We'll be looking at Luke chapter 6. Take your Bibles then and turn to Luke 6 and have them handy as well as we'll look at a few other passages. In a country drive about an hour south of Dublin, Ireland, you'll come to the ruins of a hermitage. And it's St. Kevin who was born I think in 498, if I remember correctly, somewhere in the late 5th century. decided he was born from a noble family, a wealthy family, but he decided to enter into the ministry. And he wanted to get away from people. Not a great idea when you enter the ministry, but that's what he wanted to do. He wanted to get away from people. He wanted to live a life of isolation. He wanted to be a hermit. And so he moved to Glendalough in order to avoid his followers and there he lived in a cave. And he made friends with the animals and wore animal skins. I'm not sure how you can be friends with animals and wear animal skins at the same time. That's what he did. Maybe he wore the animal skins of dangerous animals and made friends with the small ones. And he went fishing, and he slept on stones, and he really barely ate anything, and he barely slept. He spent his time in prayer. But the more he did that, the more his followers were attracted to him. And so he had to move even farther away to get away from people. and live a life of isolation, but people would journey there and they would find them. So eventually he had to go back to Glendalough and there he presided over the seminary that had been established there, more or less in his honor. Today, travelers can go about an hour south of Dublin and you can visit the ruins of St. Kevin's Monastery. And St. Kevin, like many of the hermits of the Middle Ages, their goal was to get away from it all. They wanted to live a solitary life. They thought that I could be more pure. I can be holier. I can be closer to God. It'll be easier for me to subdue the sins of the flesh. I'll get away from the world. And as a result, I can glorify God. And so they would try to do that, and they would hide away in isolated mountaintops and dry riverbeds. Some of them even sat on top of what we would call telephone poles, long poles or trees. And they'd live there, hoping to get away from every evil influence that would come about. And the problem is, of course, the Bible tells us that Our own flesh is the source of sin, sinful desires and passions and thoughts and so on. But another problem with that kind of philosophy is the Bible tells us, yes, we've been seated in heavenly places with Jesus Christ, but it reminds us that our feet are firmly planted here. They're firmly planted right here. And we live amongst the people of this world. We're told to be salt and light. And light, in order to be effective, has to shine into darkness. And salt, in order to be effective, it has to touch. We have to touch the world without being tainted by the world. We're not to light. We're not to hide our lights under a bushel. We're not to squirrel away our salt in the cupboard. We're to use it to touch the world. We must shine. We must touch. The world has to be able to see our good works and experience our good works and by those things be led to glorify God. We're to live as children in the midst of this dark world, as children without blemish, without spot, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Christ's disciples were told to go into the world and proclaim the gospel. We're to love our neighbors, Philippians chapter 1 tells us. We're supposed to interact with them. We're supposed to show them what the gospel looks like. Even our own persecution is supposed to be an opportunity for the gospel. Jesus tells that to the disciples. You're going to be handed over to the synagogues. You're going to be handed over to rulers. You're going to stand before kings and governors. And there you'll testify of my name. To put it in a, I guess, in a very kind of pedestrian way, we are citizens of a heavenly kingdom, but we're also citizens of an earthly kingdom, the United States of America, for example. And in that context, in everyday life, In your walk, daily walk, you're going to interact with people who persecute you and exclude you, as Jesus said in the last beatitude we looked at here in Luke chapter six. You're going to interact with people who are in need. And from day to day, you're going to do things to people and people are going to do things to you. So if that's the case, if we are to live out the beatitudes that we saw just before the section I'm about to read here, then what does that look like? What does it look like to live out Beatitudes? And in verses 27 through 31, Jesus addresses that question. What does it look like to live out the Beatitudes that I just gave you? And then in verses 32 to 36, he gives us the rationale behind that. Why? So today we're gonna look at verses 27 to 31. We'll begin looking at it. It's a series of imperatives. It's a series of commands. You know what the kingdom looks like. You know what the kingdom characteristics are. Now, here's what you do. Let's go ahead and read Luke chapter six in verses 27 through 31. Jesus says, but I say to you who hear, Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. To the one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also. From the one who takes away your cloak, don't