Today’s sermon is about loving your enemies. First, I want to start the sermon by questioning could Jesus be wrong? Then, I will continue the sermon by explaining why Jesus could still be right even if he seems wrong. Lastly, I will conclude the sermon by sharing why we should follow Jesus.
Before I question if Jesus might be wrong, I want to be clear about what Jesus is asking his disciples to do. He wants them to love those who mistreat them during their ministry work. Specifically, he is referring to what he said earlier in Luke 6: 22 Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. 23 “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets. So, when Jesus says, “love your enemies,” he is referring to a specific kind of enemies; they are enemies who oppose what you are doing for Jesus Christ. It is not about enemies from your own bad behavior or your sinful desires. It is not about enemies who are evildoers in the first place, like murderers or rapists. These are enemies who are ungrateful and wicked because they return evil for good, or they are against you because they are against Christianity. And when Jesus says love them, he meant it in concrete terms through the ministry work that you were doing in the first place, like doing good and offering help, praying, and blessing them.
To be honest, I know that Jesus means well. He may sound like, “Never mind lah, keep doing good despite how you are treated. The Old Testament prophets also suffered the same thing mah.” But I think Jesus could be wrong because we have to be realistic about what it means to live in a world of sinners. When you are dealing with sinners, if you turn the other cheek, you will receive double the slaps. If you offer your shirt after losing your coat, there will be those who will not only leave you naked but also take a video to put it on social media. If you give money without expectations for a return, you can expect quite a few who will return to bleed you dry. In short, it is impractical.
Brothers and sisters, when we know we live in a world of sinners, what did we do? Humanity did not live on in solitude as some in the animal kingdom do. We carry on as social creatures, capable of living and working together as a society. To do that, we rely on the law of reciprocity: ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ (Exodus 21:24; Lev. 24:20; Deut. 19:21). That is our universal solution, certainly not “love your enemies”. Reciprocity is the most effective social weapon in our arsenal living in the world of sinners. We learn it young as a child. If someone is nice, I friend you. If someone is not nice, sorry, I don’t friend you. Sooner or later, everybody learns to play nice in order to have friends. As we grow up, we may not be using those words of “friend you” and “don’t friend you,” but our reciprocal actions towards others will indicate how we prefer to be treated by them. Undeniably, there are those in society who still behave as jerks and bullies, but they either have to hide their actions, or suffer the social consequences. The law of reciprocity is fundamental to how we form tribes, alliances, and eventually the world order that we have today.
Jesus’ command to love your enemies breaks the law of reciprocity. In short, you are expected to treat everybody the same no matter how they treat you. Jesus feels wrong because he is negating the single most powerful social weapon of “I don’t friend you.” He is asking us to care for those in need, regardless of their friendship status with us. Then why should anybody bother to be anyone’s friend? In a world of sinners, everybody will no longer play nice, especially to the Christians who will treat them as friends anyway. In short, you need to uphold the law of reciprocity to guard against bad people and keep them in check. I’m just being realistic.
But something happened in reality that made me think Jesus might be right, despite being seemingly wrong. The paradigm shifting event is the salvation of God through Jesus Christ. From that moment on, we are forced to look at the world of sinners differently. In Luke 5, Jesus first declared that he had the authority to forgive sins. Then he went on to fellowship with the sinners, eating and drinking with them. You know what he said? Luke 5: 31 “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Jesus clearly had an agenda to deal with sin and sinners. He is the doctor who intentionally came into this world that is sick and gravely ill. To achieve his mission, he even sacrificed himself on the Cross for these sinners. God then raised him from the dead, which is God’s way of indicating that he is truly behind Jesus’ actions.
So, I know that Jesus seems wrong when I’m being realistic, and I truly believe we need the law of reciprocity to keep the sinners in check, and to protect ourselves in a world of sinners, but reality itself has changed. The original law of reciprocity is like an old wineskin that cannot contain the salvation of God. Like a new wine, what God has achieved through Jesus Christ has burst everything apart. Jesus didn’t just keep the sinners in check, he actually can forgive sins and transform sinners into saints. I’m now forced to rethink everything to deal with this new reality, that Jesus might be right when he instructed us to love our enemies.
