Luke 6:27-36
Love for Enemies
27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Jesus was a Man of non-violence, if it is fair to call Him a man...There were also other men who tried to follow Jesus' ways of non-violence...Some men that come to mind were Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King...These men tried to help there fellow man to a better future, and their way was in a hope that peace and equal rights to people could be done in a non-threatening, non-violent way...And yet their lives were ended by violence...
Jesus taught his followers to follow way of nonviolence and to love our enemies...“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you...To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.”...Whenever violence happened or was in the air Jesus tried tried to shun the violence...When an angry crowd found an adulteress and brought her to Jesus they wanted to stone her to death...He told them, he who has not sinned, could cast the first stone...Jesus’s teachings are unqualified and absolute...
Martin Luther King in one of his sermons and it was on a Palm Sunday that he said this of Mahatma Gandhi: And the final thing that I would like to say to you this morning is that the world doesn’t like people like Gandhi...That’s strange, isn’t it?...They don’t like people like Christ...They don’t like people like Abraham Lincoln...They kill them...And this man, who had done all of that for India, this man who had given his life and who had mobilized and galvanized four hundred million people for independence so that in 1947 India received its independence, and he became the father of that nation...This same man because he decided that he would not rest until he saw the Muslims and the Hindus together; they had been fighting among themselves, they had been in riots among themselves, and he wanted to see this straight...And one of his own fellow Hindus felt that he was a little too favorable toward the Muslims, felt that he was giving in a little too much toward the Muslims...And one afternoon, when he was at Birla House, living there with one of the big industrialists for a few days in Delhi, he walked out to his evening prayer meeting...Every evening he had a prayer meeting where hundreds of people came, and he prayed with them...And on his way out there that afternoon, one of his fellow Hindus shot him...And here was a man of nonviolence, falling at the hand of a man of violence...Here was a man of love falling at the hands of a man of hate...This seems the way of history...And isn’t it significant that he died on the same day that Christ died; it was on a Friday...This is the story of history...But thank God it never stops here...Thank God Good Friday is never the end...And the man who shot Gandhi only shot him into the hearts of humanity...And just as when Abraham Lincoln was shot—mark you, for the same reason that Mahatma Gandhi was shot, that is, the attempt to heal the wounds of a divided nation...When the great leader Abraham Lincoln was shot, Secretary Stanton stood by the body of this leader and said, “Now he belongs to the ages.”...And that same thing can be said about Mahatma Gandhi now...He belongs to the ages, and he belongs especially to this age, an age drifting once more to its doom...And he has revealed to us that we must learn to go another way...