Matthew 5:43-48
Vs. 45-47 “that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so?”
So far in this text we have seen that the origin of loving our enemies is that God loved us when we were His enemies, the action of loving our enemies is found in intercession, Jesus’ current action on our behalf and the calling of all those in Christ for one another and for the world around us. Last week we discussed the outcome of loving our enemies, that Jesus says that loving our enemies reveals us as the sons of our Father, it aligns our hearts with His and displays the love that He has for Jesus and that Jesus has for us. That relationship of love, that relationship as children to the Father has so many purposes. It is for us that we would feel love; it is for God that He could shower us with love and then receive love from us as children and it is also for those that don’t yet know that God is love. The adopted are supposed to become the revelation of the great Adopter to the currently orphaned. We were the enemies of God when Christ died for us and so we must love our enemies; we were also orphans when God adopted us and so we must declare and reveal the adopting love of the Father to everyone that continues to be His enemy and even more, those that have not yet been adopted. Surpassing righteousness is manifest in intercession that becomes and displays the grace that has not just been given to me but that has been given to all of creation. Ephesians 5:1-2 says “Therefore be imitators of God as dearly loved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.” Our imitation of God can only be accurate if it comes from an abiding relationship of love; a relationship of children to their Father, a relationship in which the children have followed, watched, obeyed and ultimately are becoming like the One in which they are following. The joy of becoming children must be that we are to become like the Father! We spread His fame! We make Him known! We declare His great worth and we get to announce and display the wonder of His love. We declare His worth, we magnify His love, we are children of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus and so, to go back to John Stott’s quote from last week we must show forth a family resemblance. Today we are going to talk about what the resemblance is supposed to be. What is it that we are supposed to show forth? What is it that our prayers for our enemies are supposed to reveal? What is it that both our attitudes and our actions are supposed to make known about God? It is grace. This morning we will discuss the grace we have been given and the grace were created to give.