Love Like God

Love like God has loved you.

When is it easiest to love people? Think about the people in your life: your spouse, friends, kids, siblings, teachers, bosses, coworkers, neighbors, parents. When is it easiest to love them? When is it easiest to treat them with kindness, gentleness, and respect? When is it easiest to enjoy them? When do you feel that you like them?

When are people easiest to love? If you’re like me, it’s when they are doing what I want them to do or what I asked them to do. They are easiest to love when they are loving me. It’s easy to love people when they are agreeing with me. They are easy to love when they are treating me how I want to be treated. Who in your life is easiest for you to love? Who comes to mind?

On the flip side, when are people most difficult to love? When is it hardest to love people in your life? It’s when they aren’t being very loving to you, when they aren’t being kind, when they aren’t patient and respectful. It’s hard to love others when they are hurting us. Who in your life is hardest for you to love? Don’t turn and look at anyone! But who comes to mind.

How can we love people who are hard to love? How can we even love people who have wronged us, hurt us, treated us terribly?

Today we are looking at Luke 6:27-38 as we continue our sermon series in The Gospel According to Luke called “To Seek and To Save”. The primary command in this passage is “love your enemies”. It is stated first in verse 27 and then again in verse 35.

“Love your enemies” - what a high bar! And what a difficult command to keep! It’s not natural for us to love our enemies. In fact, it is very unnatural. It’s the last thing we want to do. What’s natural is to avoid our enemies, protect ourselves from our enemies, or get payback on our enemies. But love? No way.

But it’s what Jesus commands...twice! In fact, this enemy love is a defining characteristic of Christian love. Enemy love is what sets Christian love apart from all other loves and it is rooted in the character of God.

This passage gives us three different ways we can love:

1. Love like others have loved you.
2. Love like you want to be loved.
3. Love like God has loved you.

What does each one look like? Jesus will show us.

Let’s start with the first section of this sermon in verses 27 through 31.

Four Love Commands (6:27-31)

In verse 27, Jesus says, “But I say to you who hear…” The “But” tells us that what Jesus is about to say is in contrast with what has come before. What has come before? Jesus first gave beatitudes in this sermon - a list of blessings in the kingdom of God. Then he gave a list of woes for those not in the kingdom. The final blessing in verse 22 says this:

22 “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the son of Man! 23 Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” (Luke 6:22-23)

This tells Jesus’ disciples how others will treat them: hatred, exclusion, reviling, spurning their name. It sounds like Jesus expects his disciples to have enemies. So now hear 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)

The natural thing to do is to fight back, to avoid them, to protect yourself. But Jesus doesn’t say that. He says “love your enemies.” The actions they are to take to love their enemies are spelled out in the three following commands: do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. People will hate Jesus’ disciples, curse them, and abuse them. But what is a follower of Jesus supposed to do in response? Jesus’ disciples are to do good, bless, and pray in response to hatred, cursing, and mistreatment. We are to use our hands to “do good” and our mouths to “bless” and “pray”. All parts of us are to love our enemies.

Here, Jesus has in mind here who treat us as enemies because of our commitment to him. There will be people who don’t like who we follow and what we believe. When it comes to people fighting against us because of our beliefs, we are not to treat them as they treat us. That’s the specific context here. Jesus assumes that people will know we are loyal to him and what we believe. But more broadly, we can apply these commands to any situation where someone wrongs us, disrespects us, mistreats us, or is fighting against us. Think about those people in your life who are hard to love. This applies to all those situations.

Jesus follows this with four practical and concrete situations in which his followers are to love their enemies in verses 29 and 30:

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. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. (Luke 6:29-30)

“Striking one on the cheek” was a slap with the back of the hand intended to insult and in this context likely came due to their beliefs. This was a form of religious persecution. But the disciple of Jesus is not to fight back and isn't to give up. They are to continue in their witness, risking the other cheek being slapped.

Someone may suffer robbery by having their clothes taken. The cloak was the outer robe while the tunic was the inner shirt. Jesus states that if someone takes your outer robe, give them your inner shirt as well. Maybe this happened during general travel or while talking about Jesus. People may take your belongings due to your beliefs, but they are to continue witnessing to Jesus.

