“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. If you do what is good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do what is good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.”

Love your enemies. It is a sobering passage, to say the least. If I’m honest, it does more than step on my toes a little – it calls me out, revealing that much of what I call “love” is nothing more than self-interest. But that’s a topic for another time. Right now, I want to jump down a few verses to what I believe is a key to understanding what is often missed about this passage – or, at least what I missed for a long time.

After summing up what it looks like to love your enemies, Jesus tells us what it would mean if we were to live out such love:

“Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is gracious to the ungrateful and evil. Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.”

This may sound obvious, but Jesus is telling us that he wants us to love like this because this is exactly how God the Father loves. When we love like this we are living as God’s children because that is how he loves. Jesus came to show us what the Father is really like, to correct our misguided notions about him. I think this is one of those moments.

When I come to this passage, I usually read it, feel depressed about the lousy quality of my love, and determine to try harder. I focus exclusively on what it says about how I love or don’t love. What I rarely do is focus on what this says about how God loves. And I rarely think about whether or not I am interacting with God as he presents himself. Instead, I tend to treat God as if he plays by our rules.

How often do we live as if God is the embodiment of everything this passage says is not love?

• As if God only loves those who love him?
• As if God is only good to those who are good to him?
• As if God only gives to us when he expects us to do something for him in return?

Even sinners do this, and yet too often we treat God as if his love is no better. Listen to the subtle implications of conversations you hear around you (and inside your own mind) and tell me this isn’t true.

We tend to believe that if we do the things God likes, he will do nice things for us, but if we do the things God doesn’t like, then he will do bad things to us. I know it seems that way sometimes. That’s why we try to bargain with God. That’s why, too often, we try to impress God with our goodness. That’s why we hide from him when we’ve sinned.

Now don’t get me wrong – there are blessings for living in tune with God, and there are consequences for disconnecting ourselves from him, but the point is this: yes, God blesses the faithful, but, astonishingly, God also blesses the unfaithful!

In Matthew’s version of this passage, Jesus says that God causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall, not just to benefit the good, but the evil as well. It is as if God can’t contain himself! He is so full of love for us – all of us – that he just keeps pouring out good things all around us, knowing that most won’t even lift their heads to thank the source from which their blessings come. What a gift to God, then, to thank him for his gifts! But even if we don’t, that doesn’t change his love – it just keeps overflowing like the sun spilling over the horizon, like the rain bursting from the sky onto parched and thirsty ground.

He just gives, and gives, and gives…

And his giving only fills him with more to give!

What if I lived like that?

What if I lived as if God really loves me like that?

I wonder if all this trying to be better would be replaced with streams of living water flowing – overflowing – from within. I wonder if I would love because he first loved me.

Sometimes I find that I’ve become so familiar with the words of Jesus that I overlook just how turn-the-world-upside-down they are. Consider the earthshaking implications of just two of the famous Beatitudes:

“Blessed are you who are hungry now,

because you will be filled.

Blessed are you who weep now,

because you will laugh.”

The economy of the Kingdom of God is a strange one. You’re actually better off when you have less or when you have lost. You are better off because to be filled after being empty is better than always having been full.

I guess in a way this makes sense. Imagine sitting down at dinner to eat your favorite food (tacos, am I right?), but consider how different you’d feel if you hadn’t eaten since breakfast in contrast to if you’d be been snacking all day and didn’t have an appetite anymore. You actually enjoy eating more if you are hungry. Or think of how sweet a drink of water is when you are parched, or how immensely pleasurable it is to lie down and sleep after a hard day of work. Sometimes we actually enjoy things more when we’ve been lacking them. 

However, this mindset runs completely counter to the way we usually think in this world. Consider the latest ads you’ve seen on TV or billboards. How do the values they suggest compare to what Jesus talks about here?

Jesus says that those who are happy are those who are poor, hungry, weeping, and despised… yet we spend most of our effort seeking to be rich, well-fed, laughing, and admired. What is Jesus trying to say? I don’t think he is not saying “Don’t seek happiness” but rather, “Don’t seek happiness that will only last on this earth” and “Even if you are not ‘happy’ now, you can still be ‘happy’ because your emptiness will be filled, resulting in more happiness than if you had never experienced emptiness.”

