Jesus' Most Radical Change

Jesus’ Most Radical Change: On Love of Enemies

August 29, 2020

Jesus’ relationship to Torah law is, shall we say, complicated. I want here to look at the portions of the Sermon on the Mount that deal with Torah law to try to get some idea of how Jesus related to it. There are other places that are relevant to the question that I won’t go into here. They include, for example, his statement that it is not what goes into a person that defiles but what comes out. Matthew 15:11. I’ll consider here primarily that passages in which Jesus addresses his relationship to the law by saying something like “You have heard that it was said, but I say to you.” I will look most closely at the passage in that format that addresses the question of love of enemies.

Jesus begins his discussion of the law in the Sermon on the Mount with these words:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:17-20.

Sounds pretty clear, doesn’t it. Don’t you dare mess with the law of Moses. To follow Jesus you must obey the Torah law more strictly than even the scribes or Pharisees observe it. The scribes and the Pharisees of course taught that every Jew must obey every jot and tittle of the law in order to be righteous, that is, in order to be in right relationship with God. It’s not clear how anyone could obey the Torah law more strictly than the scribes and Pharisees told people to obey it, but never mind. It sure sounds here like Jesus is telling us that Torah law is as valid and important in Christianity than it is in Pharisaic Judaism.

I have heard people say that that is precisely what Jesus means. I have been accused of denying Jesus’ Jewishness because I have taught that his position with regard to the law was actually quite different from what Matthew 5:17-20 makes it sound like. I respond that I would never deny Jesus’ Jewishness, but he was a different kind of Jew than were the scribes and the Pharisees. Jesus discovered and lifted up a different Jewish voice, the voice of the eighth century BCE prophets with their demand for justice for the poor. That voice is thoroughly Jewish, but it isn’t Pharisaic. It prefers Isaiah, Amos, and Micah to Leviticus, but it is a Jewish voice.

There still remains however a question about just what Jesus’ relationship to the Torah law actually was. Did he just read it, preach it, and leave it at that? Or did he do something creative with it? Did he change it? Yes he did. He didn’t abolish it, but he did change it. We see what Jesus’ relationship to the law was in the verses that immediately follow Matthew 5:17-20. The next line of the Sermon on the Mount in which these verses appear is, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder….’ But I say to you….” Matthew 5:21-22a. I want to say, “Wait a minute!” Jesus just quoted Exodus 20:13, “You shall not murder.” He says that that one of the Ten Commandments was said not to the people of his time but to people of ancient times. Then he says, “But I say to you….” You mean he’s going to say something different from what the Torah says? You bet he is. He says: But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister you will be liable to the council: and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.” Matthew 5:21-22. True, Jesus doesn’t say you don’t have to obey the commandment against murder, but he hasn’t left that commandment unchanged either. He has made it a matter not just of external acts but of internal emotions. He has broadened the scope of impermissible acts to include statements as well as actions. He’s made the law harder to obey, but he certainly hasn’t left it unchanged.

There is actually a way to understand what Jesus has done with the law in this instance as Pharisaic. The Pharisees were so zealous about people obeying Torah law that they did what scholars call build a fence around it. They wanted people not even to come close to violating a Torah commandment. That way they would never actually violate one. That’s what Jesus is doing here with the law against murder. If you guard yourself against anger you’re less likely to violate the law against murder than you are if you don’t. Jesus understood that sinful acts come from sinful emotions, so in his remarks on the law against murder he tells us to avoid even those sinful emotions.

He has however done nothing Pharisaic in two of the four modifications of the law that follow in the same format.  They are:

“You have heard that is was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Matthew 5:27-28. We must concede that what he does here with the law against adultery is Pharisaic, for if you never lust after a woman you’re less likely to commit adultery with her than if you do lust after her.

“It was also said, ‘whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery.” Matthew 5:31-32. This modification of the law is not at all Pharisaic.

“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely….But I say to you, ‘Do not swear at all….” Matthew 5:33-34. He does handle this one like a Pharisee, drawing a line around false swearing by forbidding all swearing.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer.” Matthew 5:38-39. This one isn’t particularly Pharisaic.

In these passages Jesus changes the law. He changes it in radical ways. He makes it stricter. He internalizes much of it, making it not just a matter of external actions but of internal thoughts and emotions as well.

There is of course a great deal that could be said about each of these changes to the law. On the actual meaning of “Do not resist an evildoer” for example see my book Liberating Christianity, pages 162-163.[1] I won’t go into all that now. I want instead to consider at greater length the last item in the same format that Jesus also gives us. Jesus says: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Matthew 5:43-44. Jesus’ call to us to love our enemies is easily the most radical transformation of Jewish teaching of any of the changes to it that Jesus gives us in the Sermon on the Mount. Here’s why.

