“Love And Hate”
Text: Luke 6:27-38
2-23-2025
In the name of Him who loved us even when we were unlovable, dear friends in Christ. Even though I grew up in the big city, it was still quite rare back in our neighborhood for someone to have tattoos. Our next-door neighbor had a bunch, but then again, he had been in the Navy. And let’s just say they were for mature audiences only. Despite their graphic nature, they kind of made sense because they depicted things that a young sailor was, umm, “interested in.” During my time in the Army, I was introduced to a lot more tattoos. Some of them were pretty cool to my 18-year-old mind. So much so that I almost got one. Gayleen will tell you she’s thankful that my mother talked me out of it. That’s for the best because if I had gotten the one I wanted it would look really dumb on the bicep of your Pastor today. {By the way, I don’t care one way or another if any of you have a tattoo.}
Anyway, of all those “cool” tattoos that I saw in the Army, there was one that has always confused me. One of my Drill Sergeants had “L-O-V-E” on the fingers of one hand and “H-A-T-E” on the other. He’s not the only person I’ve met who had these. So, why would someone have 2 totally opposite emotions tattooed on their hands? I read somewhere online that bikers and criminals do it to show that they fight with their “hate” hand and express love with the other. That seems like a shallow explanation. There must be some deeper meaning to it. Here’s my theory: These people who have the love/hate tattoos aren’t trying to be philosophical or theological. They’re just expressing the tension that exists in the heart and mind of every human. In some, the hate is much stronger than the love. In others, the love is more powerful than the hate. But both emotions are active.
Which leads us to the radical words of Jesus in our Gospel reading. He says, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” That doesn’t sound like much of a balance between love and hate. In fact, there’s no balance at all. He tells us that as His followers, our response to all these forms of hate is love. And from our human stand point, that’s just not right. It’s totally backwards. I mean, love pairs up nicely with love and hate pairs up with hate, right? If someone hates you, it’s only natural to hate them back. The other side of that coin is if someone loves you, it’s easy to love them in return. But Jesus says that’s not the way it’s supposed to be amongst us Christians.
The reason why His command is so radical to our thinking is because of our old, sinful nature. And we need to trace this all the way back to the Garden of Eden to understand why our emotions of love and hate are all messed up. Listen to me closely. When God created the very first humans, Adam and Eve, He made them for the purpose of love—loving one another and loving Him. Hate was nowhere in the picture. Think about that. Even though God told them to avoid the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they only knew love. It truly was a paradise. But then sin was introduced by the devil. The strange thing is that Satan didn’t urge Eve to hate God. No, he encouraged her to love herself and her desires more than God. Adam joined her in that self-love, and it upset the beautiful order of God’s creation. Their selfish love then bore the fruit of distrusting and despising the Lord. And really, in essence, isn’t that equal to hating? You can see this in full bloom when Cain killed Abel. His love of self became greater than his love for his brother. This led to jealous hatred which ended up in murder.
Whether you feel it or not, that same selfish love is inside of you too. We inherited it from our first parents. And that’s precisely why the words of Jesus sound so foreign to our ears. You see, even our so-called “love” is all messed up. Think about it in terms of a marriage. What disrupts the loving union between a husband and wife which often leads to a divorce? The man or the woman starts feeling that their needs aren’t being satisfied or fulfilled by their spouse. They begin to disdain the person they supposedly loved more than anyone else on the planet. That disdain is nothing other than hatred. And it all starts with selfish love. It’s all about me and what I will get out of the relationship. If I don’t feel I’m being loved and cared for then I suddenly have a right to be upset and to withhold my love from my spouse. That is 100% self-love. Whether you believe it or not, it’s actually a form of hatred toward another person. We don’t just do this to our spouses but also to our family and loved ones. And if we can’t even properly love the people who love us then it’s no wonder that we struggle to love those who hate us.
However, when Christ takes over our lives, He gives us a new heart. He fills us with His divine love which is the exact opposite of our selfish love. The word for love in our text is the Greek word “agape.” Whenever we read of God’s love toward us, it’s always agape love. This love is far different than brotherly love or love for our nation and such things. Agape love is unconditional. This love is not contingent on whether the other person loves me in return. It’s not contingent on whether the other person provides me with what I need either physically or emotionally. Agape love, loves regardless of the circumstances. That’s the kind of love that God showed toward us. When Christ fills us with this love in our marriages then we can sincerely say we’ll love our spouse: for better or worse, richer or poorer, etc.
But that kind of love isn’t just for marriage. As Christians, it’s also for our day to day lives. In Baptism this is the love that the Holy Spirit filled you with. And He continues to renew that unselfish love as we are regularly immersed in God’s Word and Sacrament. By it, He gives us the capacity to love the way that God loves. That means He gives us the ability to even love those who hate us and are our enemies. After all, isn’t that precisely what God did for us? St. Paul tells us in Romans 5:6–10, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”
Did you catch that? We were unlovable. Not only that, we were enemies of God who hated Him. And yet, God’s agape love compelled Him to show undeserved mercy towards us. Rather than hating us in return, He loved us. Rather than giving us what we deserved, He had compassion. Rather than condemning us, He saved us through the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross. And now, Christ calls you and I to show this divine agape love towards all the people around us. Not just those who are nice and show love to us. No, He tells us to love the unlovable. To love those who hate us. To be kind to those who are mean to us. Yes, it’s a tall order. But with the Holy Spirit filling us with His divine love, we can do it. We won’t be perfect at it, but we will have the desire to love the way that Jesus loves.
Before we wrap this up, I need to clarify something. You see, some people misunderstand what Christ said in our text. They take His words to mean that He’s teaching an extreme form of pacifism, that the disciples of Jesus are to be punching bags for any bully who comes along and they’re supposed to allow themselves to be robbed blind by thieves. They think we are to passively permit violence and criminal activity to go unchecked and unrestrained. According to them, in times of war we are forbidden to defend ourselves, our loved ones, and our country.
This is most emphatically not what Jesus is saying. We have a justice system and we’re allowed to use it. In other words, you can call the police if you’re being harmed or abused or threatened. The Bible commands us to defend those who are vulnerable. That means you may even have to exercise self-defense in order to preserve your life or the life of an innocent victim. This doesn’t relieve us of our Christian duty to love this person who is hating on us. No, you don’t have to have warm, fuzzy feelings of affection for them. But we are called to seek their good. Thwarting or preventing their evil actions and intentions may be the most loving thing you could do. Even if it means they go to jail for it. Just don’t allow your heart and mind to descend into hatred. Rather, as Jesus says, pray for them. Pray that their hearts will be changed by God’s love and that they will be saved from their sins. Christian friends, if we can learn to love even those who hate us, imagine what that can do for our relationships with those who we love! Then, the little things they do that irritate or offend us and the mistakes they make that hurt us can be blanketed in Christ-like love and forgiveness. May God grant this change of heart to all of us for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!