Today we study the Lord Jesus' teaching in Matthew 5, verses 43 to 48. "You have heard that it 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 sons of your Father who is 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 salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
Now these are striking and powerful words, and we must look into the meaning of these words. What is the message that the Lord Jesus is speaking to us here?
Clearly, this passage and the previous passage that we saw last week are internally and intrinsically related. Except that here, the statement is made more positive, more clear, more uncompromising, more absolute. "You have heard that it was said," the Lord Jesus says, "'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemy." Love your enemy. If you can love your enemy, there is no one else that you cannot love.
In other words, last week we saw that becoming a Christian is not just a question of going to church, not just a question of believing certain things to be true. Becoming a Christian is something so strikingly total in its requirements that it means a total change in our whole way of thinking. Now this point we must grasp. The whole Sermon on the Mount is not giving us an ethical formula, as so many non-Christians mistakenly suppose. The whole Sermon on the Mount is providing us with a description of how a new person thinks. His whole attitude has changed. It is expounding to us the substance of a new way of thinking. When you have become a Christian, your mind has so completely changed in its way of thought that it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the way of thinking you had before when you were not a Christian.
Now this may sound surprising to people who have gone to church for a long time and they never seem to have heard anything like this. But that is the teaching of the Lord Jesus in the whole Sermon on the Mount. And it is not surprising that the Sermon on the Mount is not very often preached today. It is because we have not understood that the Lord Jesus is saying, "You want to be My disciple, you want to be a true Christian? Then I am going to tell you how a true Christian thinks. His whole thinking changes."
Last week we saw the difference between human thinking and divine thinking. The Lord Jesus is saying that to be His disciple means not just accepting certain doctrines to be true. Our whole mental processes change. Our whole attitude changes. We become a new kind of person — not just in name, but in the whole way of thinking. The communists speak of thought reform. We don't speak of a reform. We speak of a transformation. The Lord's revolution is far more complete than any communist revolution could make it.
I think Brother John Chin will share with you that recently he was in China, and he was amazed by the fact that he did not see a great deal of change in the mental attitude of the people after 28 years of communism. He found that their thinking was just the same sort of thinking that he saw outside of China. If you were talking to me on the telephone the other day — it's so amazing — he thought that after 28 years of communism, and anyone who was under 30 years of age can't remember any other type of thinking, yet their mental attitude has not changed. You cannot reform people's thoughts, basically. That is the lesson. You can change outward behavior by the pressure of the system, but it's very difficult to change, even to reform, a person's thinking.
But what Jesus is saying is this: when you become a Christian, you don't just accept certain things to be true, but God is going to change your life so that you become a new person. And this can only be accomplished by God's power. Now if God's power is not operating, if God is not working, we preach the gospel in vain, because all we are saying are very nice thoughts, very ideal thoughts, but impossible to fulfill. But I know that God can accomplish this. I've seen what God has been doing in other people's lives. I've seen what God has been doing in my life. I know that God has the power to change even people like me. So He can certainly change every one of us.
So often the phrase "born again" is used again and again, and people just don't know what it means. Does it mean just some external formula by which you become a Christian? What happens to you? There must be some fundamental change, something very drastic that happens to you that you can describe it as "born again" — that you become a new person. Because that's what it means. To be born again means you become a new person. But many people know that we need to be born again, but when you look at Christians, you don't see any essential difference between them and a non-Christian. Now what do you call these people? Are they Christians or not Christians?
What does it mean to be born again? If being born again doesn't mean becoming a new person, then being born again has no meaning. Being born again means you now become a new person. What does it mean to be a new person? If your behavior, your thinking, your attitude is exactly the same as a non-Christian, how can you call yourself a new person? The definition of a new person is that your thinking and your attitude have completely changed. Before, you thought one way; now your way of thinking is the opposite. That is what it means to become a new person.
Before, you loved your friends and hated your enemies. But now your thinking has completely changed — you can love your enemies. That is something humanly impossible. Loving enemies is impossible. But becoming a new person is a possibility brought about by God's power. Therefore, God's power can enable you to love your enemies, to help you fulfill His commandment. So we see that all the teaching in the Sermon on the Mount is not just a set of rules or moral education. Rather, it shows us the content of this new thinking. The Christian life is not merely thought reform — it is a thorough transformation.