In each of the other statements we’re considering here Jesus changes a commandment that really is in the Torah. “You shall not murder” is at Exodus 20:13. You shall not commit adultery is at Exodus 20:14. The law on divorce is at Deuteronomy 24:1-4. The prohibition of swearing falsely is at Exodus 20:7. The saying “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is at Exodus 21:24. Jesus knew his Torah law very well. He knew it, and he thought it didn’t go far enough. So he changed it in radical ways.

His saying about love of enemies is a bit different. The saying “You shall love your neighbor” is indeed in the Torah. You’ll find it at Leviticus 19:18. The phrase “You shall hate your enemies” however, is not in the Torah, at least not explicitly. You won’t find the commandment “You shall hate your enemies” anywhere in the Hebrew Bible, at least not is so many words. Jesus here is reading something into the law that isn’t quite there.

There are passages in the Hebrew Bible from which one can easily extrapolate “hate your enemies” as something of which God supposedly would approve. Thus at 1 Samuel 15:1-3 we read:

Samuel said to Saul, ‘the Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel. Now therefore listen to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’

On what the Amalekites did when the Israelites came up out of Egypt that has gotten God so mad at them see Exodus 17:8-13. It is clear that at one time the ancient Israelites considered the Amalekites to be their enemy. We can assume they hated them. It seems equally clear that in this passage God hates them too. It’s not hard to extrapolate a commandment to hate enemies from passages like this one.

Then there’s Psalm 137. It comes from the time of the Babylonian exile of the Hebrew people in the sixth century BCE. The Babylonian Empire has besieged Jerusalem and taken it. The Babylonians have hauled at least all of the prominent people of Judah off into forced exile back in Babylon hundreds of miles east of Jerusalem across barren desert. Psalm 137 begins as a lament over that tragic turn of events:

By the rivers of Babylon—

       there we sat down and there

              we wept

       when we remembered Zion. Psalm 137:1.

We can certainly sympathize with that sentiment. The Babylonian exile was the most tragic event in Israelite history since the days of slavery in Egypt. But then Psalm 137 changes its tone dramatically:

O daughter Babylon, you

              devastator!

       Happy shall they be who pay

              you back

       what you have done to us!

Happy shall they be who take

              your little ones

       and dash them against the rock! Psalm 137:8-9.

It’s not exactly God who praises infanticide here, and like 1 Samuel the Psalms are not part of the Torah; but these verses are in Hebrew scripture. Babylon was indeed Israel’s enemy. Surely no one calls for the murder of another people’s children the way Psalm 137 does without hating that people. So while “hate your enemies” isn’t in Hebrew scripture in so many words there certainly are passages that quite obviously support that insidious notion.

Jesus will have none of it. He says:

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward to you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? Matthew 5:43-46.

Love your enemies for God loves them by not withholding sun and rain from them, sun and rain of course both being essential for any agricultural economy like that of ancient Israel. This, I believe, is Jesus’ most radical recasting if not quite of Jewish law than at least of common Jewish thought and emotions.

Why is this one of  Jesus’ changer in Jewish thought the most radical? Because it goes straight to the heart of the most destructive human emotion of all, hatred. Humans hating other humans has distorted and debased humanity at least since the rise of civilization many thousands of years ago. Hatred leads to maiming and murder. Hatred leads to war. Hatred leads to genocide. It did in the United States against Native Americans. It did in Nazi Germany against the Jews. Hatred doesn’t just cause violence, though it certainly does. Hatred harms the hater at least by keeping that person’s soul disquieted and ill at ease. Hatred destroys relationships, even relationships once grounded in love.

Hating is the most destructive thing we humans do, yet it is also something that comes so naturally and easily to us. Who among us can say we’ve never hated anyone? Perhaps Jesus never did, but the rest of us? Certainly not me. Even Saint Paul once hated people he called followers of the Way, people later called Christians. We find it so hard not to hate. Our American culture tragically teaches us white people to hate Black people. As I was growing up during what we called the Cold War I was taught not only to hate Communism but to hate the people of Communist countries. I was lucky. I spent five weeks in the Soviet Union in 1968 and an academic year in Russia in 1975-76. I learned firsthand that Russians are people like the rest of us and that there is no reason to hate them. Most Americans weren’t so lucky. In the 1950s and 1960s hatred was a big part of the American way of life. Tragically it still is.

Jesus says don’t hate. Don’t hate even your enemies or those who persecute you. When he says love your enemies he is telling us to transform or overcome what seems to be an inherently human trait. He is calling us to do what seems impossible. It almost seems like he’s calling us to stop being human. Living without hating would radically transform how most people live. What do you mean I have to love the people who flew crowded airliners into the World Trade Center? Not only can’t I love them, it just feels wrong to love them. They weren’t after all lovable, but Jesus doesn’t call us to love only the lovable. He didn’t have to call us to do that. We’d do it anyway.

