Matthew 5:43-45
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
The night before I started writing this my dad died. My dad was a great man, a brilliant man, a kind and gentle man, generous and wise. I’ve been trying to think about the most important lesson I’ve learned from my dad. Right now I’m settled on the one expressed in these verses.
Just to remind the reader; I met my dad when I was nineteen, and he and mom adopted me when I was thirty-two. I freely admit it is a weird and wonderful situation, one that clearly demonstrates the generous and Godly spirit they both had.
Long before I was adopted my dad treated me like one of his sons. Accordingly, I would ask him “dad-questions” to try and fill in what I’d missed growing up without a father and virtually free of any spiritual training. One of the questions I asked him was the age-old cliché: Why do bad things happen to the innocent and why do good things happen to the unrighteous?
It was a lengthy response from my dad, we discussed it for some time. But to paraphrase him, it really boiled down to the sentiments expressed in this scripture. Think about what it says and what it makes clear:
- Verse 43 highlights the natural state of man, which is to hate our enemies, which also makes it clear that those who decide we are their enemies will naturally hate us. They will do so with extreme prejudice as they are not constrained by the Love of God.
- Verse 44 makes it clear that you will be persecuted. God doesn’t promise us we won’t suffer, instead he tells us to pray for those who will persecute us. He doesn’t even say to ask Him to take away the persecution so we can be happy, He says we need to love these people in spite of the circumstances.
- Verse 45 gives us the pay-off for the behavior; so we may be sons of the Father, and that circumstances do not determine our standing with God. The sun shines on everyone. The rain falls on the good and the bad. (By the way the sun and rain can be both bad and good, especially if you were a farmer in Biblical times.) How often do we delude ourselves into thinking that our circumstances are somehow tied to our standing with God. I should read Job more.
- These verses make it abundantly clear that we will have suffering, and yet we are not to respond as the world does, rather we are to rejoice in our position as a child of God, regardless of our circumstances.
Need more evidence about how this plays out? Maybe you think this doesn’t apply if the bad things happening to us are because other Christians are mean or uncaring? Well, two questions:
Have you asked the rooster about Peter? Peter denied Christ three times before that rooster crowed, yet Christ chose him for the one on whom He would build his church. Have any Christians in your life denied you? Will you be sacrificing yourself unto death for them?
Then of course there is the ultimate persecution. The Lamb, the Innocent One, Christ Himself upon the cross. Persecution doesn’t begin to describe it, and what did He say? Forgive them Father for they know not what they do. So, in the end (which was really the beginning) he did exactly what these verses say to do, He prayed for those who persecuted him, and in so doing made the way for their salvation if they would but accept it.
My dad was not perfect, but his sharing of The Father’s Word with me is why he was the perfect dad for me. He took me in when I was so much less than lovable, and never failed to love me, despite whatever the circumstances may have been.