You've Heard That It Was Said- Love Your Enemies

What does it actually mean to love an enemy? Not tolerate them, not ignore them, but genuinely love them? In Matthew 5, Jesus closes out a series of challenging statements that push us far beyond the surface-level religion we might be tempted to settle for. The common assumption was that God's law called us to love our neighbors and hate our enemies. But a closer look at Leviticus 19 reveals that God never said anything about hating enemies at all. We added that word ourselves. What Jesus calls us to is something far more demanding and far more freeing: to actively pray for, bless, and be for the very people who work against us. This is not a watered-down faith. It is faith at full strength. And the model for this kind of love is God Himself, who sends sun and rain on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. The question this message presses us to sit with is a deeply personal one: have we allowed our circle of love to shrink, making more and more people our enemies, or are we growing in the kind of love that reflects our Father in heaven?