Now let us pursue the meaning of this. "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." Here we need to go carefully in our exposition. "You shall love your neighbor" — we know this is taught in the Old Testament. And "hate your enemy" — is that also taught in the Old Testament? Now specifically it's not taught in the Old Testament. In fact, in the Old Testament the teaching is contrary to this. So the quotation here, when it says "You have heard that it was said," is clearly not a quotation from the Old Testament. It is a statement regarding the way of thinking among religious people at that time.
But that is not accurate enough as an exposition. Because we must take into account the fact that, for example, in Exodus chapter 23, verses 4 and 5, it says: "If your enemy's ox or goat or sheep or donkey falls into a ditch, you shall not leave it in the ditch. You will rescue your enemy's animal, your enemy's property." Or it says, "If you see the person who hates you, his animal — his donkey or whatever — struggling under its burden, you shall not leave the animal there. You shall relieve the animal of its burden, even though that animal belongs to the man you hate." So you can see that there is some reference there to a kind of loving of the enemy, even in Exodus chapter 23.
But when we come to Psalm 139, verse 22, we come to a very striking verse, which shows how carefully we have to move. Psalm 139:21-22: "Do I not hate them that hate Thee, O Lord? And do I not loathe them that rise up against Thee? I hate them with a perfect hatred. I count them my enemies." And then he goes on: "Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. And see if there be any wicked way in me." Now it follows from this that he does not see anything wicked in hating them with a perfect hatred. He hates the enemy. And it could not be stated more forcefully: "I hate them with perfect hatred." Striking contrast to here: "Be perfect." This is perfect hatred. You can't be more perfect than that.
Notice here: the psalmist does not state that he hates his own enemies, but that he hates God's enemies. And Exodus 23 specifically says you shall help your own enemy. But it did not say you shall not hate God's enemies. So the psalmist sees that we should hate God's enemies with a perfect hatred.
Now that is exactly why the Lord's teaching on hatred — that attitude may have been appropriate for the Old Testament — it does not apply to the new. Here I must point out a principle for all Christians: there is a lot of teaching in the Old Testament that applies to Israel. It does not apply to us. We live in a different period of time, a different dispensation. We live in the dispensation of grace. They lived in the dispensation of law. Why did he hate those people? Because they disregarded God's law. They persisted in evil. He did not hate them as his personal enemy. He hated those who hated God.
Now we find this attitude very common in New Testament times. For example, in the Qumran writings — the Dead Sea sect — we see exactly the same thing. From the first Qumran scroll 1:3-4, it says: "To love all that He [God] has chosen, and hate all those whom He has rejected." The rabbis taught this in the Mishnah. We find this striking, rather frightful teaching: that if a heathen mother is in the hour of her need, you shall not give her any help. You shall let her perish in her need. If a heathen mother — a non-Jew — is in the hour of distress, say she is with child and about to deliver, and if she is alone, you don't bother with her. You leave her there. She can die, she and her baby together. The Jew will not give help to a heathen mother in the hour of her need. That is dreadful teaching, and yet it comes straight out of the Mishnah, the most authoritative law book of the rabbis. And it says too that you shall not nourish her babe in the hour of his hunger — let him starve to death, so that you may not raise up a child to idolatry.
You can see in what context and to what kind of people the Lord Jesus addressed these words. You can see the thinking of those people at the time. If the heathen mother has a child and she is in distress, you don't give her any help. If she dies in childbirth, then that's it. Let them both die. That was the attitude of the Pharisees. This is frightful. It almost disgusts you to hear such teaching coming from religious people, from Pharisees, from people who claimed themselves to be righteous before God.
What is true under the law is not right for us. We do not judge those under the law. They lived under a different standard altogether. We have entered a new era. That was a period of law, a period of the sword, where anyone's sin was put to death mercilessly. But today God has taken us into the era of love, of mercy.
