Love is the Default Mode in the Kingdom

This past Sunday Nick preached from Matthew 5:38-48, a famous but very difficult section about the requirement of selflessness and sacrifice in order to show love to everyone, especially an “enemy.” When thinking about how we could possibly love an enemy, Nick pointed out we need to remember the goal of life being centered on the Gospel, and start to think how we can apply the Gospel to all areas of life. And by the Gospel, we mean God’s goal of reconciling the world to Himself, which has been His plan from the beginning: Colossians 1:20 “and through him [Jesus Christ, the Son of God] to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”

We need to change our perception of love. It’s not gooey sentimentality, but real love means to will the good of another person.

This requires action on our part.

So how was the reconciliation possible? Through Christ’s sacrifice on behalf of His enemies: us. Remember, as Nick put it on Sunday, while you were an enemy of God, Christ made you the target of His love. Or as Paul says in Romans 5:6-8 “6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” “It is as if Paul recalls Jesus’ words: “For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt. 9:13). All are sinners (Rom. 3:23), but Christ saves those who admit it and turn to him.” [GTB]

So if we are believers, we then are admitting to our sin and need for saving from it. That’s what moves us from the status of enemy to sons and daughters in the Kingdom. And if our status has changed, then there is no room for vengeance or retaliation in our hearts. Thinking back to those verses in Romans, we see Christ set the example of love, and John points to our new default mode as Christ-followers in 1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.” For those who place their faith in Jesus then, the default is love, and anything outside of that is disobedience. 

This seems extreme and definitely is so from a worldly perspective, but we need to change our perception of love. It’s not gooey sentimentality, but real love means to will the good of another person. This requires action on our part and will likely be met with pushback when trying to love our enemy by seeking their good since they might not agree with us on what is good. But, as Kingdom citizens we are to put the interests of others ahead of our own (Phil. 2:3-4), even when that other person views us as an enemy. 

The challenge here is the call to have the action of love is not limited to loving those we align with. For instance, when someone holds to what we would interpret as an unbiblical ideal, it does not give us an excuse to demonize them and withhold our Christian call to love them. As Nick said on Sunday, retaliation has no place in the life of a Christ-follower. Christ, who was unjustly persecuted and murdered, did not retaliate, and sets the standard for turning the other cheek, and the expectations shown in Matthew 5:38-48 are no less demanding on those who claim Kingdom citizenship. 

But how do we do it? He gives us the answer in Matthew 5:44, we love our enemies, and we pray for them. Loving a person is seeking their good, so what greater good does a Kingdom citizen have than to ask the God of creation for favor and goodness in the lives of others, and especially for their salvation? And what this does for us is we cannot continue to struggle with hating an enemy when we consistently pray for them since one of the main purposes of prayer is to align our hearts with the Father’s, and He loves them regardless of how we feel or what they’ve done, just as He loves us.