withhold your tunic. Give to everyone who begs from you. And from the one who takes away your goods, do not demand them back. as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we ask that you would teach us what we are to do that we might manifest the characteristics of the kingdom and the attributes of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen. The Sermon on the Mount, as you know, can be divided into several sections. In Luke's Gospel, again, the Sermon on the Mount is very short, just 29 verses. And in the first six verses, we've seen the characteristics of the kingdom, verses 20 through 26. And then we saw that there are blessings attached to those who manifest the characteristics of the kingdom. Verses 20 through 23, those are the people who enjoy the favor of God. And then there are woes or curses attached to those who don't manifest the characteristics of the kingdom. Verses 24 through 26. And now in verses 27 through 31, Jesus is going to give us the practical application of those kingdom characteristics. What does it look like to be poor? What does it look like to be hungry? What does it look like to weep? How do we respond to those who persecute us? And we've already seen some of the implications of those things, but what does it look like day to day as we live out kingdom principles in the midst of the kingdoms of which we're a part now? Now in the Beatitudes section, the section that we just got done looking at, there are seven verses but there are only two commands, rejoice and leap for joy. And then in the section that we're looking at now, it's a shorter section, it's only five verses, but there are nine commands. So you have a shorter section, but you have more than twice as many commands in this section of the Sermon on the Mount than in the previous section of the Sermon on the Mount. In the Beatitudes section, Jesus is addressing attitude. Now Jesus addresses action out of these nine commands. Eight of them are in the active voice. Jesus is now addressing what do you do? How do those who are in Christ Jesus in the heavenly places, how do we live now in this world in earthly places? If the favor of God rests upon us, right, the Beatitudes, what does that look like in the way that we live? And we could call these nine commands that Jesus gives, we can call them the commandments of Christ. Because what they are is an extrapolation of the first and greatest commandment and the second which is like it. To love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. And what are these commands then that we have? These commands of Christ are living out the law of love. Jesus is taking the law and he's elevating it. Now each of these commands is given to us in pairs. So we have four sets and then we have a summary command given to us as the ninth in verse 31. And the section starts out with Jesus saying, but I say to you who hear. And you might remember that there's all kinds of people who are listening to Jesus. There are those who enjoy the favor of God, verses 20 through 23, and those who will receive the woes as well, verses 24 through 26. There are those who are true disciples and there are those who are critics of Christ, those who are looking to entrap him. But now the audience changes. The same people are there probably. But Jesus is now addressing specifically true disciples. These are those who will listen to my words and those who understand. those who will hear me in contrast to the religious rulers, leaders of the day. And so we see the contrasting conjunction. But I say to you, And remember the book of Revelation? He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. The miracles of Christ making the deaf hear is more than just an extraordinary exhibition of Christ's power, of course. What is it? It's a picture of Jesus Christ unstopping the ears of the deaf so that they can hear the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And those who hear are those who recognize the truth in what Jesus says. Their ability to hear Christ, their ability to hear the truth will cause them to reject the misinterpretation, the misuse of the law that was foisted on them by the religious leaders and particularly the scribes of the day. The scribes were saying that you should love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Matthew tells us that. The scribes took the portion of the Old Testament that spoke of the retaliatory penalty and restoration and they applied that to individual judgment. The law said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth where there's injury a person who injured would have to receive in kind as a penalty. And this was perpetuated and it went on and on and the scribes encouraged it. That you should love your neighbor but hate your enemy. You should deal harshly with them. You demand retribution from your enemy. And it led to bitterness and grudges and factions and fighting. One of the folks I was reading on the Sermon on the Mount quoted from Huckleberry Finn at this point. And one of my favorite books growing up, I can't tell you how many times I read the thing, but in this exchange, and I remember this exchange well, I always thought it was fascinating. Huckleberry Finn and his friend Buck are having this conversation about a feud that Buck's family was