Matthew 6:43-48: You have heard that is 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 the sons of your Father who is in Heaven. For He makes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore, be perfect as your Father is perfect.
Notice the last phrase "be perfect as your Father is perfect." It equates loving enemies as being perfect. Therefore, a sign of perfection and spiritual maturity is to love our enemies as Jesus points out here. Of all the attributes that Jesus could point out for a person to strive for it is the attribute of love.
I Corinthians 13:13 says "So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." In the first three verses of the same chapter it says "If I speak in the tongues of angels and men, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned but have no love, I gain nothing."
With all the other attributes we could strive for and gain they are all worth nothing if we possess those without love. We must strive to show love. Jesus makes it very clear that whoever I would regard as my enemy I am to have love for. A mark of a mature Christian is in how they view and treat their enemies.
Jesus says "If you love those who will love you in return...what good is it?" Even lost people do this. I am afraid that the love that many Christians have is of the same caliber as someone who isn't a Christian. Is it sinful for me to love my enemies? Here we see that it is sinful NOT to for this is commanded by Christ.
A Christian is uniquely equipped with God's Spirit to love this way. Impossible because we often love someone for what we can get out of it, but Jeussw wants us to love because it is in our nature to love. This kind of love loves without regard to how the other person will respond.
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