Giving to those who beg from you is a command to show generosity toward the poor. Jesus’ disciples are to be ready to give when there is a legitimate need to be met. Finally, Jesus says not to demand back what others take from us. We should not seek retribution or payback.

All of these can occur specifically in the context of living on mission for Jesus, but they can also be applied generally. In any and every situation, we are to love, do good, bless, pray for, persevere, be willing to suffer, give, and not retaliate or seek retribution. What would that look like for you in your difficult relationships?

Jesus gives a summarizing command in verse 31:

31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. (Luke 6:31)

We have two options: we can love like others have loved us or we can love like we want to be loved. We can treat others how they have treated us or we can treat others how we want to be treated, regardless of how they have treated us. We can give what others have given us or we can give what we want to be given, despite what they have given us.

Starting in either the 16th or 18th century, this final command has been called the Golden Rule: as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. Or it has been stated: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Similar rules existed in Greek culture and Jewish culture and have been stated by many other religions. It’s because of this consistency across religions and cultures that people will say, “All religions teach the same thing: love others, the Golden Rule.”

But Jesus’ statement is more powerful and positive than other versions. Other versions may state it negatively: don’t do to others what you don’t want done to yourself. This keeps you from doing bad to others but doesn’t move you to do good. Other versions state it with a view to what you can expect to receive back from others: “if you treat others how you want to be treated, then they will do the same to you.”

But Jesus puts no conditions on this command. And in fact, he commands it while talking about persecution, mistreatment, getting beat up and robbed. Jesus gives this command while talking about people who have already treated us how we don’t want to be treated. Jesus calls his followers not to retaliate and to treat those people as they have treated his disciples but to treat them as you’d like to be treated. This is enemy love - loving your enemies as you’d want to be loved. Don’t love your enemies like they have loved you; love your enemies like you want to be loved.

Basis for Loving Your Enemies (6:32-36)

In verses 32 through 36, Jesus gives the basis for this command to love our enemies. In verses 32 through 34, he gives examples of love where a return is expected. Jesus contrasts the behavior his disciples ought to have with the behavior of “sinners”. “Sinners” are those who have not responded to Jesus. Every disciple starts as a sinner but once they respond to Jesus, even though they still sin, sinner is no longer their primary identity. It isn’t who they are. They are Jesus’ disciples, citizens of the kingdom, God’s children.

Three times Jesus asks: what benefit is that to you? What benefit is it to you to love where a return is expected? Let’s read verses 32 to 34:

32 “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. (Luke 6:32-34)

“Even sinners” love those who love them, do good to those who do good to them, and lend to get back the same amount (or more with interest). Jesus is describing transactional relationships. In doing this, we say “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.” We ask, “What’s in it for me?” We love, do good, or lend our resources in order to get something back. Maybe we want them to do the same thing for us. Maybe we want their approval or appreciation. Maybe we want them to like us. Jesus says there is no benefit to us in loving that way and treating others that way.

I’ve used this image before of tugging on a rope. When we are in transactional relationships, we are in a tug of war with them. We are trying to pull out of them what we need and desire from them. We are trying to get our needs met through them. We do things in order to get something. We are tugging on the rope trying to pull love for ourselves out of them.

Instead he says in verse 35:

35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. (Luke 6:35-36)

Here two motives are brought up for loving your enemies: 1) your reward will be great, 2) you will be sons of the Most High. If we love like this, if we treat others like this, we will be called sons of the Most High because God is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. God loves people who are ungrateful, who lack gratitude and who are evil - who hate, abuse, mistreat, curse, and rob. So if we want to love like God, we need to love these types of people too. And God rewards those who reflect what he is like to others.

Jesus gives another summarizing command: be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. If we are in relationship with the Father, we will reflect the mercy of our Father. Recipients of mercy become givers of mercy. We show ourselves to be God’s children by reflecting what he is like to others. We take on the family resemblance. And God is pleased with his children who do so and rewards them.

