Matthew 5: Bearing God's Name by Loving Your Enemies

Introduction

"I guarantee you that if you tell your story, it is marked by love: either by moments when love was missing, or by moments when it was present." Ryan Karayiannis of Christian Fellowship Church opens week three of the "Foundations" series with these words. That morning, he talks a lot about love.

He does so from Matthew 5:43-48, the high point of the Sermon on the Mount's "You have heard that it was said... But I tell you": "Love your enemies, [...] pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you, that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven."

The preacher draws three things from it: a challenge to our quest for certainty, a need, to become like the Father, and a goal, maturity. Along the way, he rereads a well-known commandment, "You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain," and finds in it a calling: carrying God's reputation into the world.

Message Outline

1. Love Marks Our Stories

Ryan Karayiannis is the youngest of three brothers. At his first youth camp, he goes with his brother, who had planned to spend his nights pulling pranks with his friends. Every evening at 11:30 p.m., the little brother knocks on his door in tears: "I miss Mom, I want to go home." Five nights in a row, his brother takes him under his arm and talks to him until he falls asleep.
"I'm getting emotional telling this story, because I love my brother so much, because that love marked my life." On his wedding day, he says, he did not cry talking about his wife, but talking about his brothers.
Another memory: in elementary school, a classmate lands the first uppercut of his life. "You find out very quickly whether you're a lover or a fighter. I created a third category: the crier." His mother then talks to him about forgiveness and about Jesus. The next day, he goes to tell his classmate that he forgives him. The answer: "I don't care."
Therapists say it: the early years of life, depending on whether love is present or absent, shape how we understand the world. That should not surprise us: "He who doesn't love doesn't know God, for God is love" (1 John 4:8). The one who made us is love, and deep down, we long to be loved.

2. God's Love Is Verified in Love for Our Neighbor

Asked "Which commandment is the greatest of all?", Jesus answers: love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:29-31). A vertical love for God that unfolds horizontally toward others.
Yet the New Testament authors make a slight shift. James calls "royal law" not the love of God, but "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (James 2:8). Paul writes that the whole law is fulfilled in this one word (Galatians 5:14), and that love is the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:8-10).
Why this shift? "Because you and I know that it is very easy to claim to love God without it ever translating into love for others." The Church has done damage throughout history every time it proclaimed its faithfulness to God while forgetting love for others.
So it is no surprise that the Sermon on the Mount culminates with Matthew 5:43-48. Do you want to sum up the story, the Christian calling, spiritual maturity in action? "Love your neighbor as yourself."

3. A Challenge to Our Quest for Certainty

The preacher speaks to those who are zealous for truth, who want to know what is right and what is not. At the time, people were taught: "You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy."
The Pharisees started from Leviticus 19:17-18: do not hate your brother in your heart, do not take vengeance, love your neighbor as yourself. Because the chapter begins with "Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel" (Leviticus 19:1-2), they concluded that the neighbor means people who look like us, who come from the same place, who share the same story. The others could be despised and rejected.
They forgot Leviticus 19:33-34: the foreigner who lives among you shall be treated as a native, "you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." "They literally cherry-picked Scripture to reach a conclusion they taught with authority."
John Stott, in his book on the Sermon on the Mount, writes that this teaching deliberately narrows both the measure of love, by leaving out the words "as yourself," and its object, by excluding enemies from the category of neighbor and adding the command to hate them.
How did they get there? Through a very slight distortion of the truth. "Love your neighbor" is true; "hate your enemy" is the distortion. This is how the serpent hooks Eve: "You won't surely die" (Genesis 3:4-5). A half-truth, to which we are all exposed.

4. Living on the Assumption That You Could Be Wrong

Ryan Karayiannis grew up in a family that debated constantly, a mix of Greek, South African, and Northern Irish cultures. His wife, invited to dinner for the first time, wondered what was going on. His advice: "If you don't want to be blinded by slight distortions of the truth, live your life assuming you're wrong."
Many think conviction and humility cannot coexist. "You're so focused on being right that you completely miss it: love your neighbor as yourself."
A friend from church asks this question: when was the last time we prayed "Lord, have mercy on my faulty theological thinking"? We will discover at the judgment where we were right and where we were wrong. In the meantime, we can pray: "Lord, lead me into all truth, but thank you also for your mercy and for your choice to keep using me despite my mistakes that I can't see."
Preston Sprinkle writes that a helpful conversation is not one where everyone ends up agreeing, but one where everyone feels understood and honored, even if the disagreement remains. When we resort to dehumanizing slogans, or can't acknowledge anything right in the other person, we may be compensating for the unexamined weaknesses of our own position.
"I preach with authority and with conviction. But I can be wrong. In fact, I guarantee you, I will be wrong." It is an invitation not to let a Pharisee settle in, lurking in our heart.
The psychologist Daniel Kahneman, 2002 Nobel laureate, once attends a lecture that demonstrates he was wrong. Asked on his way out, he is delighted: "My view was corrected, so I'm closer to the truth."
A question to ask: "Can you help me understand how you arrived at that conclusion?" And a challenge: find the person who disagrees with you the most, talk with them assuming you are wrong, and seek the truth together.

