#8 Question: So, you love your friends?

How many friends do you have? And do you love them all the same? Think back to your grade-school experiences and having a best friend. Remember the time you had only one piece of candy to share and gave it to this best friend? But weren’t several other friends unhappy? Even mad at you? And what about all the other classmates that had envious looks? For Valentine’s Day and to be equally friendly to everybody, your mom made you send everyone a valentine. Thankfully, all that is passed now that you’re an adult. Or has it?

Jesus asked something about how you treat people, Matthew 5:47:

“And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?”

Here Jesus is calling on us to live on a higher plane and do more than just be friends with the people we like.

He had begun this discussion earlier in Matthew 5:43-46:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”

This is the sixth contrast in this ‘sermon on the mount’ where Jesus is contrasting what people “had heard that it was said” and what is needed to follow Christ. In each of these contrasts, Jesus points out wrong thinking on the part of the religious. In this sixth example, He commands the unthinkable: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. And the reason is made plain: to love your enemies is to be like God who sends rain on the good and the bad. Then Jesus asks the question in verse 47: What are you doing more than the average person does? This is a hard question because we naturally favor our dearest friends. But Jesus wants us to do more than the average person. He bids us love our enemies and therefore do what is best for the salvation of their souls.

What lessons do we learn from these words of Jesus?

  1. A disciple of Jesus will love his enemies and do what is best for their souls’ eternal welfare.
  2. We should break out of the normal routine of loving only our friends and think, “What would Jesus have me do? Who would Jesus bid me love?”
  3. Such love is being more like God who loves everyone, even the wicked and those who hate Him. He sent His Son to die for their eternal salvation.

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