The Path of Perfect Love
Having the Heart of God for the World
Christians are called to reflect God. To reflect God is to be godly, or more precisely, godlike. To reflect God's heart with our whole being is the pinnacle of godliness. Nothing greater can be said of a person than that he or she is a man or woman after God's own heart.
Jesus desires that all his followers would be people after God's own heart. Jesus makes this clear in his seminal sermon on Christian discipleship - the Sermon on the Mount. In this sermon, Jesus calls us to rise above mere religion and pursue the "greater righteousness" - the kind of righteousness that befits his disciples (Matthew 5:20). Jesus teaches that an exclusively external demonstration of righteousness is not what God desires.
Shema People
God wants his people to be shema people. The shema pronounces God's call to his people. "Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might" (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). God wants our entire being - body, soul, mind, and spirit - to be integrated in loving response to God's love for us. Put simply, God wants our heart - the integral center of all we are - to reflect God's own heart.
This integrity of heart - this wholeness of being - reflects the Hebrew understanding of perfection. Hebrew "perfection" has nothing to do with the way we normally use the word. Hebrew "perfection" is not the Greek ideal of the attainment of all virtues in all their fullness without possibility of growth or diminishment. For the ancient Hebrew person, perfection involves a faithful commitment to God demonstrated in integrity of relationship to God, self, and others. Hebrew perfection is "wholeness," "integrity," or "whole-heartedness" rather than "flawlessness" or "sinless perfection."
It is this wholeness that Jesus calls "the greater righteousness" - the "righteousness that surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees" (Matthew 5:20). In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus attacks religion without a heart. He accuses the contemporary religious leaders of his day - the scribes and Pharisees - of distorting the very purpose of God's law while outwardly appearing to obey God's law while inwardly rebelling against the law's intent in producing a shema people. In Paul's words, they were guilty of "having a form of godliness, but denying its power" (2 Timothy 3:5).
Obedience to the law is not simply a matter of regulating one's external behavior. True obedience to God's law flows from the whole person - body, soul, mind, and spirit. If one's heart does not reflect God's heart, one's actions are impure and corrupt, no matter how "right" and "proper" they appear. One's heart is divided and not "whole." One lacks integrity. His or her acts of righteousness are half-hearted, falling short of God's intention in giving his law.
Jesus presents a number of examples to make his case. To refrain from murder while harboring anger is to live a divided life and undermine the intention of God's law. In order to be whole, one not only needs to refrain from murder, but also one needs to deal with the attitudes and passions that can result in murder (Matthew 5:21-26). Or again: to refrain from adultery while harboring lust within is to live a divided life and fail to grasp the intention of God's law. In order to be whole, one not only needs to refrain from adultery, but also one needs to curb the attitudes and passions that often lead to adultery (Matthew 5:27-32). Obedience that does not penetrate below the surface of one's actions is not the kind of obedience God's law demands. This is not to love God wholly - but to have a divided heart.
Love Your Enemy
The climax of Jesus' "greater righteousness" challenges strikes at the very crux of possessing God's heart for the world - of being a man or woman after God's own heart. Jesus reveals that we must reflect God's heart in the way we love others - especially our enemies. "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 5:43-44a).
The first half of the saying ("you shall love your neighbor") is found in Leviticus 19:18. The second half ("you shall hate your enemy") does not explicitly appear anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. However, it is easy to understand why someone could come to the conclusion that the natural corollary of loving God is hating God's enemies - especially in light of many Old Testament passages that appear to affirm this stance. The Psalmists often desire to see their enemies violently destroyed (Psalm 137:7-9). In the midst of the one of the most touching Psalms of intimacy with God, David expresses his deep hatred for God's enemies and breaks out in a heated cry for them to be slain (Psalm 139:19-22). The prophet Jeremiah beseeches God to completely and utterly crush his enemies (Jeremiah 17:18). Finally, in the very passage Jesus quotes (Leviticus 19:18) the neighbor that is to be loved is clearly a fellow Israelite (Leviticus 19:17). God's people are commanded to love their Israelite neighbors. They must not "hate [their] fellow countryman [Israelite neighbor] in [their] heart" (Leviticus 19:17). The fact that they are only forbidden hating their fellow countryman holds open the possibility of limiting the idea of one's neighbor solely to fellow Israelites. This opens the door to allowing the opposite attitude - hatred - as a legitimate expression toward non-Israelites.
Jesus' original hearers would define their enemies as all pagans - whether Greek or Roman - as well as all Jews who failed to keep God's law, thus creating an obstacle to God's redemption of Israel. These "renegade Jews" - tax-collectors, prostitutes, drunks, and rebels - were held responsible for God's hesitancy in delivering his people from Gentile oppression. In popular Jewish expectation, God would only deliver a repentant and purified people. The "renegade" presence delayed God's deliverance.
These enemies - Gentile pagans and Jewish renegades - threatened Israel's existence from without and within. Because they were Israel's enemies they were also considered God's enemies as well. For this reason, the "separatists" of Jesus' day - the scribes and Pharisees - justified their neglect, abuse, and hatred of Jewish tax-collectors, prostitutes, and drunkards. Even more radical groups such as the Zealots justified their murderous violence against Gentile oppressors for the same reason.
Who is your enemy? Who do you feel justified in neglecting, abusing, or outright hating? What individual or group of people do you view as so opposed to God that you feel justified in harboring a "holy" hatred? Retain this person or group in your mind for the remainder of this article. For you, they are the enemy God wants you to love.
Jesus rejects the second half of the saying ("hate your enemy") while affirming and enlarging the first half to include all people, including one's enemies ("But I say to you, love your enemies" - Matthew 5:44a). By doing this, he calls his followers to love all people regardless of their perceived righteousness or unrighteousness, personal reciprocation or positive response. Put simply: Jesus calls us to love everyone, everywhere, all the time. If one loves one's enemies, who will not be loved? When enemies are loved, then everyone is loved.
This kind of love is foreshadowed, but not directly stated, in the Hebrew Bible. "If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey wandering away, you shall surely return it to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying helpless under its load, you shall refrain from leaving it to him, you shall surely release it with him" (Exodus 23:4-5). The Psalmist mourned over evil doers who return evil for his good (Psalm 35:12-14). Jeremiah called the exiled people to pray for their oppressors' welfare (Jeremiah 29:7). David continually spared Saul's life, even though Saul was his avowed enemy. The Proverbs call us to give food and drink to our enemies (Proverbs 25:21-22).
If we are to reflect God's heart with our whole being and thus prove ourselves men and women after God's own heart, then God's expression of love must be our pattern. What is God's love like? How is it expressed? Jesus gives an example that sheds great light upon God's kind of love: "But I say to you, love your enemies... in order 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... Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:44-45, 48).
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