Jesus says: Your Love is too Small. Love Bigger.

Jesus says that as humans, we are really good at loving those who love us back.  

Most of us manage to love those who we are supposed to love, like our immediate and somewhat extended family members (most of the time).  Most of us manage to love a couple of really close friends and some folks we know at church.  Some of us love a couple people that we work with.  And, one or two of us manages to even love our boss.

But that's usually where our love stops.  Beyond that, ice begins to form along the ridges of our heart, as we grow increasingly hard and cold towards others outside this circle of people that we love most.

As a result of our love growing colder the further somebody gets from the center of our hearts, we often begin to treat people very differently from the people we really love.  For example:

• You demonize every former romantic interest you've ever had.
• When some random person you don't know on Facebook openly disagrees with a comment you make about President Obama on a Fox News report, and then you proceed to hurl every insult your sanctified lips can muster at that person.  
• Anytime you see a homeless person begging for money on the side of the road, you make sure to tell your kids never to give people like that money, because they will probably just use it for booze or drugs.
• You gladly bend over backwards to help somebody you like, but get irritated and upset over inconveniences others cause you to experience.
• When you see a black person walking down the side of a road that you are driving on, and you instinctively lock your car door.
• You make it a point to vote for certain politicians because they promise to destroy every Islamic radical who wishes to do harm against the United States or the nation of Israel.  
• When you talk badly about somebody because they are rich or because they are poor, and assume they are such because they lack some sort of virtue or mindset that you just so happen to possess. 
• You never volunteer in the community, and you give little or no money to any person or organization besides your immediate family or local church.  
• If you experience bad customer service somewhere, and you act like a jerk towards the people who work for that company because of it.
• You feel happy when "karma" finally pays back somebody you don't like, or you find it impossible to be happy for them when something good comes there way.
• When you try to out perform your peers at work or school instead of simply just doing your personal best every day.  
• You are overly critical of others, and more than happy to point out their shortcomings.
• When you regularly "forget" to follow through on promises you make to others.  
• You don't respond to phone calls or text messages in a timely manner (...yeah, I just went there).  

I could probably rattle off a million other things other than what I have listed above.  And I don't do such simply as somebody who is nothing more than a finger-pointer.  I do such as somebody who is something of an expert at not showing love towards others.  

And naturally speaking, I think we all know what it means to be an expert at not showing love towards others.  We love those whom we love, and that's all there is too it.  To everybody else we are cold, callous, indifferent, rude, short-tempered, and even openly hostile and hateful.  

Yet, Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that heaven doesn't give out any rewards for loving those that love you back.  There is nothing particularly virtuous about this ability.  Jesus said even godless pagans are able to do the same.  Heck, even Hitler loved his mother and his wife.  So what makes you so special?

When Jesus goes so far as to say that you must "love your enemies, and to pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:44; NASB), I am confronted with the reality that my ability to love is too small, and that I need to learn to love bigger that my heart's present abilities.  I need the type of love that can only come from God to fill up my heart, and make me the kind of person that can love those not only outside my bubble, but those who are openly my enemy and even want me dead.

Because my enemies... I want them dead, and I want them dead in a very Old Testament sorta way.  And the deader they are, the happier I usually am.  And, I think there is something like that in all of our hearts, to one degree or another.

It is no wonder then that Jesus linked the idea to be sons of God with the ability to love our enemies.  For such is something our hearts just don't naturally do.  It's only something those born of heaven can do, even as Jesus did on the cross.

We are more than happy to love our families and to love our country, and we are willing to defend both to the point of death.  But when it comes to loving somebody who is from another country or somebody that wants to harm or even kill us or somebody else that we love, then praying for their well being is something we leave off our to-do list for the day.  

Instead, we prefer to pack up the rucksacks of some soldiers and send them off to make war.  We'll even send these soldiers care packages just so they can keep up the morale necessary to kill people on our behalf.

Yet this ability to love our enemies is something that Jesus says indicates we are truly children of God.  Our ability to make war... not so much.

But loving those outside our heart's inner circle is something we fail so badly at.  And loving our enemies and those who actually wish us mortal harm is something entirely foreign to our way of thinking as American Christians.

It can't help but make me wonder, are we as saved as we think we are?  Our love is so small. We need to learn to love in a much bigger way.  

Loving Your Enemies: But What About Islamic Terrorists?

I've lived in the "Bible belt" for almost 30 years. I've been saved for almost 15 of those years. I've been to Bible college and Seminary. I've literally listened to several thousand sermons in my lifetime. All the churches and schools I've been involved with have been conservative, Evangelical, and "Bible believing" churches.

Yet to date, I can confidently say I've never heard a single sermon dedicated to the topic of "loving my enemy."

That's not to say somebody hasn't mentioned it in passing at some point. Indeed, I briefly have heard it talked about. And that's not to say there aren't preachers out there in America that don't preach on the topic. Indeed, there are, as a simple Google search will reveal it to be so.

But I've never heard such a message preached in any church I've been a part of, and my guess is you probably haven't either.

Therefore, I worry that one of the central ethical teachings of Jesus recorded in the Gospels, has not only been largely overlooked, but has been almost entirely forgotten.