Now as we examine this important teaching, we find that what the Lord Jesus is saying is: all the way you have thought before must radically be changed. But before you get all self-righteous in your thinking, remember this: loving the friend, the neighbor, and hating the enemy is perfectly reasonable. It is the acme, the perfection of human thinking. It is right to do this, especially when the enemy is the enemy of God. It is right to deal with them in this way, right in terms of justice.
That is why I say you must understand justice before you understand love. You cannot use love to criticize justice. Justice demands that life is for life. Under the Old Testament, justice was demanded and must be fulfilled. So never use love to criticize justice. The Old Testament is concerned with justice, and justice is essential for the continuation of human survival. If you left every maniac to run on the street, we wouldn't survive. So never be self-righteous and criticize the Old Testament. Justice is the foundation of human society.
But the Lord Jesus is taking us further on from there, taking us to a new stage of thinking, and saying: justice is essential, He is not condemning it. But He says, "As for you" — He is speaking to His disciples — "you are going to change completely in your thinking. You are going to enter into a revolutionary new way of thinking. That is to say, you will love your enemy."
Now I am concerned to press this point. The reason the Lord Jesus gives us is this, in verse 45: because God loves His enemy. That is a surprise to many people. God loves His enemy. It is strange how many Christians haven't realized this yet. We are required to love our enemies, and God hates His enemies — so we love, we somehow are even better than God? No, don't be mistaken. Justice and love are not incompatible. A father who punishes the child does so out of love for that child, even if he punishes the child severely.
How does the Lord Jesus establish this statement? He uses an illustration that we can all see for ourselves. He says, "Look, the sun shines." Do you see a ray of light just shining on the Christians and not on the non-Christians? God's sun shines, the Lord Jesus says, on Christian and non-Christian alike, upon the good and the evil. And He says, "Look at the rain." Does the Christian farmer get more rain than the non-Christian? No, they get the same amount of rain. The rain comes down on both.
It would be very nice, wouldn't it, if we are walking along the road and the rain just falls on the non-Christians, and we get the sunshine. And it's strange how many Christians like to expect that. "On my holiday, I hope it's going to be sunny." And when the non-Christian goes, "I hope he has a good rainy holiday. For me, sunshine." We want God to suit our way.
A serious principle derives from this: Christians have formed God in their own image. We have made God to think like we think. The lower your spiritual life, the more the God that you believe in is like you than the God of the New Testament. That is why J.B. Phillips once wrote a book, "Your God Is Too Small." What kind of a God have you got? Because you hate your enemy, you make God to behave like you. You hope that this guy is going to have a bad time of it. He deserves the judgment of God. "What about you?" — if you deserve some judgment of God when you do the wrong thing — "Oh no, no, God is merciful to me. I'm a Christian." We have changed God's image to something that is very distressing.
When I listen to some Christian teaching, I wonder what kind of a God they are really talking about. I mention, for example, the people who maintain an extreme predestinarian teaching. I really wonder what sort of a God they are talking about. The teaching here is that God loves those who love Him and hates those who don't accept Him — they are all going to hell. I'm puzzled. Where did they get this teaching from? When He expounds the words "God so loved the world," they say "the world" doesn't mean non-Christians, it means "the elect." I have never discovered that "the world" means anything like that anywhere in the Bible. But they have twisted the Scripture to suit their own taste.
Beware of a predestinarian teaching. There is a right kind and a wrong kind. And the wrong kind says that God has predestinated everybody — the saved will be saved, the lost will be lost, and God has predestinated the lost to be lost. I look at the teaching of the Lord Jesus and ask: How do you make this kind of teaching compatible? How do you derive the idea that God created some people to go to hell and some people to go to heaven? Is that from the Bible? Such teaching I will attack mercilessly out of the Word of God.
Does the Lord Jesus really say that God loves His enemies or doesn't He? Let's make up our minds once and for all on this issue. The Lord Jesus says we must love our enemies because that's what God does. And these people are telling us that God doesn't really love His enemies — He has created them to throw them into hell. What kind of a God do they teach? Where does this teaching come from in the Bible?
I am so embarrassed by people who go around with this kind of teaching. You cannot say that God truly loves His enemy and yet has predestinated them to hell. By what mental distortion can you come up with this kind of conclusion? I can truly love my enemy but I'm going to stab him in the stomach? If we are going to play around like this, we have removed the meaning of love. We have destroyed the content of God's word.
