Flourish Like the Father (Matthew 5:43–48)

According to Jesus, those who flourish are righteously related to the Father through his Son. They have righteousness that exceeds  merely external righteousness (v. 20). That is, they truly, wholeheartedly, “whole-personally” keep the law of God (vv. 17–19).

In the closing section of this first instructional pericope of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus points his disciples to what is perhaps the most radical of the previous five antithesis concerning what the religious leaders were erroneously teaching and what King Jesus demands. In sum, he says that the true subjects of God’s kingdom are those who look and live like God the Father. They therefore truly flourish, as he does. God is the “blessed,” “happy”, flourishing God precisely because he has whole-person righteousness. He is internally what he is externally. This is the calling of every subject of his kingdom. This is the kind of life expected of those who have been born again, precisely because the gospel that saves also empowers for such Father-like flourishing.

We will consider two major headings from these six verses:

First, we are called to love like our Father (vv. 43–47), which includes at least two things.

First, we are to love our foes. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (vv. 43–44).

Jesus begins, as he did in the previous illustrations, not with, “It is written” but with, “You have heard.” He then corrects what they had heard: “But I say to you.” In other words, “You have been poorly, even perversely, instructed.”

Of course, there is no Scripture that says, “Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” However, the scribes and Pharisees extrapolated on Leviticus 19:18 by adding, “And, of course, since the neighbours envisioned were fellow Jews in the Promised Land, God’s law implies that those who are not your neighbour are, in fact, his enemies and ours, and therefore we are to hate them.” Perhaps they drew this conclusion having reflected upon some of the imprecatory psalms. Whatever the rationale, Jesus corrects it with a radical rebuttal. Rather than hating our enemies, his disciples are to love them. As Pennington observes, “There is no higher apex of virtue than this command.” Bonhoeffer astutely wrote, “This is the supreme command. Through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God.”

Love is the defining characteristic of the Christian. Certainly this includes love for other Christians (John 13:34–35), but this love also overflows to those who are not Christian. Christians are so loving that they even love their enemies. This loving demand and disposition is not an option. It is not open to debate. It is, well, a command!

Those who follow Jesus keep the law. They do it and they teach it (5:17–19). Jesus, the law-giver and the law-keeper, commands us to love our enemies along with loving our “neighbours” (i.e. those whom it is easy to love).

Enemies, in the original context, would include those pesky Roman soldiers telling you to carry their pack for a mile; those slapping you on your right cheek; those unjustly suing you; those cruelly taking your cloak (vv. 36–41).

To love someone is to want the best for them and includes willingness to be a means towards that end. This explains the second part of v. 44. Note the preposition: “Pray for those who persecute you.” Unlike an imprecatory prayer, Jesus does not say, “Pray against those who persecute you.”

That may be all well and acceptable when praying for justice for another. But when we are the objects of the persecution, we are to pray for the welfare of the one behaving in an unjust and evil way.

Pray for their repentance (see Luke 23:34). Stott writes, “If the cruel torture of crucifixion could not silence our Lord’s prayer for his enemies, what pain, pride, prejudice or sloth could justify the silencing of ours?”

The cross of Jesus Christ empowers us to forgive our foes. The cross work of Jesus empowers us therefore to flourish. Bitter people don’t flourish. Those obsessed with getting justice do not flourish. Those obsessed with wrongdoers experiencing instant karma don’t flourish. Those who love flourish.

Plummer wrote, “To return evil for good is devilish; to return good for good is human; to return good for evil is divine.” This is the characteristic of those in the kingdom.

Second, we are look like our Father. We should love our enemies

Like Father, like son. The point is simple, but it is also sharp and convicting. Subjects of the kingdom of God are so because of the new birth. They have been born again and hence adopted into God’s family. It is expected that there will be a family likeness.