part of, one of those famous family feuds. And here's a perfect example, I think, of this law of retribution. What's a feud, Buck? Why, where was you raised, Huck? Don't you know what a feud is? Never heard of it before. Tell me about it. Well, says Buck, a feud is this way. A man has a quarrel with another man and kills him, and that other man's brother kills him, and the other brothers, and so on, and it goes on for a whole nother, and then the cousins chip in, and bye-bye, everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. But it's kind of slow, and it takes a long time. And that was the scribes. The scribes had taken this law that provided for restoration and they turned it into personal vengeance, personal retribution. You have the right to avenge your enemies. They neglected Leviticus chapter 19 and other passages that said that you shall not take vengeance. You shall not bear a grudge, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. And now the Lord comes and the Lord is correcting the authorities and their misapplication and misinterpretation of that law. A misinterpretation that appealed to the flesh. But Jesus is going to shock them. And he's going to give them an interpretation of the law that defied what they'd come to expect and what they had come to believe. And those who truly believe. Those whose ears have been opened by the Holy Spirit will respond in obedience to Jesus Christ. Now these nine commands can be divided into two sections. We'll look at the first section today, loving your enemies, verses 27 through 39, and then verses 30 through 31, loving your neighbor. And let's look at the first pairing as we look at loving our enemies in verses 27 to 29. The first pairing, It goes like this, verse 27, but I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. Now maybe we've heard this a hundred times, so it doesn't sound very shocking to us. But this is a shockingly radical idea to the followers of Jesus Christ. Jesus is revealing the demands of the law and he's revealing it in a way that had never been heard before. Now the noble idea of treating your enemies with kindness was certainly not something completely foreign. It was the stuff of myth, it was the stuff of legend. Ancient philosophers would espouse such noble ideals. The Old Testament implied it, but it was largely neglected by the Pharisees. Today we make movies out of it. The unexpected kindness that a victim shows toward the person who has done the victim wrong. But what made it the stuff of legend? The reason why we like to watch movies like that, the reason why it was espoused by ancient philosophers as a noble idea was because it was impossible. It was heroic. This isn't the way that you normally act. You were supposed to love your neighbor. You were supposed to love the one that you had something in common with. Religious things in common, particularly, and you shared things in common. Him you love, your enemy you hate. That's typical. And Jesus is commanding something heroic, but more than heroic, he's demanding something supernatural. Jesus is taking the law and he's elevating it. The law spoke of providing assistance to your enemy. It spoke of, for example, don't rejoice in your enemy's downfall. If your enemy is hungry, give him something to drink. If your enemy, or give him something to eat. If your enemy is thirsty, give him something to drink. But Jesus is elevating that to an unheard of idea. Love your enemy. Your disposition toward your enemy cannot be one of hatred and retribution, but of love. in compassion. Now we might ask, well, who is my enemy? What's Jesus talking about? Who is Jesus talking about? Well, the commands here are given in the plural. You, plural, love your enemies. You, plural, do good to those who hate you. And Jesus is not talking about personal antagonists, but about enemies and his followers. Bear in mind the context of Luke's gospel and the way these gospels then are circulated through the churches in the early church in the first and second centuries. When they read this, who are the enemies they're thinking of? They're thinking of the state, the persecuted, they're thinking of the Roman government, they're thinking of Jews who persecuted them, those who opposed them, the enemies of the cause of Christ. We need to understand who our enemy is, don't we? Your enemy is not the guy at work who got the promotion instead of you. It's not the woman at work with whom you have a personality conflict. It's not the politician who votes for higher taxes or some other cause that you detest. Taken in light of the last beatitude about persecution and taken in light of what Jesus is going to say in these other pairings, your enemy is the one who is an enemy of the faith. Your enemy is the one who persecutes you. Your enemy is the one who hates Christ first and then hates you as a result of it. So your enemy is not somebody who simply opposes you. Our enemy is not that guy on Facebook that you can't stand it when his ridiculous post comes across your wall and you've just got to say something back. Our enemy is not First Baptist Church up the street, unless they're preaching a false gospel. And of course we are to love more than just our enemies, more than just the enemies of the church, but yes, even our own personal