The basic command here is: love like God has loved you. There are three different ways we can love:

1. Love like others have loved you.
2. Love like you want to be loved.
3. Love like God has loved you.

To love like God is to love with no expectation of return. To love like God is to love even those who are ungrateful - who will never say “thank you” or appreciate it. To love like God is to love even those who are evil - who don’t do good to you. To love like God is to love your enemies.

How to Be Merciful and the Reward of Doing So (6:37-38)

In the final two verses, verses 37 and 38, Jesus applies verse 36, showing us what it looks like to be merciful and the reward we can expect. The person who is in relationship with God will be changed by that relationship, thus they will treat others as God has treated them. As Jesus will say later in this sermon: you know a tree by its fruit. A relationship with God transforms a tree and you can tell whether a tree has been transformed by looking at its fruit: how does this person love? Are they merciful? That’s how you can tell if someone is in relationship with God. Loving like God and showing mercy isn’t what saves us, but is what shows we have been saved by the God who is merciful and loves his enemies. Loving our enemies and showing mercy is what grows in our life when we have been loved by God and shown mercy by God.

Jesus says in verse 37:

37 “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. (Luke 6:37-38)

“Judge not” is not a command against all types of moral evaluation. It also isn’t a command to simply overlook people’s sins. This is about a judgmental and arrogant attitude that focuses on others’ sin and labels them accordingly. This is how the Pharisees were living. They were harsh, condemnatory, excluding. They looked down on other people. They measured people by their obedience. They were against people who didn’t do what they were supposed to do. They had a critical attitude. Are you like this? Do you hold people’s faults, sins, and mistakes against them? I can relate because I tend to see what is broken and needs to be fixed in everyone and everything. I see what’s missing, I see the problems. And when I am overly focused on problems and have an “against” attitude, I know my heart isn’t in the right place. I know I have slipped into what one author calls “mercy forgetfulness”. I have forgotten the mercy I’ve been shown and how much I need it. That same author says, “The person who is the best at giving mercy is the person who knows how desperately they need it.”

Jesus calls his disciples to a life of love, mercy, forgiveness, and generosity. Taking the role of judge in people’s lives isn’t our role. That’s not our responsibility. Judgment is God’s role. Forgiveness is our responsibility. The question is: are we quick to judge and condemn and slow to forgive? Or are we slow to judge and condemn and quick to forgive? This doesn’t mean we don’t do any moral evaluations of people’s actions, it’s clear from the Bible that we are to do this. But this is about attitude. It’s “I’m for you, not against you” attitude.

And what can we expect from God if we live this way? The rest of verse 38 says:

Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” (Luke 6:38b)

The image of the “good measure” comes from the marketplace in measuring grain or corn or some other produce. The seller would crouch down with a container between their legs and fill it about three quarters full. Then they’d shake it for the grain to settle. Then they’d fill it to the top and give another shake. Then he’d press it down with his hands. Then he’d continue filling it to create a mound on top while tapping it gently and carefully to cause the grain to settle more. Sometimes they’d even bore a hole in the middle to create more settling. The goal was to give a “good measure” - the purchaser couldn’t get any more grain. Then it would be poured into the fold (“lap”) of the purchaser’s garment as they held out their robe. If we want to measure stingy then that’s what God will give us. If we measure with mercy, love, and generosity, then that is what God will give to us.

On June 17, 2015, there was a terrible tragedy followed by a remarkable display of mercy. Dylann Roof entered Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. He attended a Bible study that lasted for about an hour. When people began to pray at the end, he stood up and pulled a handgun from his fanny pack and began shooting people. Polly Shepard was lying on the floor. Roof asked her, “Did I shoot you yet?” She said, “No.” He said, “I’m not going to. I’m going to leave you here to tell the story.” In total, he killed nine African Americans in that church building. He was a self-professing white supremacist.

At his bond hearing two days later, relatives and friends of the victims appeared in court. They’d lost mothers, sisters, sons, husbands, and wives. This was the first time they had come face to face with the one who murdered their family. They were invited to make a statement if they wished. Nadine Collier had lost her mother, Ethel Lance. She stood up and said something unexpected. While fighting back tears, she said: "I forgive you ... You took something really precious from me. I will never talk to her ever again, I will never be able to hold her again, but I forgive you and have mercy on your soul.” Others offered similar forgiveness. None of them planned it beforehand, but it’s what happened.