This is mystery, to be sure. It is also a mystery why we rarely live in accordance with the truth that Jesus has given us. Think of a time recently when something you wished for didn’t happen and you were left with that hollow ache of disappointment. We tend to get stuck there and live as if that emptiness is the truth, when in reality it is only the prelude to God filling us with boundless joy.

I do not mean to diminish the suffering we encounter here on earth, but rather to point out that to the degree in which our suffering is great (and it is), the power of God to redeem our pain is even greater!

Which brings us to the greatest mystery in the economy of the Kingdom of God: our own redemption. I don’t know if any of us can fully wrap our mind around this, but join me in trying to let it sink in:

We are closer to God in our redeemed state than if we had never fallen.

Takes my breath away.

We think that the product of our sinful acts is only more corruption, and without Jesus this would be true, but through Him, the power of redemption is stronger, not just than sinfulness, but even than sinlessness!

If you doubt, turn your eyes to the Cross. Upon the canvas of our sinfulness is painted the most beautiful picture of love ever seen. But that sacrifice was not just a display, it is an invitation for you to accept Jesus. He loves you and He is the only one who can redeem all things – yes, even that.

“On a Sabbath, He passed through the grainfields. His disciples were picking heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. But some of the Pharisees said, ‘Why are you doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?’

Jesus answered them, ‘Haven’t you read what David and those who were with him did when he was hungry – how he entered the house of God, and took and ate the sacred bread, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat? He even gave some to those who were with him.’ Then He told them, ‘The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.’”

Sometimes you think you know Jesus, and then he does or says something totally unexpected. For me, this passage was one of those moments.

Of course, I have no problem with what Jesus and his disciples were doing. I’m like, “Wow, way to overreact Pharisees. They’re just picking and eating grain.” But then comes Jesus’ response. I expect him to say something about how he and his disciples aren’t really breaking the Sabbath, and how it is instead the Pharisees’ own misguided understanding of the Sabbath that is the problem here. And that is kind of what he does, but the example he uses is unsettling.

He references the story from 1 Samuel 21, when David and his men are on the run from Saul. They’re hungry. Starving? Probably not. But when you’re on the run from the king of the land, food can be scarce. So David goes to the temple and asks the priest for some bread. The only bread available is the bread from the Table of Showbread, so the priest gives this to David. Sounds reasonable, right?

Except: it is unlawful for any but the priests to eat this bread! David and his men are breaking the law. The priest who gives the bread to them is breaking the law. When this story is told in the Old Testament, it is morally ambiguous at best. Yet here Jesus is using it to defend his disciples’ actions!

I realized that this unsettled me because I misunderstood the nature of the law and our relation to it. I thought the goal was to avoid breaking the law. But it’s not. The goal is to obey the law… and sometimes that means breaking it.

In Matthew’s version of this story, Jesus cites a second example in his disciples’ defense. He says, “Or haven’t you read in the Law that on Sabbath days the priests in the temple violate the Sabbath and are innocent?” (Matthew 12:5)

Again, this makes sense to me, but the way Jesus says it has the wheels in my head spinning. You can break the law and still be innocent? Jesus doesn’t say that the priests working on the Sabbath don’t break the Sabbath – but rather that they do and yet, somehow, are still obeying the law. This has profound implications. It means there are sometimes things in life more important than avoiding breaking the law. Like feeding hungry people. Like serving others in ministry. And that you may have to break the letter of the law in order to fulfill the spirit of the law.

Then it hits me: the point of the law is not the law; the point of the law is people. It is designed to show us how to love God and love one another. Our purpose is not to serve the law. The law exists to serve us – to guide us towards the true path of love and ultimately to Jesus himself.

In fact, that is what Jesus seems to be saying: “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27-28). The Sabbath, like the rest of the law, was given to us by God, not so we would serve it, but so it would serve us – preserving and enriching our life. The law lays the foundation of God’s character: love. If, in striving to keep the letter of the law, we act in an unloving way, we are no longer really keeping the law.

Think about it: you can technically be a member of those of “keep the commandments of God” and yet actually be living contrary to the law of God. While at the same time there could be those who, to human eyes, break a commandment and yet are actually living out the law of God. This was certainly the case between the Pharisees and Jesus.

Although I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time now, I’m still not sure I’ve wrapped my mind around all the implications. I don’t have all the practical applications figured out. But I know this: it is not enough to simply go through the motions. I want to know Jesus, the Lawgiver, so that I can truly live in accordance with what he desires for me.