I. It's About Us 00:01
We pray this morning that you would narrow our focus, Lord, that you’d help us to look to you and not to our own strength, our own provision. We pray that as we engage with you in your words, you would transform us to be like you. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Last week we began a series that I titled What Was I Made For? And if you’re paying attention, you may realize that that is actually a very individualistic question. I left it there; I didn’t talk about it. But I think it’s important, because I think it calls each of our individual hearts, and that’s why I titled it that way. But I want to make a distinction: this isn’t about you. It’s about us, and it’s about him. Which means, paradoxically, it is about you. Each one of you is the center of the universe, in the sense that God has made you like him, and you have a whole universe laid out before you that you get to experience, and he means for you to experience. But we are not alone.
Everything going on in your life is very important to God. He cares about every hair on your head. And yet at the same time we have to remember that it’s about us. I say that because this whole Gospel lesson is challenging our idea of what it means for me to be a me and for you to be a you. It’s breaking down the barrier between my realm and our realm. And I mean that, because it’s crazy to love your enemy. That person over there? That person’s against me. And Jesus is methodically breaking that down to talk about love: that thing which unites heaven and earth, that thing which generated the universe. God himself is overflowing love, and you see it in the beauty of the galaxies and in the simple pleasures of our day-to-day life. Everything is an overflow of love.
II. The Heavenly Man 01:21
And so when we start here and talk about the Heavenly Man, I don’t want to get lost in abstraction. You can read that Corinthians passage (1 Cor 15.47–49), and if you thought the last couple ones were hard, this one’s really hard, because it’s like: the physical came before the spiritual, but the spiritual supersedes the physical, but it’s not like the physical is subsumed, and we’re a part of… You could really go down this road of metaphysics that would just be no good, no help to us this morning. You can have fun with that, and it’s a wonderful thing, and if you want to talk philosophy, you know I’m always game. But on a Sunday morning I want to get at the heart of what Jesus wants for us.
So I’m going to summarize Corinthians, and then we’re going to talk about the words of Jesus, because the people who put this lectionary together did it purposefully. The passage in Corinthians is actually linked directly to the passage in Luke that we read today, and to this question: what was I made for? What were we made for?
The thing you need to know from the passage in Corinthians, the thing that Paul is demonstrating, is that we were once children of Adam: fallen, broken, those for whom death was the end. That’s what Adam and Eve in their rebellion brought into the world. They ushered in death, and everyone who came after was fated to die, to be slaves to sin who died. And yet now, what Corinthians is telling us is that we are no longer children of Adam. We are children of Jesus. What he did was he became our spiritual ancestor, the prime being, the firstborn, the one from whom we all are.
So guess what? You’re no longer the fallen creature you once were. You are now children of God. That’s the invitation that Jesus gives us. In our baptism we die with him and we’re raised, and from now on you are heavenly men and women after the likeness of Jesus. That is where we come from, and that is where we are going. And so in that sense, what was I made for? I was made to become a heavenly man, a heavenly woman. Now, how do you accomplish that? By his grace, by his invitation, and by his activity in your life. So as we’re talking about these very practical ways that we live the love of God within us, let’s not lose the fact that it’s all because we’re from him. It’s all because we are like him, and we’re becoming like him.
III. Love Your Enemies 04:56
So we’re going to skip through the passages I had here. I’m going to summarize that, and we’re going to go straight to our Gospel.
Last week we talked about shalom, eudaemonia, blessedness. If you’re like, “What is that middle word? Did he sneeze?” No, it’s a thing we talked about. If you want to listen to that, you can. My point is that what we’re describing here is a journey from the way the world tells you you should live, “I want to fulfill my own goodness, my own pleasure,” to “I want to live in a world full of peace from on high. I want to live in a world where everything is good and in its right place.” And so in order to do that, we have to change. We have to be transformed. We have to become the heavenly men and women that I was just talking about.
And so when we go into Luke, it’s not disconnected from the Psalms: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful” (Ps 1.1). All of this leads to Jesus’ unfolding of what this looks like in your life in Luke 6. And he starts off really easy with us in verse 27:
27 “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” Luke 6.27–28
I’m joking; that is not easy. “Pray for those who abuse you.” I’ve got my prayer list. It doesn’t contain people who hate me. I’m doing it wrong. It contains a lot of you guys, but you love me, right?
So there’s this idea here that Jesus is challenging the way we are now. How do we do this? Well, he structured it kind of like an instruction manual, actually. “Love your enemies.” How do I do that, Jesus? Well, first of all, you do good to those who hate you. You know what will change your heart towards a person? Doing good to them, serving them.