Chris Singleton, whose mom was murdered by Roof, expressed forgiveness at a baseball game. In a USA Today article, they write: “Singleton notes that Roof set out to start a race war. He finds solace in the fact that the community reacted in a way opposite of what Roof was expecting but that brought them together.” (https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2019/06/17/emanuel-explores-power-forgiveness-after-charleston-church-massacre/1478473001/)

There are three options for how we love others:

1. Love like others have loved you.
2. Love like you want to be loved.
3. Love like God has loved you.

These grieving, hurting people chose to love like God had loved them. They chose to love someone who had murdered their loved ones. They chose to love an enemy. And they expressed it through forgiveness instead of condemnation.

Which one will you choose? To love like others have loved you is to enter into transactional relationships. You do to them what they have done to you. You only give if there’s an expected return. The question is, “What’s in it for me?”

To love like you want to be loved is a different mindset. You give whether there is something in it for you or not. You do for others what you want done to you. The question is, “How would I want to be treated?”

To love like God has loved you is even more powerful. “To love like you want to be loved” means you think about what you would want done to you. But to love like God has loved you means you imitate love that has been given to you already. God has perfectly loved us like we’d want to be loved and even better than we want to be loved. We are not the best at giving to ourselves what would be most loving and beneficial. But God is. Loving like others have loved us is to give to them what we have experienced from them. But loving like God has loved us is to give to them what we have experienced from God.

Which do you find yourself most often doing?

1. Loving like others have loved you.
2. Loving like you want to be loved.
3. Loving like God has loved you.

Loving like God moves us toward transformational relationships. We have been transformed by God’s love which transforms our love perhaps to transform others. God’s love works through us. The way God shows love to us, he now wants to show through us. If we want transformational relationships, we have to change how we measure the love that we give out to others. Do we measure it based on what they’ve done to us? Do we measure it based on what we’d want done to us? Do we measure it based on what God has done to us?

Consider this: who’s the most loving person in your life? And what makes them the most loving? The most loving person in your life is the person who loves you even when you don’t deserve it. They don’t treat you like an enemy even though you are acting like one: hurtful, disrespectful, mean, grouchy, cranky, short, harsh, vengeful. For this reason, the most loving person in your life is probably the person closest to you. The people closest to you are most often on the receiving end of your bad side. They know you the best and they still love you. And you’ve let them see more of who you are than anyone else sees. They’ve seen you with your mask off. They’ve seen you as you really are, not who you pretend to be for other people so they like you.

Receiving love requires risk. It requires that we take the risk of someone else knowing us - knowing who we really are. Because it’s only when they know us - the real us - that they can love us. As long as we are wearing a mask to cover up who we really are or putting on a persona we think they will like or pretending we are better than we are, then we can’t experience love because we don’t know if someone really loves us or if they love who they think we are.

The relationship principle is this: The person who knows you best can love you the most. The scary side is that the person who knows you best can also hurt you the most. Some of us have been hurt when we’ve opened up to people so we aren’t open and vulnerable. We hide. We wear masks. Because showing people who we are gets us hurt. They won’t love us or will stop loving us. But you can’t really be loved, at least not deeply, until people see the real you. Otherwise they are just loving a mask you wear or a persona you put on.

A friend of mine recently told me this definition of intimacy: intimacy = fully known and fully loved. Isn’t that true? When we stop hiding, stop pretending, and stop performing, we are being our true selves and when we are fully loved while being our true selves, we feel closeness and connection.

In our relationship with God, he already knows us fully. There is no hiding from him. The masks, the personas, and the pretending don’t work with him. God knows us the best, so he can love us the most. God has perfectly loved us even while we were his enemies. God is the best lover - the ultimate lover.

And in order to love like God, you need to be loved by God. God is the most loving person in your life. The question is whether you are feeling and experiencing that love.