So we’re supposed to love our enemies, to love people we’d rather hate. But just what does that mean? What does loving our enemies actually look like? Jesus doesn’t explain it here. Paul has a brief interpretation of it in Romans. He says, “No, if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Romans 12:20. I don’t think heaping burning coals on anyone’s head is a Christian thing to do. It sure doesn’t sound like loving your enemies, but never mind. I think we can get a better idea of what Jesus means by “love your enemies” by looking at the meaning of the word translated as “love” and by considering what love of enemies might look like within Jesus’ larger scheme of salvation.

The Greek word translated as “love” at Matthew 5:44 is “agapate.” It is a verb form of the noun “agape,” which is the most common word for love in the New Testament. Agape is a particular and peculiar kind of love. It isn’t an emotion. It isn’t liking a lot. It certainly isn’t being romantically involved with. It is rather caring and giving for another. Agape is radically unselfish. It is self-giving for the sake of another. God’s love of creation is agape in its purest form. God gives of Godself freely and unconditionally for the sake of creation. Dean Martin sang “That’s amore.” We can say here “That’s agape.”

So what does agape of one’s enemies look like? It looks first of all like not hating them. Jesus makes this aspect of love of enemies clear in the way he sets up that command: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you love your enemies….” Matthew 5:43-44. Overcoming hatred is the first thing this passage is about.

Next, love of one’s enemy means not physically harming them. The Church of the Brethren, one of the historic peace churches, once put out a bumper sticker that read: “When Jesus said love your enemy I think he probably meant don’t kill them.” Indeed. Love of anyone certainly involves not killing them, not even our enemies. We humans fail at this one all the time. Humans sometimes kill out of hatred, but we often kill mass numbers of people without hating them at all. Consider for example the famous story of the Christmas truce of World War I. At Christmastime 1914 at places along the western front German and allied forces spontaneously stopped firing at and killing each other. In many places they came out of their trenches and greeted each other with good holiday wishes. It is said that in some places they sang the carol “Silent Night” together. Then, after Christmas was over, they went right back to killing each other. These soldiers apparently didn’t hate each other. Nonetheless they went about the nasty business of war, the business of maiming and killing other human beings. They didn’t hate, but they did kill. As they did they certainly were not loving their enemy.

Loving one’s enemies also means seeking reconciliation with them rather than prolonging conflict with them. It doesn’t necessarily mean giving up all self-interest to placate an enemy. It means seeking common ground with them as a basis for ending everyone’s status as enemy. It means finding a way for former enemies to live together in peace. It doesn’t mean total self-abnegation, but it does mean being open to compromise with the enemy for the sake of peace.

We can also seek to understand love of enemies by looking at how that love fits into Jesus overall teachings and mission. In so much of the Bible what people wish for their enemies is their elimination, their death. Thus as 1 Samuel 15:1-3 as we have seen we find humans attributing to God a command that they kill every living thing among a people identified as an enemy. We’ve also seen how at Psalm 137:8-9 we find a Jewish author wishing that someone would commit infanticide against Babylonian children. At Psalm 139:19 the psalmist wishes that God would “kill the wicked.” The New Testament book of Revelation sees the solution to imperial violence and injustice as massive bloodshed and death. We humans are really good at wishing death and destruction on people we consider to be enemies.

Not so Jesus. His whole program is a call for a nonviolent transformation of the world through a transformation of each person from the ways of the world to the ways of God. See for example Mark 5:1-13. There Jesus exorcises a demon named Legion out of a possessed man. A legion was a unit of the Roman army roughly equivalent to a modern regiment or division. A demon named Legion possessing a man symbolizes the way that we humans internalize the violent ways of the world. Jesus exorcising Legion symbolizes his desire for all of us to expel the ways of the world, the ways of violence and injustice, out of our minds and spirits and replace them with God’s values of justice and peace. Jesus wants to transform the whole world into the kingdom of God through that kind of personal transformation.

Loving our enemies then means praying not for their deaths but for their transformation. Just as Jesus calls us to transform ourselves as the means for creating the kingdom of God on earth, so his commandment to love our enemies calls us to pray and to work for the transformation of enemies into friends. It can be done. We always begin the work of transformation with prayer not for our enemy’s death but for their radical transformation, forgetting never that we need that transformation too. I believe that Jesus’ call to us to love our enemies involves all of these things and no doubt many more. And of course everything we say and do must be grounded in love.

Just think how different the world would be if no one hated anyone and everyone loved everyone. That’s the world Jesus calls us to. He goes straight to the heart of the matter when he tells us to love our enemies. He will never let some ancient law no matter how sacred stand in the way of the transformation of love. He knew it wasn’t easy. He knew we’d never do it perfectly. He also knew how absolutely essential it is if the world the way it is will ever be transformed into the kingdom of God, into the way God wants it to be. So he calls us to the most radical transformation of ourselves imaginable, the transformation from hatred to love even of enemies. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

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[1] Thomas C. Sorenson, Liberating Christianity, Overcoming Obstacles to Faith in the New Millennium (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2008), 162-163.