I have said before and I say again: nobody gets to hell except he goes past the outstretched hands of the Lord Jesus, the hands that were stretched out upon the cross. Nobody gets to hell except past those outstretched hands. You are going to brush your way past His bleeding hands to get to hell. God has predestinated nobody to hell. I have seen nothing of the kind in the Bible. He died so that we — His enemies — might be saved. We were His enemies. If God didn't love His enemies, where would I be? Where would you be? I was one who ridiculed Christians. I derided Christians. Paul persecuted the Christians — he was an enemy. But he found grace. God loves His enemies. Let nobody contradict those words, because there they stand written in God's word.
The Lord Jesus says we must love our enemies. Why? Because our Father God loves His enemies. The Father loves His enemies, and we are to love ours because He does — we are to be like Him. But today many people have a very different concept of God. They make God out to be like man — loving those He loves and hating those He hates. Some speak of predestination — that God has predestined some to hell. Brothers and sisters, I cannot find such teaching in the Bible. If God loves His enemies and simultaneously predestines them to hell, how is that called loving His enemies? I have nothing to do with such teaching. God has predestined no one to hell. He has predestined us to salvation by His grace — that is His grace. But to say God predestined people to hell — I tell you, I can find no such thing in the Bible.
I have said this in the church many times: no one can go to hell unless they push past the salvation the Lord Jesus has accomplished for us. You have to push aside the Lord Jesus' salvation to get to hell. The cross stands at the gate of hell, not letting us in. But you can push past. You can push aside the Lord Jesus standing there with His outstretched hands, nailed to the cross. You can push Him away and say, "I don't want You." Only then can you enter hell. There is no other way in.
Now we come to the last key point. In verse 45, there is a special word we need to examine. In the original, the word is not the verb "to be," but the verb "to become." The two words are entirely different. And sometimes it really puzzles me as I read these translations — surely the translators know Greek — why have they compromised their translation? Is it because of certain doctrinal interests? I find that too often in translations, doctrinal and dogmatic interests have prevailed.
When we come to the Word of God, we must be absolutely honest. Even if it seems to go against our doctrines, we must accept the Word of God as it stands. No playing fast and loose with God's word. No fooling around with the Word of God. No slightly changing the interpretation to suit my purpose. We must be absolutely honest with God's word. That is the basic principle. When you study the Bible, be honest. Don't twist it around.
I want to say to you that some evangelical expositors are dishonest with the Word of God, and I'm very distressed about it. They find a passage that does not seem to harmonize with their particular doctrine, so they twist it around. I came to the Bible with many preconceptions. And the Bible just knocked them out, one after the other. Sometimes it's a very uncomfortable process. The Word of God penetrates as a sword. We can either evade it, and so its healing effect is not accomplished, or we let it deal with us as it must be done. When you come to the Word of God, I hope you will let it come as the surgeon's knife. You can sidestep it, and it doesn't cut you. But neither will it save you. Neither will it take out the cancer in your body. You have to submit to that knife if you want to be healed.
# Love Your Enemies (Part 2) — Matthew 5:43-48
You have to submit to that knife if you want to be healed of that cancer. What it says here is not that you may "be," but that you may "become" sons of God. And no matter how uncomfortable that word is, that's how it is. And if any of you know any Greek, by all means go back and check your Bibles and see for yourself. I assure you that there is nothing that I preach from this pulpit that I have not checked with the utmost care. And if anybody can point out to me anything that I have said that is unscriptural, I will be most grateful, utterly and sincerely grateful, that you will point out to me any error. Because of my exceeding great care in my expositions, in all the years that I have preached the gospel, no one has ever once faulted me on an error of exposition, no matter how learned the person may be. But if you can find anything that I have said which is not in the Word of God, then I beg of you, as a matter of Christian duty and love, to point out to me my error.
