looks like in real time. The Golden Rule itself is a rule of love. Love, as Jesus teaches, is something the Woe-to-yous won’t do.

But the Woe-to-yous are here.

• Those who hate the blessed in verse 22 are back in verse 27 as those whom the blessed love.
• Those who speak evil of the blessed in verse 22 are back as the evil ones to whom God shows kindness in verse 35.
• Woe when all men speak well of you in verse 26, but you must do well to those who hate you in verse 27.
• There is great reward for those who have haters in verse 23, there is great reward for loving the haters in verse 35.

Love shapes the outline to the heart of the sermon. The blessed show love to haters (verses 27-31) and the blessed love unlike the haters (verses 32-36).

But one more comment that is from Jesus at the start of verse 27: But I say to you who hear. This is both an insight and an invite. Not everyone wants to hear this, not everyone can. It was true for the audience that day with Jesus Himself, and don’t think it’s any less true in these days, even among those who say that they know Jesus. But this is how His disciples love.

Love Your Haters (verses 27-31)

Everything in this paragraph connects to love. Only verse 27 has the word love, but the next paragraph assumes that love is still the point. The point is: love your haters.

Four Categories (27-28)

Love your enemies. Most of the original listeners knew the law that required them to love their neighbors (Leviticus 19:18). That was the kind of difficult that might make you committed to forget it. Loving an enemy? That was impossible to agree with.

A couple of questions that get answered by the next few verses. What is love? And who are your enemies?

Here’s a working definition: love is active affection; a care that seeks good for another. Love isn’t just a feeling in your heart (“be warmed and filled”), it shows itself. And also, love isn’t heartless, as if going through the motions can be called love (“take your stupid cup of cold water”). We’ve heard preachers say that agape is Christian love, and that’s convenient, and wrong; sinners agape one another in verse 32. That said, agape love is not convenient, and often must be shown to those who treat us wrong.

Enemies are haters; the word enemies could be translated as “the hateful,” and the ones hating is a different word with the same strong aversion. Haters hate on a spectrum of intensity and in a variety of ways. Before we see some of that, get the category established. If you would obey Jesus, you must be able to identify and name your enemies. How will you love them if you don’t see them?

Jesus gives three follow-up commands as in a string, and then four concrete examples. It explains love and enemies.

Do good to those who hate you, so love is doing good and the enemies are the haters. Bless those who curse you, so love includes desiring favor on enemies who desire the opposite of favor for you, who want your harm. Pray for those who abuse you, who do you harm. Prayer is a private response before God not men, which is a way to do good and bless them. A bad attitude will make it impossible to obey this word.

Four Concrete Cases (29-30)

Verses 29-30 are illustrations, different ways to show love to haters.

• Turn the other cheek. Which has the ingredients not of a fight but of an insult, as from a backhand to the face (which Matthew seems to specify with “right” cheek).
• Give the shirt off your back. Which appears to be as if you were robbed, taking your coat and also offering the undershirt.
• Don’t hold back to beggars. Look for ways to be generous.
• Don’t demand your own goods back. This is another way to not be grabby.

These are love languages that very few speak. They are so impractical and unjust that there must be a wink or a footnote or a key to interpret them so that they aren’t so ridiculous.

We can say that these are not executive or judicial or military policies. They are not replacements for justice, they assume the willing acceptance of injustice, at least at times. Kings and judges and soldiers and police officers should uphold the law. A homeowner can forgive the neighbor kid who broke his window and pay for the glass himself. That doesn’t mean the city should stop prosecuting vandals. So we are not redefining what is right, Jesus is saying that there is more than one way to do right.

It also goes to show how powerful this life of love is, because we live downstream of some 2000 years of disciples who have taught and tried to embody this love, so that now our pagan neighbors know how to exhort us to live up to our own Master’s commands.

One Rule (31)

And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them (verse 31). Or the LSB: “treat others the same way you want them to treat you.”

We know it as the “Golden Rule.” The English phrase began circulating in 1604 in Britain, first used in print by Charles Gibbon in a tract about fair taxation.

What Jesus said wasn’t entirely new, but it was emphatic. It sits here in the context of difficult love, and love that does better than just not retaliating.

Conclusion

We can’t love our enemies if we can’t identify them. Who hates, curses, or slanders you right now? What is one good thing you can do for them this week? Have you prayed by name for the person who wronged you, for their good and not just for your vindication (verse 28)?

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil by love (“with good,” Romans 12:21).

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Charge

If you would aim for Big Whoop Love (BWL), then build on Base Line Love (BLL). Husbands, love your wives. Fathers, love your children. Church, love one another. Christians, love your neighbors. Exercise love. Keep increasing the weight of your love lifts. May your love astound more and more.

Benediction:

[M]ay the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. (1 Thessalonians 3:12–13 ESV)