Jesus, of course, is not teaching that we become children of God by working up love for our enemies. He issaying that, as we love our enemies, we demonstrate our spiritual DNA. When we love our enemies, when we have a prayerful disposition desiring the best for them, we resemble our heavenly Father.

“For” continues the argument. Jesus highlights that, in God’s kind providence, he sets the sun to shine on his friends and his foes. Our heavenly Father sends rain on the fields of both those who belong to him and those who oppose him. He sends his crop-producing precipitation on both those who love him and those who hate him. When the Vaal Dam fills up, both believers and unbelievers, the thankful and the unthankful, experience God’s loving generosity.

The lesson is obvious: Jesus’ disciples are to look like Jesus, who is God’s Son!

Citizens of God’s kingdom of God are not to be selective with kindness. Of course, wisdom is called for, but here this is not Jesus’ point. Rather he is using absolute, perhaps even exaggerated, terminology to make the point that his disciples, believers, those born again, those forgiven, will be flourishing with lovingkindness so much so that even our enemies will benefit.

When you think about it, this is precisely what the Great Commission involves. We seek the welfare of God’s enemies and, by extension, ours. We pray for the church being persecuted and for those persecuting the church (see Stephen and Saul [Acts 7:60ff]).

The next statement could be attached to either the following or the preceding verse. Either way, Jesus is making the point that those who belong to the Father live noticeably counterculturally.

The “reward” is perhaps eschatological, referring to the ultimate reward of entering the kingdom (vv. 3–12). Regardless, his point is that those who belong to the King will not live morally, relationally, and dispositionally like their enemies.

Jesus began this passage speaking about loving one’s enemies. To a Jew, tax collectors and Gentiles were synonyms for enemy! Therefore, this was a loaded statement, meant to emphasise how different God’s children are—and who they are to look like. Those who flourish because they are rightly related to the Father through Jesus will look like it in their countercultural love. This is why Simon the Zealot and Matthew the tax collector—natural enemies—could partner in gospel work. It is the reason that the wall of relational-ethnic hostility could be removed (Ephesians 2).

“What more are you doing than others?” is a piercing question. This was not a general, “Compare yourselves with one another.” This was not about a contest among Christians or a challenge for one-upmanship. Rather, the context makes clear that Jesus is referencing the overarching shadow of this passage cast from v. 20.

A righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees includes a love that exceeds theirs. They “love their own.” They love those whom it is easy to love. But those who belong to Jesus have a love that exceeds the expected and the normal. It is a love that is supernatural; it is a love that looks like God’s love (see John 3:16; Romans 5:8).

Finally, we must live like our Father. Jesus concludes with what has become a well-known yet often misunderstood statement: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (v. 48).

Jesus is not saying that we must live in perfect conformity to God’s law to be saved. Christ has done that for us (Romans 8:1–4).

He is not emphasising that the pursuit of the Christian is moral perfection in this world (though this indeed is our goal).

Rather, Jesus is saying is that those who belong to the Father and who therefore belong to his kingdom will live like their Father. That is, our outer life and our inner life will be in harmony. We will live with a whole-person righteousness. Our inner disposition and our outer display will be one.

Pennington comments, “‘Tell them what you are going to say, tell them, then tell them what you told them’ is conventional pedagogical wisdom that is as old as teaching itself. Such a summary is precisely what we find in 5:48. The teaching of 5:48 makes sense of the whole unit in concluding the discussion of the greater righteousness begun in 5:17–20.”

God flourishes. He is the happy God (1 Timothy 1:11). He flourishes because he is holy—fully holy. And the degree to which we are holy, we too will be happy. And according to Jesus, true holiness is inseparable from how we love.

So, because we have believed the gospel of God, and therefore because we are empowered by the Spirit of God, let us, like God, love our foes, increasingly coming to look like our Father. After all, “All that Jesus has said in the description of the family of God in the Beatitudes confirms that we are not ordinary men. It should be obvious that we are extraordinary, for our Father is extraordinary” (Ferguson).

AMEN