Matthew 5:43 - Meaning and Application

Here we have, lastly, an explanation of that great basic law of the second table, “You shall love your neighbor,” which sums up the law.

See first how this law had been twisted by the Jewish teachers (Matthew 5:43). God said, “You shall love your neighbor,” but they limited “neighbor” to people from their own country, nation, and religion, and even then only to those they chose to count as friends. Worse still, from the command “You shall love your neighbor,” they were ready to infer what God never meant, “You shall hate your enemy.” They treated as enemies whoever they wished, and so they made God’s great command powerless through their traditions, even though there were clear laws against this (Exodus 23:4, Exodus 23:5; Deuteronomy 23:7). “You shall not abhor an Edomite or an Egyptian,” though those nations had been as much enemies to Israel as any others.

It was true that God commanded Israel to destroy the seven devoted nations of Canaan and not make alliances with them. But that had a special purpose, to make room for Israel and keep them from becoming a trap. It was very wrong to turn that into a rule that all enemies must be hated. Yet even the moral teaching of the heathen allowed this kind of thing. Cicero’s rule was, “Do no harm to anyone unless you have first been wronged.” This shows how willing corrupt hearts are to borrow support from God’s word and use a command to justify themselves.

See next how the Lord Jesus clears up the command. He teaches a better lesson: “But I say to you,” I, who come as the great Peacemaker and the one who brings all things together again, who loved you when you were strangers and enemies, “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44). Even if people are very bad themselves and act cruelly toward us, that does not cancel the duty we owe them, the duty of love to our fellow human beings and to our own kind. We are all very quick to want harm for those who hate us, or at least to wish them no good. But that feeling comes from a root of bitterness that must be pulled out, and from the remains of a corrupt nature that grace must overcome.

This is a great duty for Christians: love your enemies. We cannot feel close friendship toward someone who is openly wicked and profane, or trust someone we know is deceitful. We are not required to love everyone in exactly the same way. But we must respect human nature and, in that sense, honor all people. We should gladly notice whatever is good and admirable in even our enemies, such as good sense, a fair temperament, learning, moral virtue, kindness toward others, or a profession of religion, and we should love that, even when they are our enemies. We should feel compassion for them and sincerely wish them well.

We are told, first, that we must speak well of them: “Bless those who curse you.” When we speak to them, we should answer insults with kind and friendly words, not repay harsh words with harsh words. And behind their backs, we should say what is commendable about them. After saying all the good we can, we should not be eager to say more. See 1 Peter 3:9. Those whose speech is governed by kindness can give good words to people who give them bad words.

Second, we must do good to them: “Do good to those who hate you.” This is a better proof of love than words. Be ready to give them any real help you can, and be glad for the chance, whether it concerns their bodies, property, reputation, families, and especially their souls. It was said of Archbishop Cranmer, an English church leader, that the way to make him a friend was to do him harm, because he did so much for people who had offended him.

Third, we must pray for them: “Pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.” It is no new thing for the most excellent saints to be hated, cursed, persecuted, and abused by wicked people. Christ himself was treated that way. And when that happens to us, we have a chance to show our likeness to both the command and the example of Christ by praying for those who abuse us. If we cannot show our love any other way, we can do it this way without showiness, and it is a way we certainly would not dare fake. We should pray that God will forgive them, that they will not suffer for anything they have done against us, and that he would bring them to peace with us. This is one way of helping to make that happen.

Plutarch, in his Sayings of the Spartans, tells of Aristo. When someone praised Cleomenes’s saying, that a good king should do good to his friends and harm to his enemies, Aristo said, “How much better to do good to our friends and make friends of our enemies.” That is like heaping coals of fire on their heads.

Two reasons are given to press this hard command of loving our enemies. First, we must do it so that we may be like God our Father, so that we may show ourselves to be children of your Father in heaven. Can we follow a better pattern? It is a pattern in which love for the worst enemies agrees with perfect purity and holiness. God makes his sun rise and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45). Sunshine and rain are great blessings for the world, and they come from God. They are not there by accident, but from his hand.

Common mercies should be valued as signs of God’s goodness. In them he shows himself generous to the human race, which would be miserable without these gifts and does not deserve even the least of them. These gifts of common providence are given alike to the good and the bad, the just and the unjust. So we cannot judge God’s love or hatred by what we see around us, but by what is within us. We do not judge by the sun shining on our heads, but by the rising of the Sun of Righteousness in our hearts.

The worst people share the comforts of this life with everyone else, though they misuse them and fight against God with his own gifts. This is an amazing display of God’s patience and generosity. It was only once that God kept his sun from shining on the Egyptians while Israel had light in their homes; God could make that difference every day. God’s kindness to sinful people who are rebelling against him teaches us to do good to those who hate us. And even though there is in us a fleshly mind that is hostile to God, we still share in his bounty. Only those will be accepted as God’s children who seek to resemble him, especially in his goodness.

Second, we must do this because it makes us do more than others (Matthew 5:46, Matthew 5:47). Publicans, tax collectors, love their friends.

Nature already bends people toward this, and self-interest pushes them as well. Doing good to those who do good to us is common human behavior, and even the people the Jews disliked and looked down on could do that as well as the best of them. Tax collectors were people with a bad reputation, yet they were thankful to those who helped them get their positions, and polite to those on whom they depended. Should we be no better than they are?

When we act this way, we are serving ourselves and looking after our own advantage. So what reward can we expect for that, unless reverence for God and a sense of duty carry us beyond our natural feelings and worldly interests? We must love our enemies so that we rise above them. If we are to go beyond the scribes and Pharisees, we must certainly go beyond tax collectors. Christianity is something more than ordinary human kindness.

This is a serious question, one we should often ask ourselves: What do we do more than others? What is the distinctive good thing we do? We know more than others. We speak more often about God’s things than others. We confess more and have promised more than others. God has done more for us, and so he rightly expects more from us than from others. God’s glory is more at stake in us than in others. But what do we do more than others? Do we live above the level of the people of this world? Are we still worldly, and do we still act like ordinary people, below the calling of Christians?

In this matter especially, we must do more than others. Everyone will return good for good, but we must return good for evil. That shows a nobler heart and follows a higher rule than most people live by. Others greet their own friends and welcome those of their own group, way of thinking, and opinion. But we must not limit our respect like that. We must love even our enemies. If we do not, what reward can we expect? We cannot expect the reward promised to Christians if we rise no higher than the virtue of tax collectors.

Those who expect a reward above others must aim to do more than others. Our Savior ends this teaching with this exhortation, “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). This can be understood in a general way, meaning all the things in which we should follow God as beloved children. It is the duty of Christians to desire perfection in grace and holiness, to aim for it, and to press on toward it (Philippians 3:12-14). In that, we should try to match the example of our heavenly Father (1 Peter 1:15-16).

Or it may be understood in this more specific sense, about doing good to our enemies, as in Luke 6:36. It is part of God’s perfection that he forgives injuries, welcomes strangers, and does good to the evil and unthankful. And it will be our perfection to be like him. We owe so much, indeed we owe everything, to God’s kindness, so we should copy it as closely as we can.