I term the new principle: the Law of Reciprocity 2.0. This is to account for the reality that when I accept the salvation of Jesus Christ, God is now a third party in all my relationships. It is now no longer just between me and other persons, God is also part of the equation of how I’m treated and how I treat others. He got involved because I am now part of his salvation plan. Loving your enemies may seem wrong in a world of sinners, but Jesus can still be right because he is Immanuel, God with us in a world of sinners.
First, I’m treated with grace and mercy by God. Paul says in Romans 5: 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. There’s no way to repay God’s grace, except to pay it forward. That’s the essence of the parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18. Matthew 18: 32 “ ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” In short, God’s mercy towards us demands that we do the same and be merciful towards others.
Second, not only did God treat us with grace and mercy, God also promised to reward us in the future if we show kindness to the ungrateful and the wicked. It is true that you will be treated worse if you turn the other cheek. However, when you love someone who cannot or will not love you back, you are not left empty. God promises to fill what others cannot. With God, no act of love is ever wasted. We are not short-changed because God ensures that his love in repayment will be a full measure, in Jesus’ words, “38 A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.”
So far, I have tried to address the topic today rationally. I’ve argued why Jesus may seem wrong in a world of sinners. We need the law of reciprocity to deal with sinners. Then I’ve tried to show why Jesus might still be right when he entered our lives through the salvation plan of God. The law of reciprocity needs to be upgraded to 2.0 to account for the grace of God, and God’s abundant grace changes the dynamics of our relationship with others. But now, I would like to approach the matter with a heart-to-heart talk. I have two reflections to share based on my sermon title: Beyond sinners.
One, beyond sinners means I don’t want to live in a world of sinners—especially when it doesn’t have to be that way. While the law of reciprocity helps like-minded people work together, our increasingly fractured and tribalistic world makes us see more enemies than friends. Gandhi famously said, “an eye for an eye makes the world go blind.” We are moving toward darkness. Some politicians fuel this by labeling immigrants, welfare recipients, or the rich as enemies. But I would rather be a suffering prophet of God’s truth than a comfortable false prophet of the world’s lies.
If God’s salvation plan is to eradicate sin and bring about a world without sinners, I want to be part of that plan. If Jesus is the doctor for this sickness, I want to be his medic. “Seek ye first his kingdom and his righteousness.”
If you share this vision, know that sacrifices are part of the mission. The world needs peacemakers. This means listening to both sides, enduring misunderstanding, and sometimes facing rejection from all parties. In a time when spreading hate and joining the bandwagon is a social media pastime, being a bridge-builder is hard and often thankless. But when you feel like giving up, remember God’s vision. If you yearn for a world without sinners, love your “enemies.”
Two, beyond sinners means I want to live as a saint. To me, a saint means one thing: unconditional love. This love is not based on how others treat us but comes from a desire to love freely. While I am a saint by God’s grace, I am far from one in practice—but I aspire to live that way. I don’t want to live in constant calculation, measuring my kindness by the status of the relationship. Jesus gives us the freedom to love anyone, as he does.
Unconditional love is not beyond us. We see it in how a mother loves her newborn, in social workers helping those with special needs, and in hospice staff caring for the dying. We are all capable of such love until the world of sinners tells us otherwise. But Jesus has begun the revolution by living a life of unconditional love, and I want to follow his way.
I want to leave you with something to ponder. The command to “love your enemies” wasn’t given in peaceful times. Both Matthew and Luke included these words of Jesus in their Gospels, written not long after Christians had endured brutal persecution under the Roman Empire. Imagine what that meant. They knew what it was to be hated—truly hated. To be excluded, mocked, and treated as if their very existence was evil.
Matthew and Luke could have softened Jesus’ words. They could have left out this hard command—especially when their own communities were still nursing the wounds of rejection and cruelty. But they didn’t. They preserved it. Why? Because to them, this command wasn’t optional. It wasn’t a suggestion. It was the heart of who Jesus was—and who they were called to be.
Can you picture it? Early Christians, carrying these words in their hearts, going back to the very people who hurt them—not to seek revenge, but to love them. To serve them. To offer kindness where none was given. They chose love over hatred, even when it cost them everything.
That choice moves me deeply. If they could love their enemies in a world so hostile, how can I not try to do the same? Their courage, their faith, their love—they inspire me to follow in their footsteps today.