So here what it says in verse 45: "That you may become sons of your Father who is in heaven." What does that mean? What exactly does this mean? Well, when we have followed the teaching so far, we have begun to see one thing. We have begun to see that we have to have a completely new way of thinking, which is God's way of thinking. That God loves His enemies. He always loves His enemies. That is why Christ came into the world to die. What do you think Jesus came into the world to die for? Why did God establish this amazing plan of salvation, if He did not love us? "We love Him," the Apostle John says, "because He first loved us." This we must clearly grasp.
But if that is the case, then the second point, verse 45, says this: only when you have this new way of thinking, when you have been born again, when you have been utterly renewed, only so do you become the son of your Father in heaven. You see, we don't become God's sons by just accepting certain evangelical doctrines. Becoming a Christian, my friends, is not so easy. Not so oversimplified as that — just believing certain doctrines to be true. That saves nobody. Don't you go out and preach false doctrine to people and say, "All you've got to do is believe in Jesus, accept these doctrines to be true." That is true as far as it goes, but it's not sufficient. It is nothing as simplistic as that.
What the Lord Jesus says is: how do you become the son of your Father in heaven? By being utterly renewed. Transformed. And Paul says exactly the same thing, as we have seen before in Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2, especially verse 2: "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Becoming a Christian is to become utterly changed. If you are not changed, you are not a Christian, no matter how many times you've been baptized. If you are not changed, you are not a Christian. Understand this thoroughly. How are you going to become a Christian? Only by being utterly renewed, by the power of God, being born again. And if the word "born again" has any meaning at all, then we see from the teaching of the Lord Jesus, it means that your whole way of thinking has changed. The whole attitude has changed. You don't love people because you like their face. You love people because you have now a new nature inside of you, which is to love.
Examine yourself in the light of that teaching. Are you a child of God? Are you a son? Are you a daughter? So don't congratulate yourself on having been baptized only. Baptism is essential. But unless you are transformed, you are not saved. Becoming a Christian means then that you are utterly different from anybody else. You become a different sort of person. You stand out in the world as something different.
What kind of child of God is this? One whose whole thinking and attitude has been completely changed by God's work. He doesn't just go to church because he has been baptized, or because he has been attending services for years. That is not what makes him a child of God. It is that his whole life has been transformed.
Let me reiterate: your whole thinking, attitude, and mind must be completely changed. This is what it means to become a new person. And only a new person is a child of God. So everyone must understand this. Don't say, "I've been going to church for many years, I'm quite familiar with the Bible." Let me tell you, the devil knows the Bible far better than you do. He has studied it for thousands of years. He can quote Scripture to you anytime and defeat you in debate. He went to Bible seminaries and led professors astray. Don't say, "I'm familiar with the Bible." You are not saved by that. But it pains me deeply to see that many Christians have little difference in their thinking and attitude compared to non-Christians.
So we see what the Lord Jesus says: you must be completely different from others. If you are a child of God, your thinking is different. Look at verse 46: "If you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?" If you only love those who love you, how are you different from a non-Christian? Tax collectors also love those who love them. You love them, they love you — what's special about that? Verse 47: "If you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others?" They greet each other, you greet them back — it's just mutual courtesy. In Chinese we say, "You give me courtesy, I give you courtesy — courtesy requires reciprocity." It's nothing remarkable.
The Lord Jesus says, if your behavior is like this, how are you different from non-Christians? You are the same as them. To be a Christian is to be different from others — completely different. We see that being a Christian is not merely a matter of different behavior, but of a different attitude and thinking. If your thinking has not been changed, if your mind has not been changed, if your relationships with others have not been changed, then saying you are a Christian is useless. On that day, standing before the Lord, the Lord Jesus will say to you, "I don't know you. Who are you? I have never seen you." You must become a child of God through the work of the Holy Spirit, becoming a new person. So don't just say, "I am a Christian because I believed." The question is not whether you believe, but whether you have been changed. Has God changed you? This is what the Lord Jesus teaches us here, clearly.
Now, I must deal briefly with one question. We will say, "Well, if this is so, we are to be so utterly different from the non-Christian. We are to love our enemies. How is it then that the Bible also says that we are to be separated from the non-Christian?" How can we love the non-Christian and still be separated from him? Not to associate with him in any kind of business, commercial, or marital relationship. That a Christian is not to marry a non-Christian. Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 6, verses 14 to 18, "You shall not be unequally yoked with the unbeliever."
