Loving one's enemy.
This is another instance of the way in which Christian righteousness is to exceed the righteousness of scribes and Pharisees. Let us consider the duty and the motives that urge it.
I. THE DUTY.
1. Positive. This carries us beyond patience under insult and nonresistance to injury. The previous passage insisted on those duties only. It was negative in character, forbidding a wrong course of conduct; therefore obedience to it would be purely passive. Now we come to a positive and active duty—to love and aid.
2. Helpful. Love is a subjective sentiment, but it cannot confine itself to the breast of the person who cherishes it. It must flow out in deeds of kindness. Here is the key to the precept in the previous paragraph. By itself it seems to be impossible to carry out so extraordinary a rule; or, if it were put in practice, it looks as though it might be quite subversive of society. But it must be followed by the conduct now recommended. Bare non-resistance will not be successful. It will only end in the extinction of right and the triumph of aggressive evil. But non-resistance, sustained by active love to our enemies, will assume a very different character. Love is a more powerful weapon than the sword. We are to "overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:21); to conquer our enemy by destroying his enmity, while we prove ourselves his friends.
3. Prayerful. Love is not sufficient to meet the hard heart of enmity. Only the gracious influences of the Spirit of God can do it. Therefore we are to pray for these. If we are wrongfully used, we may overcome our enemies by seeking for God to turn their hearts while we show them brotherly kindness.
II. ITS REASONABLENESS. This duty is so contrary to the ways of the world that it seems to be quite unnatural and unreasonable. But Christ shows that he has good grounds for demanding it of us.
1. The example of our Father in heaven. God is not only kind to the good. First, he shows infinite patience and forbearance. Then he goes beyond these passive excellences and manifests active beneficence in sending sunshine and rain to all sorts and conditions of men. Thus he is impartial in his kindness. He does not regulate his favours by our deserts. The very constitution and course of nature reveal this large, indiscriminate beneficence of God. Yet God maintains order in the universe, and ultimately effects the triumph of the right. Therefore kindness to enemies is not unnatural; it is the very method of nature. It is not unreasonable; it accords with God's wise way of governing the universe.
2. The obligations of Christianity. The law of resentment represents a low stage of moral development. If religious people follow this law, they are no better than the irreligious—"the publicans;" if Christians follow it, they are no better than the heathen—"the Gentiles;" i.e. Christian love as such only appears when we begin to love those whom we should not love if we were not following Christ. We prove our religion, not in those good things in which we agree with the irreligious, but in those by means of which we surpass them. Meanwhile no lower standard can be allowed to the Christian; he must aim at nothing less than the Divine example of perfection.—W.F.A.
HOMILIES BY P.C. BARKER
Teaching for the multitude.
We hold that the discourse to which these two verses in St. Matthew's Gospel are an introduction is one with that given in the sixth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel; and that although, judging from the closest context in both passages, it might at first be supposed that "these sayings of Jesus" were spoken to the lesser circle of his disciples exclusively, they were really spoken, if not from the very beginning, yet, as regards the large proportion of them, to the widest circle of his disciples, and even to "the multitudes" (Matthew 7:28; Luke 7:1). The second Passover of our Lord was now past; and this discourse was not as near the beginning of his public life as its apparent early place in St. Matthew's Gospel would ordinarily lead one to infer. To remember., its later place is to vindicate more clearly its seasonableness to the minds of the disciples and people, and its usefulness as another higher standard in the "teaching" of the world. In these two preliminary and introductory verses we may notice as, at all events, suggestions that lie on the surface, the following things.
I. IN THE BORN TEACHER OF MORALS, AND ESPECIALLY RELIGION, THE SIGHT OF "THE MULTITUDES" IN ITSELF A PROMPT AND STRONG IMPULSE. Trace the fact historically, that it is the moral gaze on "the people" that is the spring of this impulse; and that otherwise the ages have rather hedged up knowledge to the few; and that the world's greater teachers have been prone and glad to avert their teaching-thought when the multitudes have been thrust before their eye by any accident.
II. A TYPICAL INSTANCE OF A MORAL IMPULSE; PROMPT AND VERY STRONG, IT DOES NOT PAUSE AT THOUGHT, NOR EXHAUST ITSELF IN FEELING: IT IS PRACTICAL. Point out the illustration of this that is spoken in Christ's pursuit of method, and in his use of intermediate agents and in his measured calmness herein. But through and after all there is a sure outcome of action and something practical.
III. THE MOUNTAIN-PLATFORM A MORAL VANTAGE-GROUND. For it secured at the same time some apparently very various results and ends, each very desirable.
1. It cannot be denied that it fairly challenges the observation of earth and heaven.
2. But it does at the same time win much retirement from the noise of earth, and shall foster thought and high feeling rather than distract them.
3. It speaks the large sweep and outlook of moral and religious truth.
4. And at the same time the large room and welcome that the truth offers to all who will receive it. One may imagine at this point, in a literal sense, the position of Jesus himself, with all that his eye overlooked and surveyed each moment, and moral analogies will rise not slowly in the wake of the literal facts.
IV. A TYPICAL INSTANCE OF THE TRUE TRADITION, OF HEAVENLY WISDOM, HEAVENLY TEACHING, AND THE GREAT MASTER'S OWN WORK, INTO THE CHARGE OF MEN.
1. The work of Christ is to be carried on by the living instrumentality of living men, imperfect as they are sure to be, and far removed from the goodness, grace, power, and wisdom of the Master.
2. These men must be in real character disciples.
3. They must be progressing learners as well.
4. It must be of the things they themselves in very truth have learned of the great Teacher that they are to tell others. They must not only be, for instance, hearers, but must be of the taught, the successfully and humbly taught.
V. THE FINAL SUMMONS TO AN UNTAUGHT, LISTLESS WORLD TO GIVE EAR AND LISTEN. Jesus "opened his mouth and taught."
1. What an authoritative summons!
2. What an encouraging summons!
3. What a rewarding and comforting summons!—B.