enemies and our own personal haters. But the emphasis here is on the church, on true disciples who are to endure under persecution. But it still applies to your neighbor who tries to provoke you. to the guy that you can't stand, who hates you because you're a Christian. And how do you love them? How do you do the impossible? Remember those commands, come in pairs? Well, in this case, and we'll see it follow through here, the second part explains the first part. Look at the second half of verse 27. Love your enemies, how? Do good to those who hate you. Both of these commands are active. What's it mean? Loving your enemies isn't a passive feeling. It's an active response of good. So to love your enemies, just to relieve you of some sense that I could never, ever, ever love my enemy. Well, loving your enemy doesn't mean that you somehow have to conjure up a tender emotional connection to them. And it certainly doesn't mean you love everything they do or that you love everything that they stand for. Loving your enemies is not a sentiment of feeling. Loving your enemies is a determination of doing. It's active. So you're not commanded to have warm and fuzzy thoughts toward your enemies. What you are commanded to do is work for their good. Now what's it mean to work for the good of your enemies? We're going to find out in just a second. Jesus is going to give us some more instructions. How do we love them? First, do good. Second, leave justice in God's hands. First, do good. Our first concern for the enemies of the gospel isn't that they ought to receive a swift and thorough judgment from God and from us as good measure. Now our first concern for our enemies is that they will see our good works and in turn be caused to glorify God, that they might turn from their sin. That's the gospel in action. Now what does that look like? Jesus gives us four examples of what it means to do good. And we see it in the next two pairs in verses 28 and 29. First Jesus says, bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. It is difficult to hate your enemy when you're on your knees in prayer for your enemy. It's difficult to hate in the presence of God. We pray for those who abuse us and something changes in our hearts as we pray that something will change in theirs. And we bless those who curse us. We respond with the gospel. The Apostle Paul says this in First Corinthians chapter four, when reviled, we bless. In fact, I'll quote a number of sections here in First Corinthians chapter four if you want to turn there. First Corinthians 4.12. Paul says when reviled we bless, when persecuted we endure. Paul says when we are reviled, when people hurl verbal abuse at us, when we're misquoted, when they twist our words, when they take sound bites and they arrange them strategically to make us look foolish and selectively quote what we say, what do we do in response? We bless. We speak well of our enemies. In return for harsh words we offer words of the gospel, words of prayer. We recognize that the world cannot, the world will not, they're unable to understand the message of the gospel. And that the world hates us because they don't know the love of God. And so we value God's estimation of us higher than we value the world's estimation of us. And we're willing to be seen as fools for the sake of the gospel in the eyes of the world, as long as the glory of Christ is seen in us. So we're not only not dismayed by the verbal abuse that we might receive from the world, but we expect it. And it's our response to that abuse that demonstrates the gospel to them. Now, what's verbal abuse? Verbal abuse is something that is external. It's usually informal. snide remarks at work, little snicker behind your back. Somebody again twisting your words. Oh, I can't believe that he said this when that's really not at all what you said. It's sitcoms that turn the rare featured Christian into a laughing stock. It's the media that always paints the Christians in the worst possible light. That's verbal abuse. But in verse 29, that verbal abuse accelerates into physical abuse. In the next two examples, there's a physical assault, and then confiscation of property. When the world's antagonism takes a more sinister and a more organized turn, how do we respond to that? Look at the last part, or look at verse 29, rather. If one strikes you, or 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. It's violence. In fact, Luke uses a violent term, a term for beating. What's our response to persecution? We endure it. We don't rain down curses upon our enemy. We're not told to be helpless, but we are told don't retaliate. Jesus himself in John 18, you see the example of this. When someone strikes him, he reminds him it is illegal for you to strike me, but he doesn't strike him back. Jesus defends himself, but he doesn't take vengeance. He defends himself, but he doesn't avenge himself. The second example Jesus gives is somebody takes your cloak, don't withhold your tunic. Now, it becomes a little bit more personal because a tunic was essentially an undershirt. If somebody robs you, that's the word that Luke uses here, somebody robs you of your shirt, takes your shirt off your back, let them have more. According to the Old Testament, your cloak was your possession. And it was given