I have not been an easy person to love the past two or three weeks. I’ve been stressed, feeling down, cranky, grumpy, harsh, and impatient. Katie has let a lot go and has looked past a lot. She’s also had to say “I forgive you” a lot. I sometimes noticed her let things go. I’d say something in a way that was hurtful, but she’d continued talking to me respectfully and calmly like it didn’t happen. But I didn’t receive it as love in that moment. I thought maybe it wasn’t as bad as it sounded or maybe she didn’t notice.

As I was praying about this sermon, I realized she had been showing me a lot of love the past couple weeks. I was acting as an enemy, doing and saying things that were hurtful. But she did not treat me as an enemy. As I recognized how she treated me, I began feeling loved by her and my heart warmed toward her.

This showed me and it shows us that we can be very loved by someone and yet not feel very loved. Someone can be showing us a lot of love and we can feel none of it. We may not be aware of their love that they are showing us. Or we might not be aware of our sin that’s making it hard to love us. Or we might not receive their actions as love. Children have a hard time receiving many of their parents’ actions as love. It’s only later that they realize the love of their parents in making them do chores or saying “no” to whatever.

This is in the context of persecution for religious beliefs. So often, we do everything possible to not offend someone by our beliefs. We don’t want to ruffle feathers, to rock the boat. We want to keep the peace. We want to make sure people like us. We want to keep their opinion of us high. We don’t want to step on toes. So we walk on eggshells around people. What enables and strengthens us to have beliefs that other people may not like and talk about them openly? It’s God’s love for us. What might God be working in your life by giving you enemies? Perhaps so we might truly understand what God’s love for his enemies is like. As we love people who are hard to love, we realize how hard we are to love and we come to understand God’s love for us more. We learn humility. We learn how to lay down our rights, just like Jesus did.

How do we become people who love our enemies? In order to love like God, you need to be loved by God. We don’t love to make us happy. We don’t love to get something in return. We love because we have already been loved. We love out of the joy of being loved. We don’t just try harder to love our enemies, but we receive God’s love for us and it changes how we love. Rend Collective has a song called “Unconditional”, and the last line says this: “Your heart is to welcome me just as I am, but to be loved is to be changed.”

So how do we experience God’s love? How do we receive it? First, we see it in Scripture. The cross demonstrates God’s love for us. God’s love for us is a proven fact. Jesus died for the ungodly (Rom 1:18, 4:5), the unrighteous (Rom 1:18), the ungrateful (Rom 1:21), sinners (Rom 5:8), and God’s enemies (Rom 5:10). Romans 5 says: “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us...For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” (Romans 5:8, 10) In Christ, nothing can turn God against us.

Second, the Holy Spirit is God’s love poured into our hearts and is the seal of his love for us. The Spirit takes what Jesus purchased for us and applies to our hearts. The Spirit allows us to not just say “Jesus died for sins” but “Jesus died for my sin; Jesus died for me.” The apostle Paul says in Galatians 2:20: “And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Ask God to let you feel his love. To taste and see the joy and delight he has in you. Shining face - prayer. Ephesians 3:14-19.

Third, we can practice gratitude. Just like I was unaware of how Katie was loving me, we can be unaware of how God has been and is loving us. So create rhythms and habits in your day and week where you say “thank you”. We have started doing this with Hudson at the dinner table. We share something we are thankful for. Begin your prayers by saying thank you. Philippians 4:6 says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God.”

Lastly, we need to receive God’s love through his people. God’s people are God’s delivery system for his love. We are made in his image to love. We have been redeemed in love. We have his love poured into us by his Spirit.

What is a disciple? A disciple is someone who was once God’s enemy but who has been loved by God and who has been transformed by God’s love to love their enemies. We don’t treat anyone as enemies. We don’t take on an us vs them attitude. We are not against people but for them.

A mentor of mine once posted on Instagram this formula:

Grace:
Fully known (scary)
yet...
Fully Accepted...
Fully Adored...
Fully Commissioned!
Wow!

This is the good news of the gospel. To be fully known and fully loved. What if we lived in this reality as disciples of Jesus? What if we were a community who did this for each other?