Let’s take this great example. You have a neighbor who you do not like. They park in your space, or they built their fence on your property line, or they play loud music, whatever the thing is. Or you just don’t like the way they look. Whatever it is, you have a beef with your neighbor for whatever reason. How do you love that person? Find a way to serve them. Leave a basket of fruit on their doorstep. I lived in Boston, and shoveling snow was just awful. Maybe you shovel the snow of the neighbor next door. You find ways to serve.
We are so isolated. We’re so in our own box that the idea of interacting with our neighbors is annoying: “Leave me alone. I’ve got to go do my things with my people.” G. K. Chesterton pointed out that so many people leave their country to go find… “I’m going to go love that villager in East India,” or, “I’m going to go love that foreigner in sub-Saharan Africa. I’m going to go do all these things and find people to love that are so different from me.” And he goes, “Yeah, but nobody’s doing what Jesus said. They’re not loving their neighbors.” Start with the guy down the hall. Start with the person next door. Start with the cashier at the grocery store. Start with the people in front of you. Trust me, you will find diversity, infinite diversity, in the people that you encounter day to day. Love your neighbor.
IV. Do Good, Bless, and Pray 08:19
And so when he says, “Love your enemies,” the first thing you do is you do good to them. Or maybe that’s too hard. Well, why don’t you find ways to bless those who curse you, bless those who wish you harm? How do we do that? Well, there’s a lot of different ways you could do it.
I follow this pastor that I like, and there was this Christian ministry that was critiquing his ministry, and he found out about it in a Christian magazine. They had the whole exposé: “He doesn’t believe this, and I don’t like his philosophy on that.” And he was really hurt and really angry: “How many people saw this guy ripping apart my teaching in this magazine? People are turning against me.” He was so angry. And God said, “Hey, you need to make a donation to his church.” “Oh man, I don’t want to do that. He’s cursing me in this paper. He’s wishing my destruction.” “No, you need to go make a donation.” Because it’s not about him; it’s about you. God wanted to do something in his heart. And so he blessed the person who cursed him.
And then furthermore, God said, “And you need to put him on your prayer list. And you don’t get to get away with this. You don’t get to just say, ‘Lord, I just bless that man.’” He’s like, “No, I want you to do war for him in prayer. Pray for him, that he would have prosperity.” Go beyond the simple “Jesus, I pray for this person. I got it off my list. I prayed for my enemies, yay.” No, actually dwell. Bring that person into your mind. Pray for his prosperity. Find out what his church needs. Find ways to pray for him. And it changed his heart towards this person, his enemy. How does he love him? He did good to him, he blessed him, and then he prayed for him. That’s the instructions: do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
We don’t get to have enemies. At least we don’t get to have human enemies, I’ll tell you that, because God came for them, so you don’t get to be against them. The only person who had every right to come down and curse all of his enemies died for them, prayed for them, loved them. In fact, let’s stop saying “them.” He died for us, who were his enemies. While we were yet sinners, Jesus did all of that for us (Rom 5.8). And so we have to be on his mission. That’s what it means to be a Christian. We don’t do our thing; we do his thing. And his thing is: love your enemies, pray for those who abuse you, do good to those who hate you, and bless those who curse you.
Now here’s an interesting idea. I think in parenting you really get to learn this, because yes, you love your kids. Let me just say this very clearly: I love my children. But I love them more after I just cleaned up the worst mess they ever made. And I mean that seriously. It doesn’t happen immediately; sometimes you’re still angry or whatever. But the day-in, day-out serving of your children leads you to love them more. The day-in, day-out serving of your wife leads you to love her more. And the more you make it about you, the less you love them. The more it’s about “I don’t want to deal with that inconvenience. I don’t want to serve; I want to be served,” the less love there will be in that house.
And you can observe it pretty quick. It doesn’t take long. You walk in the door thinking, “Man, I just want my this, my that, and the other,” and very soon you’re going to encounter resistance, both in your own heart and in those around you. And yes, you can fight through to make sure that you get what you want, but that doesn’t help anyone. What I want is a house full of shalom. I want a house where everything is excellent and good. And so I have to love them. They’re not even my enemies, and I have a real big problem sometimes. They’re the people I should love the best and most. But when I love them where they’re at, when I serve them where they’re at, my heart gets tied to them, and it becomes transformed.