5. The Need to Look Like the Father

Love your enemies, "that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good" (Matthew 5:45). The goal of our lives is not to be autonomous. "We are not pioneers, we are imitators."
When he starts following Jesus at 21, under the influence of a man who marked his life, he constantly asks himself what that man would do in his place. "That's what discipleship is: telling someone, come into my life and start copying what I do." Paul says it: "Be imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ" (1 Corinthians 11:1).
Jesus is the revelation of the Father: "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). To imitate the Father, become obsessed with the life of Jesus and read the Gospels every day.
Jesus says he came not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17). If he has to say so, it is because his life shocks everyone's idea of the law so much that it seems to destroy it. "I don't want my life, compared to Jesus', to make him look like someone who destroys the law."
From Genesis on, man and woman are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27): they represent him in the world. That was the plan for all humanity.

6. Bearing God's Name Means Bearing His Reputation

"You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain" (Exodus 20:7). It has often been understood as a ban on swearing. Ryan Karayiannis remembers a student, during his teaching internship, who would correct his classmates: "Hey, I know him, don't say that."
The Hebrew verb, nasa, means to carry, to lift, to raise. Literally: you shall not carry the name of Yahweh in vain. Dr. Carmen Imes, who devoted her dissertation to this passage, shows that in the ancient Near East, a divine name written on something implied ownership, sovereignty, and obligation. The reputation of the god was tied to the fate of what he owned.
Aaron carries the names of the sons of Israel on the breastplate of judgment, over his heart, when he enters the holy place (Exodus 28:29). He also carries, on a gold plate fixed to his turban, the inscription "Holy to Yahweh" (Exodus 28:36-38): he enters the holy place carrying God's reputation.
This is not reserved for the priest: all Israel is called "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Exodus 19:5-6; Deuteronomy 26:18-19). And Aaron's blessing ends with a verse often forgotten: "So shall they put my name on the children of Israel, and I will bless them" (Numbers 6:27).
"The Father has entrusted you with his reputation." Ryan Karayiannis illustrates it with his son: it is like telling him "you are a Karayiannis, we entrust you with our reputation; when people meet you, they will meet me." As a pastor, as a parent, as a coworker, you carry God's name wherever you are.
Rather than the "What Would Jesus Do?" bracelet, he suggests a more useful question: "Jesus, if you were me, what would you do right now?" Facing an email to send on Monday, facing his son who wakes him at 4 a.m., facing a difficult person. This question becomes a spiritual practice that brings us back into alignment.

7. The Goal: The Maturity of a Life Given Away

"Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father who is in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). The word teleios means perfect, mature, or complete. It comes from telos, the end, the goal. "It's not a condemnation to live a perfect life. None of us will get there. It's the direction in which we are moving."
Ronald Rolheiser, in Sacred Fire, distinguishes two stages: at first, we struggle to put our lives in order; maturity is when we struggle to give our lives away. We come to want simply to serve, to help, to love, holding nothing back.
David Thomas, one of the leaders of the Asbury revival in Wilmore, Kentucky, tells how a spiritual hunger kept a few students after chapel on February 8, then crowds came. A decisive moment: a student stands up and says "Nobody knows me. I'm hiding. I'm sorry." Another student shouts to her: "We want to know you."
For him, revival comes when we become truly honest and get rid of everything that keeps us from giving our lives and loving our neighbor as ourselves. The sign of a revival is not gifts, it is a radical love for our neighbor.
The preacher's conclusion: acknowledge that we can be wrong, ask Jesus what he would do in our place, and give our lives. "If we do that, I believe the Father's reputation is in good hands."

Key Takeaways

It is easy to say you love God; love for your neighbor, including your enemy, is the proof of it.
A slight distortion of the truth can lead very far. Living on the assumption that you could be wrong protects against the Pharisee heart.
Conviction and humility can coexist: seek the truth together, even with someone who thinks the opposite.
You carry God's name: he has entrusted you with his reputation where you live and work.
The perfection of Matthew 5:48 is a direction, maturity, seen in a life given away.

Personal Application

Which person disagrees with you the most, and how could you start a conversation with them where you first seek to understand?
Is there a conviction you hold as certain that you have never agreed to bring before God, saying "Lord, have mercy on my mistakes"?
Who are the "foreigners" or enemies you have struck from the category of neighbor?
In what situation this week could you ask: "Jesus, if you were me, what would you do right now?"
What keeps you today from giving your life, and what do you want to ask Jesus to help you let go of?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did the Pharisees teach people to hate their enemy?

According to Ryan Karayiannis, they read Leviticus 19 as a word addressed to Israel alone and reduced the neighbor to people who looked like them. They left out the measure "as yourself" and forgot Leviticus 19:33-34, which calls for loving the foreigner. A slight distortion of the truth led them to a conclusion opposite to God's intent.

What does "do not take the LORD's name in vain" mean according to this message?

The Hebrew verb used in Exodus 20:7 means to carry or to lift up. Bearing God's name means carrying his reputation. Just as the high priest wore "Holy to the LORD" on his turban, every disciple of Jesus carries the Father's reputation wherever they live: at work, at home, with colleagues.

What does "Be perfect" mean in Matthew 5:48?

The Greek word teleios means perfect, mature, or complete, and comes from telos, the end or the goal. For the preacher, it is not a sentence to live a faultless life, but the direction in which we are moving: becoming like the Father, to the point of giving our lives out of love.