I would like to say to you, brothers and sisters, that being yoked with the unbeliever does not merely mean whether you marry the unbeliever or not. It is that you have no business relationship with him either. Did you know that? You must not be associated in a business relationship in which you are partner. That does not mean you may not be employed by him, but you are not associated with him in capital business. "Yoked together" means that you have a legal contractual bond in business or in marriage or in anything else. The word "yoked" is very wide in the original meaning. And some Christians, not realizing this, have fallen into grievous error.
We must be separate from them in the matter of life, and yet to love them genuinely and from our heart. You say, "How can this be done?" Quite simple. For example, if a person were sinking in quicksand, how do you love the person? Do you say, "Okay, here I jump into the quicksand and grab hold of this guy and say, 'I love you. I really love you.'" And so you both sink in the quicksand and go down together? That's wonderful love. What kind of love is this? If you love him, then drag him out of the quicksand. Don't go down with him.
How many people do not understand that to love does not mean you have to get into the same mess with them? In fact, if you want to love the person, the only way to help that person is to stand outside the mess. So if you want to help the person in the quicksand, the thing to do is not to jump into the quicksand, but to stand on solid ground and pull the person out. That is love. Many Christians simply don't understand this. If you want to help the person, you must stand on an entirely different ground in order to help him.
To love those who are in darkness does not mean to turn off your light too. You don't help people in darkness by turning off your own light. We have to stand as separate — not in order to be exclusive, but in order to be able to save them. Do you understand? That is the Word of God. So when the scriptural teaching is to be separate from them, some Christians separate themselves and have nothing to do with non-Christians at all. Paul says, "If you want to behave like this, the best thing for you to do is get out of the world altogether." Because so long as you are in the world, you are going to be associated with these people, as he says in 1 Corinthians 5. We are in the world to do a job, to help these people. And the only way you can help them is to be different from them. So being different is not in order to have nothing to do with them, but being different is the only useful way you can love them, to help them come into the light.
I heard the other day that there was a man on an aeroplane. He was preaching to all the stewardesses, giving out Gospels and preaching to them. "You've got to believe in Jesus!" And the airline stewardesses were very busy trying to serve passengers, and he was holding them back. "No, no, no, nothing more important than listening to the gospel. You stand here." The stewardesses didn't want to offend the passenger, and so they tried to stand there and listen to him. Eventually, there was one stewardess trying to open a drawer that was stuck. He looked at her, didn't bother to give her a hand, kept on talking to her about the gospel. She was tugging at this thing, and he says, "Now, here is what the gospel says." Finally, she pulled the drawer with such force that she went backwards. The drawer landed on top of her, she was flat on the floor. And do you think he went over and helped her to pick up the drawer, and put the things back, and give her a hand to help her up? Nothing of the kind. He just bent down beside her with the gospel and said, "Now!" It's just incredible. The whole aeroplane, watching this spectacle, were disgusted with this man. Here was his chance — help her put the things back in the drawer, pick her up, get her on her feet, and then talk to her about the Lord. No, no, no. He just left her on the floor.
That's how many Christians behave. The person is sinking in the quicksand: "Now I'm going to preach to you, but I'm not going to drag you out of there. I'm not going to give you any help." So let us understand this. We are different in order to be able to save. We must be different in our attitude and actions. On one hand, we must love them completely; on the other hand, our position must be different from theirs. Only then can we help them, only then can we save them.
Now, we come to the last verse: the command that we must be perfect. Now, how are we perfect? If you have followed the Lord's teaching so far, I think you are clear about one thing. The perfection here is not moral perfection in the sense that God is perfect. The whole context is talking about love. That we are to love perfectly. Not that we have no faults in ourselves, not that we have no shortcomings in ourselves, but the whole meaning is this: we are to be perfect in love. This is what the whole context is about. We cannot be morally perfect. We will always have shortcomings. Becoming a Christian is not to become morally without fault. There is no such teaching in the Bible. In 1 John 1, it says, "If any man says that he has no sin, he is a liar, and the truth is not in him." No Christian is perfect. None of us are perfect. We all have many, many faults, many weaknesses, many failings. But what we must aim to be, by the grace of God, is to be perfect in love. In all our attitude towards other people, we must aim always to be perfect in love.