So far as I've heard and studied, any brief mention of loving our enemies is generally reduced to a command that only advises us on how to deal with interpersonal drama.  It deals with things you might see on "Dr Phil" or the "Jerry Springer Show."  That is, we see Jesus as teaching us to do nothing more than find ways to get along with people we don't like at work, and how to deal with family members whom we wish were grafted into somebody else's family tree.

As I get older, I've become increasingly aware of what a dangerous world we actually live in, and the fact that there are people out there who actually want to do mortal harm to me, my family, and this nation.

Yet, as I read my Bible, I find myself confronted with this teaching of Jesus where He commands me to love my enemies, and I start to think He might have something more in mind than how to deal with personality conflicts and otherwise rude people.

When I crawl into my time machine and find myself transported back into the times of Jesus, as I hear Him preaching to the multitudes in His famous "Sermon on the Mount," I can't help but be arrested by the fact that Jesus's teaching to love my enemies had a much greater application than I  regularly appreciate as a middle-class white-boy who grew up in America.

As I listen to Jesus preaching on a hill side in Judea, I look around and see a lot of Jewish people who have lived under the brutally oppressive Roman Empire.

I see a people whose hearts are broken,  angry, and confused.  They don't understand why God has allowed a foreign and pagan army to occupy and govern a land that He had promised them.   They are forced to pay heavy taxes, are forced into servitude, and live under a police state.  Justice is administered coldly, swiftly, and decisively (which is to say, not really at all).  They are a people who want to rebel, they want to fight back, and they want to get out from under the boot of Rome.  But Rome frequently squashes all hope of that ever happening, and regularly tortures and kills anybody who dares to fight back, and try to gain freedom.

History tells how the Romans dealt with Jewish rebellions in their day.  For example, one day they reportedly crucified 3,000 people, and set them up on the highway as an object lesson.  The lesson was simple: Don't even think about messing with us.

This happened during the time of Jesus.  He may have personally seen this event as a small boy.  If He didn't see it, He would've definitely heard about it.

Yet for all the brutality the Jews suffered at Roman hands, Jesus taught that they should not hate their enemy.  Instead, Jesus taught the Jews of His day that if they wanted to be a people who were rightly related to God, that they would have to love their enemies.

That is, they would have to love the Romans.

Jesus taught the Jews of His day to love the very enemies who not only crucified 3,000 Jews, but would one day crucify Him.

Jesus taught the Jews of His day to love they very enemies who would one day conduct a military siege against Jerusalem.  According to the ancient Jewish historian Josephus, more than 1 million people were killed in the fall of Jerusalem, and almost 100,000 people were enslaved.

Love those people, Jesus said.

The application would have been loud and clear.

The Jews would have understood Jesus's sermon as teaching them to love people who were truly their enemies, and not simply people they had a hard time getting along with.  They would've understood Jesus to be teaching them to love people who could actually physically and mortally harm them and their families.

"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 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. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:43-48; NASB)

...Fast forward 2,000 years to the present.

Outside of some co-workers and some family members that you consider your enemies, can you think of anybody that threatens you in the way the Romans threatened the ancient Jewish people?  Do we have any enemies who actually threaten to physically harm and kill us and our loved ones?

If Jesus were to preach a sermon at your church this Sunday, and taught you to love your enemies, do you think He might make a PowerPoint slide that listed Islamic terrorists as one of the people we ought to love?

If Jesus appeared on Fox News and was interviewed by Sean Hannity, how do you think Hannity would respond if Jesus said He thinks the solution to the crisis in the Middle East was for us to bomb ISIS with something resembling "care packages" instead of something a little more explosive.

If Jesus were to advise President Obama on the Middle East crisis, do you think He would tell the president to love his enemies and pray for their well being?  Or do you think He would quote the famous country music star Toby Keith, and tell the president to "put a boot in their ass."

In our heart of hearts, if we were really honest with ourselves, I think most of us know what Jesus would say on these matters if He were given the platform to speak today.

The problem is, as so often is the case, we simply find the straight forward teachings of Jesus too hard to accept.  I believe we simply don't have the capacity in our hearts to accept such truth.  The problem therein is not the words of Jesus being too hard to accept, so much as it is the hardness of our hearts to accept them.

So we largely ignore such teachings.  We pass over them very quickly in our reading of the Bible and in our teaching in the church.  We don't want to dwell on such things.

For we ultimately know that there is a lot of risk involved in loving our enemies.  Loving our enemies means we let something of our guard down.  Lowering our guard makes us vulnerable.  We don't want to be vulnerable as a general rule of thumb, let alone vulnerable before our enemies, who have an interest in putting us and those we love to death.

Our fear is what ultimately keeps us from loving our enemies.

But love, true love, the kind of love that can only come from God, can grant us the supernatural transformation we all need in our hearts, to give us the capacity to genuinely love our enemies.  It is the kind of love that Jesus had in Him, and is the kind of love that ultimately drove Him to the cross to die on our behalf.

And if Jesus can cause us to love even the men that want to put us to death, then just imagine what He can do to the hearts of those who want to kill us.

He did this once to a man named Saul of Tarsus, who was involved in killing the first Christian martyr.  Today, we all better know this man by the name of Paul, the apostle.  He started dozens, if not hundreds of churches.  And in the process, he wrote most of the New Testament.