King of Hearts | Week 7

SERIES: King of Hearts
MESSAGE: Love your Enemies
DATE: May 23, 2020

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy’.  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. For he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what are you doing out of the ordinary? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  Matthew 5:43-48 

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy’.   Matthew 5:43

“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”  Matthew 5:44

 

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  Matthew 5:48 

Who is my enemy?

How can I turn my enemy into my neighbor?

“The role of all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste your time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor, act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less … The differences between a Christian and worldly man is not that the worldly man has only affections or “likings” and the Christian has only “charity.” The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he “likes” them; the Christian, trying to treat everyone kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on – including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning.”  (CS Lewis, “Mere Christianity”) 

Will I commit to pray for my enemies?

“…love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. That’s why Jesus says, ‘Love your enemies.’ Because if you hate your enemies, you have no way to redeem and to transform your enemies. But if you love your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption.”   (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)