To be perfect is totality. What God requires of us is total Christianity. No partial Christianity. There is no kind of Christian who is a partial Christian. In the Bible, I see only one kind of Christian: the total Christian. Love is always total. It is either all or nothing. By definition, love is total. You cannot say, "Well, I love you a little bit." That is not love in the Bible.
And this brings us to another point. There is a vital difference in the Bible between liking and loving. The teaching here is not to say, "You must like everybody." We cannot like everybody. We don't like everybody, because liking is my personal feeling. And I am not asked that my personal feeling is the standard by which I deal with other people. I am to love the person. Liking is a matter of feeling. Love is a matter of action. The person who is drowning in the river — you don't like the person. You haven't even met the person. You don't even know the person. How can you like the person? The feeling, the liking doesn't come into it at all. You jump into the river to save that person, not because you like the person. You don't know the person. But because love requires it. Love is action. Liking is only a matter of feeling. The command then here is to love — to go into that river and help the person, whether you know the person or you don't know the person, whether you like the person or you don't like the person. It doesn't matter whatsoever.
So understand this refers to perfection in love, not perfection in the matter of our inner moral standards. The point is our attitude towards other people. This is not saying that a Christian equals someone without weaknesses or faults. The Bible tells us we always have weaknesses and shortcomings. 1 John says that if anyone claims to be without sin, that person is a liar and the truth is not in him. We always have weaknesses and faults. But the perfection spoken of here is perfection in love — that is, our attitude toward people. This perfection is necessary. It's not that we have no weaknesses, but even in our weaknesses, we must still have perfect love toward others. This can only be accomplished by God's power. God does not require us to become people without faults, because that is not possible in this age, while we still live in the flesh. The principle of sin, as Romans tells us, is already active in our flesh. But as Christians, living with this flesh, our attitude toward others must always be one of love — a perfect love. That requirement is already very, very high. But to say we must have no faults — such teaching is not in the Bible.
But one last point of great importance. When you look at all this teaching, you say, "How can I fulfill such teaching? How can it be done?" It seems almost impossible. You are going to ask me to go out of here and love my enemy? I can hardly love my friend. I can hardly love my roommate. That is why we need to be transformed.
The Lord Jesus always tests our faith. If you think that you can become a Christian without your faith being tested, you don't know what a Christian is. A Christian's faith will always be put to the test. Let me give you a few examples.
In John chapter 9, we read of a man who was born blind. What did the Lord Jesus do? Heal him instantly? No. He put his faith to a test. A very tough test. He put clay on this man's eyes. He mixed some clay with spittle and put it on his eyes, and said, "Go down to the pool of Siloam and wash your eyes." Now think a minute. A blind man, with clay on his eyes, is going to walk at least half a mile — I've calculated the distance from where the Lord Jesus was down to the pool of Siloam. As you go around the streets, probably a mile. Now think of the thoughts going through the blind man's heart. He may have thought: "If He had the power to take my blindness away, why didn't He just say, 'Open'? What's He putting all this clay on my eyes for?" The whole point is that this man's faith was being put to a test. He could have said, "This must be just a cruel joke. How can it be that this clay on my eyes, I'm going to wash it off, and my eyes are going to open?" But he went. And when he washed, he could see. Why did the Lord Jesus do it this way? Test of faith. "You've got faith in Me? I want to see it in action."
Take another example. John chapter 5 — a man paralyzed for 38 years. The Lord Jesus said to him, "Do you want to be healed?" He said, "Yes." The Lord Jesus said, "Take up your bed and walk." He could have thought, "Is this a joke? I've been crippled for 38 years and you ask me to take up my bed and walk?" But clearly he thought, "Well, that's the case, I'll have a go." And he found he was coming up. Slowly he got to his feet. He picks up his bed. That's how the Lord Jesus works. He tests your faith.
