Word on the Web

18 Feb 2010: Love your enemies

We live in a culture which cultivates retaliation, where hating the enemy is normal, and if we’re going to be different – which is the call this week, to be radically different – we have to demonstrate that God does provide the power to love the enemy. And Jesus gives the third reason. We love the enemy because we’re called to be perfect. These are the words of verse 48: ‘Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ It doesn’t mean perfect in the sense of sinless perfection; I don’t believe, according to the Sermon on the Mount, that we can have a perfect life without sin here on earth – no anger, no hatred, always loving the enemy … how can Jesus invite us in the early part of the sermon to go on hungering and thirsting for righteousness? It’s because perfection, total life with God, lies on the other side of glory, but meanwhile the call to be perfect is a call to maturity, to completeness, to wholeness. It means a life totally at one with the will of God – a longing to fulfil the family likeness and reflect it in our living, a desire to love without discrimination.

David Coffey
Matthew 5:43-48

 

To read the full text of this talk by David Coffey please see ‘Faith that Works’ – Keswick Year Book 2009, and if you would like to purchase a copy please click here.