to, oftentimes would be given as a pledge, but it had to be returned. And even the poor had a right to it. And Jesus is saying, what's your cloak? What's your coat compared to the glories of heaven? What is your right to vengeance on earth? What is that compared to the right that you will have to judge perfectly in heaven? The fact is that the reality of the kingdom to come obscures the glamour of what we value so highly, our own personal safety and our own material possessions. This is radical stuff, isn't it? Turn the other cheek to the person? Give him more than what he robbed you of? This is truly radical. This radicalism is nothing less than the religious radicalism of love, the surrender of self, and the perfect willingness to serve for the cause of the gospel. It's not natural love our enemies. It isn't natural to love our enemies. We serve a loving God and so too we must love in response to his love. And Paul, going back again to 1 Corinthians chapter 12, and Paul says we're to be patient in persecution. That is we have a mindset that goes beyond our immediate circumstances. We're patient in persecution. The world hears the message of the gospel and they don't hear the story of salvation. The world hears the message of the gospel and instead they twist it and they say Christians want to enslave, Christians want to oppress, Christians are intolerant. What do we do when the world takes the message of authentic love and accuses us of hating, accuses us of being unloving and assaulting us? The Apostle Paul says that when that happens, we entreat. That is a response to the world's attacks is to continue speaking the truth in love. Don't forget that second part. Tiny little prepositional phrase, very important. Speaking the truth in love. We don't back down. We neither become shrill and bitter in our presentation of the gospel, nor do we dilute the message of the gospel to the point where it becomes palatable to the listener, but poisonous to their souls. continue to make our appeal. We continue to speak the words of love. We continue to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, to show forth the love of Jesus Christ in the way that we live, in the way that we work, in the way that we aid the neighbor who hates us. Because we know the abuse that the world hurls at us is due to the fact that they hate Christ. The abuse the world hurls at us is due to a lack of believing faith. And faith comes by hearing and hearing comes by the word of Christ. What do they need? They need the gospel. So what do we do? We do good. What is good? The gospel itself shown to them, told to them. And then second, how do we love our enemies? We leave justice to God. The weapon that we wield against our enemy is love. There's a passage back in Exodus, Exodus chapter 23, and Moses says, when you meet your enemy's donkey or his ox going astray, you're to help him. You're to help him bring it back. If somebody hates you, but they have a donkey and that donkey collapses underneath the burden, you're obligated to go and assist that person who hates you, to relieve the burden off of his animal and to rescue him. So what about justice? He wouldn't do that for me. If he saw me going down the road, he'd laugh at me. Or worse, perhaps. What about justice? Later on in chapter 23, God says this. But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, God says, I will be the enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. God says, you treat your enemies with kindness. Let me take care of what they deserve. Retribution belongs to God. To love your enemy is to trust in God. That's what it is. It certainly feels good to get back at somebody when they've done something to you. But then we've become gods. Imagining that we have the omniscience to know what suitable justice is and when it ought to be distributed. God says, I'll be your enemy's enemy. You assist him. You show him love. Turn to Romans chapter 12 for a second. Romans 12. Paul has a bit of an extended section on this. I want to go over this briefly because it takes this principle. He has to have this beatitude in mind, I think, as he writes this. Paul says this. Romans 12 verse 19. Beloved, never avenge yourselves. But leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink. For by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Does that last part sound like something Jesus just said? Do good to those who hate you. Romans 12, Paul is saying, Christian, don't take the law into your own hands. You don't need to enact upon the offender the vengeance of the law. Vindictiveness destroys Christian distinctiveness. Vindictiveness destroys Christian witness. And here Paul quotes from the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 32, the prophets Nahum chapter one and verse two. The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. He's avenging and wrathful. He takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power. Paul says leave it to the wrath of God. You don't know when to deal with this. God does. On the day of divine judgment, God will deal with his enemies and God will deal with our enemies. But you say, well, wait a minute. Isn't that a contradiction? This doesn't make sense, right? Love our enemies. Do good to those who hate us. But then we're told God's wrathful. Read in Isaiah 9. God hated the Israelites because of their sin. Book of Revelation we saw, right? The bowls of wrath that God pours out upon the rebellious. Psalm 5, God hates evildoers. In fact, nearly 600 times with a bunch of different terms, the Old Testament speaks of the anger, the wrath of God. But it also speaks of God's patience. We just saw it in Naaman. In Psalm 103, same thing. God is slow to anger. Here's the distinction. Our anger is not the same as God's anger. We find that this doesn't seem to make sense to us. We have to love our enemies, but God hates our enemies. This makes no sense. Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated, but we don't. The problem is that we can't confuse God's anger. We can't confuse God's hatred with the sinful, conflicted emotions that we often exhibit. It's not the same thing. God's hatred, God's anger is not a capricious, uncontrolled response to his enemies that arises out of a temper. The hatred of God is the revelation of the justice of God against sin. It is put in terms that we can emotionally grasp. John Murray describes God's wrath as the holy repulsion of God's being against that which is the contradiction of his holiness. That's good, isn't it? The holy repulsion of God's being against that which is the contradiction of his holiness. His anger is, as one writer put it, a righteous antagonism against all that is unholy. The revulsion of God's character to that which is a violation of God's will. J.I. Packer put it this way, it is the right reaction of a moral perfection in the creator toward moral perversion in the creature. God's hatred, unlike ours, is a holy hatred. It's not the malice, it's not the bitterness of human hatred. It's again, as John Mary again puts it, the expression of holy jealousy for God's honor. And though we hate sin, and we're to hate the deeds of the wicked, There's no human equivalent of the hatred of God toward individuals that we can exercise. We're not perfect, obviously. We're not holy as God is holy. We can't exercise a holy hate the way that God does. So we're told to love. This we can do because love is an action. And as Paul says that in Romans 12, going back again to Romans chapter 12, look at verse 20. We leave wrath in God's hands, and then what? To the contrary. Since we trust in God, since loving our enemies is trusting in God, then what do we do? If our enemy is hungry, we feed him. If he's thirsty, we give him something to drink. The most potent weapon in the arsenal of the believer is found in deliberate, focused, unconditional love. That's the weapon that we wield. It's the gospel. And it has to be deliberate. it's not natural. It's supernatural. It has to discern the deepest need of the unbeliever and meet it. What's the deepest need? The gospel. And when love meets hate, hate disintegrates. The gospel turns our heart toward others and it turns it away from self-interest. What's the purpose of this? Why do we wield the weapon of love? Look what Paul says in verse 20 at the end of it, you'll heap burning coals on his head. What does that mean? Well, people think differently about what that means, but the idea here at the very least means they'll be shamed by their sin eventually. Some believe it means repentance, coals of repentance symbolizing the ashes of repentance upon their head. And then Paul says this in verse 21, and this sums it all up. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Nothing is as powerful as goodness. The most effective apologetic, right? We're good at arguments, right? We've got our apologetics, our transcendental argument or covenantal apologetics. Well, we've got those things down pat. We take classes in apologetics. The most effective apologetic is love, goodness, the demonstration of the gospel. Those whose minds can withstand arguments, proofs of God's existence, their hearts hardened against the threats of hell. Their hearts can be melted by authentic love. Peter says this in 1 Peter 2, have your conduct honorable among the Gentiles that when they speak against you as evil doers they may by your good works which they observe glorify God on the day of visitation. Why do we love our enemies? We love our enemies so that they might be friends of God. Now here's what's crucial for us to understand. It is so crucial that we understand that we too are the enemies spoken of here. We were the enemies of God. This is us. Titus chapter 3. Two more passages that I want you to turn to. Titus 3 and Romans 5. Titus chapter 3, the beginning of verse 3. Paul says to Titus, we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in mouths of envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God his Savior appeared, He saved us. We too were enemies of God. This is who we were. We were hated and we hate it. But what did God do to us? His covenant faithfulness, loving kindness poured out upon us in his goodness. And it changed us, saved us. We now glorify God. We are no longer those things. We are not identified by our passions and pleasures. Malice and envy don't characterize us. Hatred doesn't characterize us. Why? Because we've seen the goodness of God. This is what God has done for us. We can do no less for others. Romans chapter 5, verses 6-11. Romans 5, verse 6. For while we were still