V. Obedience Comes Before Understanding 12:27
Okay, so how do we do this? Well, last week we talked about knowing the law of the Lord, letting the word of God transform you, telling and listening to good stories. There are amazing stories of Christian saints who have loved their enemies in ways that would shock you. There are so many different ways that we could be shaped by those things. But first and foremost I want to emphasize something else we talked about last week: obedience comes before understanding.
And I’ll say it this way: loving your enemies is the result of blessing them, praying for them, and doing good to them. So you obey the command to pray, do good, and bless, and the love comes later.
One rabbi put it this way. He was gathering his disciples, and he asked, “How do you know when the sun is risen?” And you’re like, that seems like a silly question. But it’s pretty hard to answer. At what point does it count, and what point on the globe are you? How do you know when the sun is risen? That can be pretty complicated. And so his disciples jumped up: “I hear the rooster crow at dawn.” So it’s the rooster crow. Or, “When I see light fill the sky.” Or, “When I feel the warmth of the sun on my face.” And the rabbi smiled and simply answered, “The true sunrise comes when you look in the face of your enemy and you see your brother.”
That is the sun that we are anticipating when we say, “Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven”: when we no longer see us and them, but we see everyone as a brother in Christ, and we invite everyone to be more and more a part of that. There are no enemies.
My dad had this saying growing up, and man, when you have eight brothers and sisters, it is a really annoying saying: “You have no right to be offended.” “But do you know what they did?” “You have no right to be offended.” “But did you hear what they said?” “You have no right to be offended.” And yes, I did need to hear it infinitely. There was an infinite regress of reasons why I had every right to be offended. You have no right to have an enemy. It really doesn’t matter what they do. They killed him, and yet he said, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they do” (Luke 23.34).
VI. The Enemies We Are Called to Destroy 14:37
Now let me be clear: we have enemies that we are called to destroy. There is a lot of war language in the New Testament, and it matters. I actually heard a pastor once (love the guy, but I couldn’t understand this perspective) say, “We’ve got to get rid of the war language in Christianity. Everybody takes it wrong, and then they’re trying to be militant for Christ.” I’m like, no, the war language has to stay, because this is a matter of life and death. Eternity is on the line. There’s a reason Paul used war language. You’ve got to put on the armor of God (Ephes 6.11). You’ve got to use the weapons of our warfare; they are powerful for destruction (2 Cor 10.4).
Who do we get to destroy? “Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Gal 5.19–21). Wait, but they don’t live out there. They live in here. All of those things are in here. Our enemies are spiritual. Our enemies are bad ideas, bad desires. Our enemies aren’t an army that we’re going to go conquer. It’s learning how to submit every thought to Jesus. That’s the war we fight. That’s what our swords are for. In fact, as you love your enemies, you’re fighting envy and anger in them. You have weapons to destroy those enemies in the hearts of your neighbor, but your weapon is love.
Last week we talked about how, when you’re a fruitful tree, you bear the fruit of the Spirit. And this is actually the list that Paul gives right before the fruit of the Spirit. He says these are the things that you’re fighting so that you can get this: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control (Gal 5.22–23). That’s the opposite of these. Those are the weapons we use to destroy these. Self-control is really hard. Think about it: it is last, so I feel like you build up to self-control.
All of these things are extremely important. There’s war language for a reason. It’s your life, it’s their life, it’s everyone’s life. Try a little peace, love, and understanding, but you’ve got to think about it in the sense that we are actually fighting for these things. It’s not going to be easy, but your weapon is love, and the Holy Spirit within you will give you the ability to bear fruit in keeping with your love. That’s what the fruit of the Spirit is.
VII. Turn the Other Cheek 17:00
Okay, we’re a verse into ten verses. I promise we’re not going to do them all today. But verse 29, he continues:
29 “To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.” Luke 6.29
Jesus is going further. Before, you could have abstracted “love your enemies, pray for them, bless them.” Those could be kind of spiritual concepts: “I do that when I’m at home, when they’re not around.” But when they’re physically doing stuff to you, when they’re slapping you on the cheek, that’s where the rubber meets the road. Are you going to love them in that moment?
Now let me say clearly: a slap on the cheek is like when they insult you. He’s actually not really making a big argument about fighting in this moment. That’s not what he’s concerned with. He’s concerned with your heart towards those whom you would count as your enemies. So we’re not going to talk about pacifism and all the other implications. People have done that, and that’s awesome, and you should take that stuff seriously and look at what is true and good about violence. The Bible has a lot to say. But we’re just not going to address it this morning, because it’s just not time.