Or take Peter. Luke chapter 5. Peter worked all night and caught nothing. The Lord Jesus says, "Go out and let down your nets." Peter could have said, "I just came back from there. I got nothing. You're going to tell me how to fish? I've been a fisherman all my life. You don't catch fish in the daytime." But Peter said, "Nevertheless, at Your word, I will let down the net." He went out there and couldn't pull up the net — there were so many fish.
If you understand this, you understand the principle: the Lord Jesus always puts your faith to the test. Don't sit there so comfortably and say, "Hallelujah, I'm a Christian now." He's going to put your faith to the test. You want eternal life? Yes. By His grace, it's made possible. But He says, "Go out there and love your enemy." You say, "Lord, I can't even love my friends and You ask me to love my enemies. This is unheard of. It's not possible." Well, was it possible for the blind man to be healed with some clay? Was it possible for the paralyzed man to pick up his bed and walk? Was it possible for Peter to go out in the daytime and catch a load of fish?
"At Your word, Lord, nevertheless, if You say so, I'll do it." That's the attitude of the true Christian. That is what faith means, brothers and sisters. Faith means: "At Your word. If You say so, I'll do it." Have you got that kind of faith? "You ask me to go out and love my enemies? It's against all my thinking. I'm in foreign territory. But if that's the way You want me to do it, at Your word, I'll do it."
Did you notice that every time they obeyed His word, the power came to accomplish it? Every time they obeyed, the thing happened. The crippled man couldn't walk — at His word, it was done. The blind man went and washed — and he could see. That is living faith — the faith which says, "Lord, I will do what You say."
The Lord Jesus wants us to enter as new creatures into a new area of life. This new area of life is the area of love. Now you might find, as a young Christian or even as an older Christian who has never practiced the Lord's teaching, that entering into this new atmosphere is very unfamiliar. You are going to move out of the area of selfishness and hate, and into the new area of love, of God's love. And you are going to feel just like going into a foreign country. Love is not the atmosphere in which you normally breathe. Love is not the country in which you normally live. And the Lord Jesus is saying: "I want you to move into this new land." Yes, the Promised Land. We come out of Egypt — what for? To stay in the wilderness like so many Christians do? Not at all. To enter into the new country, the kingdom of God, the atmosphere of love. And in there, you will find all God's promises — but only in there.
Many Christians live their whole Christian life in the wilderness. Have they truly come out of Egypt? Are they saved? Yes, they came out of Egypt. But have they entered the land of God's promise? No, they are still in the wilderness. So we need to enter into God's love.
As I've said, when you enter into that area, at first you feel like a stranger, a foreigner. Never mind. Just relax and say, "Lord, You have commanded me. Here I am. By faith I have entered into the land of God's promise."
In conclusion, let us look at that one marvelous verse, exceedingly important for every Christian to know. 1 John chapter 4, verse 16: "So we know and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." I would like you to think about those words very deeply. God, as to His character, as to His nature, is love. And he who abides — that is, he who lives in love, who conducts his life in love — lives in God. And God lives in him.
Let's translate "abide" into modern language. The word "abide" simply means to live. God lives in you, and you live in God. That is really a new area of life. Have you tried it before? When I first tried this and entered into this new atmosphere of life, it was like entering Canaan — a kind of heaven on earth. So many Christians live in the wilderness. They have never entered the Promised Land. Why? Because they have not entered into the Lord's teaching, into the whole new atmosphere. This is the land of promise, the land of spiritual promise. Enter into it. Don't spend your life in the wilderness.
Don't cling to the old country, the old way of life that you've got so used to. The whole tragedy of the Old Testament is that they lived in Egypt so long that they could not get used to another way of life. They were always longing to get back to Egypt. I see that's exactly what happens to Christians. They lived in sin and in their own selfish ways so long, they've been so indoctrinated by the thinking of this world, that they can only think of the leeks and the garlic of Egypt. They are attached to the old way of life. But if you want to be saved, it's not enough just to get out of Egypt. Because getting out of Egypt only leaves you in the wilderness. You've got to go on into the land of promise. And remember, only in the land of promise will you find and experience the promise of God — His saving power, life eternal.
1 John 4:16 shows us: whoever lives in love, lives in God, and God lives in him. This is the true Christian life — the beautiful life. Where there is life, where the promise of eternal life is found — it is here.