weak, while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly Believer, we need to recognize that we are chosen by God, elect of God, again, not because God looked down the corridors of time and saw, you know, that guy's going to be a pretty good guy someday. I think I'll choose him. But while we were ungodly, Christ died for us. Verse seven, for one will scarcely die for a righteous person. Perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But that wasn't us. God showed his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. We were the enemies of God. Paul says in verse nine, therefore, since we've been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God? Fact is we love our enemies. We walk in love. Every step we walk in love. Why? Because we were once enemies of God. And Christ loved us. And he gave himself up for us. He took the wrath of God upon himself, us, while we were enemies. John puts it this way in 1 John 4.10. And this is love. And this is love. Oh, it's not that we loved God. No, no. but that He loved us. And He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Wonderful word there, propitiation. He sent His Son to bear His wrath. Remember the wrath of God? 600 times nearly in the Old Testament it speaks of the wrath of God. But He sent His Son so that His Son would bear that wrath. The anger of God would fall upon Jesus, not upon us. And He did that not because we loved Him. Not because we were his friends, but because we were his enemies. 1 Peter chapter 3 in verse 18, Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit. We shouldn't consider too hastily the severity of what it meant for Christ to do for us that we might be saved. What it meant for Christ to endure the wrath of God on our behalf. The Father lays upon the sublimely pure and perfect and sinless and spotless lamb. He lays upon that lamb the enormity of the guilt, the weight of the sins of His people. As one writer put it, God permitted our unrighteousness to be laid on Him with great violence. And what happened when Christ Jesus was on the cross was not the unavoidable consequence of the fact that He participates in our nature, but what happened with Jesus Christ on the cross was the action of the Father against the Son for us. pouring out the immensity of divine wrath upon Jesus. He abandoned Him on the cross. You realize that God did that. God abandoned Christ on the cross and condemned him to death. In fact, the way that the Gospel of Mark describes Christ's prayer in Gethsemane, when he wrestles with the Father in prayer, as he sweats great drops of blood, Mark says that Jesus described himself as terrified at the prospect of facing the wrath of God. Isaiah tells us that he was pierced and chastised and wounded and crushed and put to grief. His soul was made an offering for our sin. He's removed from the favor of God, removed from the presence of God, the glorious Savior who had known intimate and unbreakable fellowship with the Father in the Spirit from eternity past is cut off. Why did he do that? So that the enemies of God could be reconciled to him. So that we who are enemies of God might be friends of God and brothers of Christ. When we consider what Jesus did for us, it's no great task to love our enemies, is it? when we consider that Jesus Christ bore the wrath of God on the cross for us. It's no great sacrifice when he simply says, do good to those who hate you. Love your enemies. Turn the other cheek. Pray for those who abuse you. Bless. Those who curse you be willing to give up your possessions for the sake of the gospel. And unfortunately I'm afraid this doesn't really look like us too often. Many times Christians earn their reputations by being intolerant and argumentative and arrogant. Some Christians seem to court controversy. They love it. They're antagonists. They're provocative. They relish litigation. They're always ready for a fight. They might write true words, but they write them with pens that are dipped in venom. I mean, too often we feed the appetite of the flesh, while in a self-righteous spirit we think we're doing the work of the spirit. The next time that antagonist at work mocks you, Think of the mocking of Christ. Think of Jesus who took upon himself your sin, was abandoned by the Father, heard the mocking of the crowds, and never opened his mouth. The next time you're tempted to heat up your keyboard and start pushing the buttons of your favorite Facebook enemy, think of the love of Christ. It's appalling sometimes on some internet chat groups and social media forums and Facebook posts to read the caustic ways that some Christians respond sometimes to real enemies sometimes to imaginary enemies. May we see Jesus in this passage and what he did for us while we were enemies of Christ and recognize that we of all people have no right to take out vengeance on our enemies. That we of all people, having been recipients of the love of God, and having seen his wrath and anger poured out upon Jesus instead of us, may we of all people have mercy upon our enemies. Tell them of the love of Christ, the love of the Father. the good news of the gospel, of changed lives, of the forgiveness of sins, and show them what it looks like to be a recipient of the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, I ask that