But I do want to address what Jesus said, and what he’s talking about is: if somebody comes and insults you, don’t defend yourself. Think about this. This is the one where it’s like, you have no right to be offended.
My son Rhys yesterday (love this kid, beautiful, wonderful child) is trying to build a Magna-Tiles castle at the same time as my older son Rowan is trying to build his Magna-Tiles castle, and they need the same parts to do the thing. So Rhys takes a part from Rowan. Rowan takes the part back. Rhys jumps on Rowan’s castle, and it’s demolished and destroyed. And I get home and I’m like, “What happened?” And Haley’s like, “You’ve got to go talk to Rhys. The boys are fighting. You’ve got to talk to Rhys.” Rowan’s crying, Rhys is crying, everybody’s crying.
I come over there and I go, “Rhys, what happened?” And eventually I had to tell him, “I don’t speak whine, so you have to change your voice a little bit. Let’s bring it down a register. I literally cannot understand you. Let’s calm down a minute.” I sometimes think about how Jesus must feel in my most distressed prayers: “Am I speaking whine? I need to change my language.”
But Rhys finally calms down, and he explains to me, “Well, I needed the piece, and then Rowan took the piece, so I smashed his castle.” It made perfect sense to him. “There’s no reason why I should be in trouble right now. You do hear what I’m saying?” And he said it like three times: “Don’t you get it? He took the piece I needed, so I smashed his castle.” And that’s the impulse in all of us. We’re all laughing because we know that’s exactly how we feel when somebody takes our Magna-Tile. We get so angry, and we want to just destroy their thing.
In fact, in the Bible, the first murderer, that was his whole thing. When Cain killed his brother and he got the mark of Cain, it was like, “If somebody hurts me, they will be hurt seven times more” (Gen 4.15). And then a few generations later, Lamech is saying, “You know how Cain said they’d be hurt seven times more? Well, if somebody hurts me, they’d be hurt seventy-seven times more” (Gen 4.24). And then Jesus comes along, and they go, “How many times should we forgive somebody? Seven times?” They’re thinking about Cain: should we forgive somebody seven times? And Jesus is like, “Seventy times seven” (Matt 18.22). Four hundred ninety. “It’s one smart carrot.” Sorry, VeggieTales. I’m sure there’s somebody here who didn’t get that reference.
But all of this to say, Jesus is directly confronting that thing in us that wants to defend itself, that wants to justify itself, that wants to take our pound of flesh. And in the moment when somebody slaps you, you are going to respond poorly. When somebody insults you, you will absolutely respond poorly, unless you’ve been praying for your enemy, you’ve been blessing your enemy, you’ve been doing good to your enemy, unless you’ve been shaped in the way of the cross. Now, we’re still going to mess up, because we’re just not that good, although he is within us. But there’s infinite grace. It’s a journey. It’s a transformation. We’re offered a better way.
VIII. Do Not Withhold Your Tunic 22:10
Okay, but what if they steal from me? So they’re not just insulting you now; they’re stealing your thing. And just like Rhys: “Hey, but I own that.” We have that argument all the time: “But it’s my toy.” You don’t own anything, kids. We are a communal, communist place in our household: from each according to his abilities, to each according to their needs. That’s how we live in our family, and it’s right and good to do so. Granted, we’re led by Jesus, and I get to decide. But just like a communist country, there is a dictator. But the point is… sorry, I’m getting so off track.
The point here is, somebody’s just stolen your cloak. Don’t you have a right to turn them over to the authorities? Don’t you have a right to get back what’s yours, what you worked so hard to earn or get? And Jesus is like, “No, give them your tunic also.” You don’t get a right to your stuff. You don’t get a right to your honor. “They’ve offended my honor!” Your stuff? You actually live at the grace of God, and everything you have is from him.
So when he says this, you think about it, and it’s hard. It’s hard to make a clear rule book about how these things should go down. So I’m just going to tell a quick story that you guys will be very familiar with.
Once upon a time, an escaped fugitive convict found refuge in a church. And the man he thought was a priest, who was actually a bishop, said, “Why don’t you stay in the nicest bed, and why don’t you have the nicest food that I have to offer, and eat with the nicest silverware,” actual silver. And in the middle of the night he was like, “I’ve got to save myself somehow, so I’m going to steal this silver.” And he ran away. He took the actual silver stuff. And then the guards found him and brought him back, and the bishop goes, “Oh my gosh, there’s been a mistake.” The guards are like, “We know he has your silver.” And he goes, “No, he forgot the candlesticks. They’re the nicest pieces.” And he takes the candlesticks off the mantel and gives them to the convict. And the convict is standing there, and the police are like, “Well, he told us that you gave him the silver, but we didn’t believe him.” And he goes, “No, he was absolutely right.” And what did he tell his sister, who was so offended? “We’ve been keeping that silver from the poor for far too long. I’m so glad it finally found its proper home.”
These stories challenge us to think differently. I’m not telling you you have to go give away everything you have, but you might need to. We have to be open to what God does to us and what God will change in us, so that we can see the convict as our friend, our brother. That’s how I would treat my brother, I would hope. Thinking about my brothers… I don’t know. I love them so much.
All of this is to challenge the way that we think about us versus them: “We have our stuff, and they can’t take it.” Well, maybe they can, because you know what? We do have an infinite God, who has the cattle on a thousand hills (Ps 50.10), more than you could ever need. That’s why the whole passage ends with “Give, and it shall be given unto you, pressed down and overflowing, in good measure” (Luke 6.38). You can’t outgive God. Stop trying to defend your stuff. He’s got your back.
IX. As You Wish That Others Would Do to You 25:20
Okay, let’s just read these two, and we’ll end with verses 30 and 31:
30 “Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. 31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.” Luke 6.30–31
And so then we have the Golden Rule. You’ve probably heard this from your kindergarten teacher a thousand times: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is not about what you do. This is about who you become.
I’ll explain. Jesus tells us elsewhere that what he does is everything he sees his Father doing, and what he says is everything he hears his Father saying (John 5.19). So does that mean that Jesus was walking around on earth with his eyes on heaven, and God picked up the cup, and so he picked up the cup, and then God took a sip, and so he took a sip, and then God said, “That’s good,” and so he said, “That’s good”? No, it’s not like that. He’s not a marionette. He’s not a puppet. What he means when he says that is that in his relationship to his Father he is so united to God that everything he does is exactly what God is doing. Or you could say it: exactly what God would do in that situation. But Jesus is God, so it is what God is doing on earth. What Jesus does… His point is that his heart has been so shaped by his relationship with his Father that there is no distinction. What Jesus does is what God would do, or God is doing.
That’s the invitation we are given. He then says, “Father, make them one, as I and you are one” (John 17.21–22). We’re on a journey to become so transformed that we will do to others what we would have them do to us. We are going to love people so well that when the person insults us, we have no temptation to insult them back. We just want to love them well. That bishop didn’t think twice when the convict showed up. He said, “Oh my gosh, I need to give you more. Here are the silver candlesticks,” because he was transformed by his relationship to God.
That’s the journey we’re on. When we’re talking about becoming the Heavenly Man, we’re talking about that. It’s not some ethereal, abstract notion. It’s the people you encounter: you react out of love, like God, so that they can see God in you.
X. You Were Made for Love 28:39
We’re God’s representatives on earth. Jesus wants to love these people. He uses you to do it, but you have to be transformed. So when we talk about “What was I made for?”, it’s this: you were made for love. You were made for love, and not weak sentimental feelings. You were made to bless those who curse you, to pray for those who abuse you, to do good to those who hate you. That’s not weak love. That’s a strength that only comes from the Holy Spirit.
And so as we go on this journey (and next week we’re going to talk about the Transfiguration, because that’s the ultimate picture of what we were made for), let’s every day wake up and ask, “What does love demand of me today?” It’s a good question to ask, and it’s not fun, because it demands that you take the trash cans out for your wife even though it’s 3:30 in the morning, or whatever it is that you’re doing. It reminds you that everyone you encounter is made in the image of God and deserves to be loved. Jesus showed us the way; we’re just walking in it. What does love demand today, right now, after church? What does love demand? And over time you will become the heavenly man and the heavenly woman, and we cannot imagine how good that will be. The end is so far beyond our understanding.
And so, if you’re feeling any sort of burden or twinge of guilt, let me just remind you: this is an invitation to joy every day, and there’s no end. I mean, that bishop who gave those candlesticks away is the happiest person in the whole book. The book is called “miserable people,” and he is the happy one in the midst of it all. And actually, for those twenty pieces of silver he gave away, a life was saved instead of betrayed, if you get the reference. And Jean Valjean started to live like the bishop, and in the end he has this beatific vision. He dies and goes to heaven and joins the Heavenly Man. That’s the whole point of the book. It turns on this one act of love.
So when you think about what you’re doing and what love’s demanding, remember: you don’t know the end. There are eternal ramifications for the love that you show. Amen.