On Matthew 5:43 through 5:45

Hello, all, and Merry Christmas!  Welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, the longest, most comprehensive, and most exhaustive gospel study that will ever be written!  If you are here for your first time, it is highly recommended that you start over from the beginning by following this link.

To my regular readers, I'd like to extend my deepest gratitude for your ongoing readership.  This project will forever count among the most important things in my life, and your support counts among the things I cherish most in this world.  Thank you so much!  I pray your holidays and the New Year find you in the best possible condition.

As per usual, we have little time to mince words.  Today, we come upon Jesus' long awaited Sixth Antithesis, as we near the end of The Gospel According to Matthew, Chapter Five.

I know that I said recently that Jesus' "Teaching About Retaliation" was the most important thing Jesus ever said.  The thing about that, though, is that Jesus' words tend to occupy a kind of quantum state, wherein many of the things he said happen to simultaneously be the most important thing he ever said.  That said, allow me to say this: we're about to read the most important thing that Jesus Christ ever said.  And that's saying a lot!  (Don't be surprised when I say this again.)

Without any ado, then, please enjoy today's study.

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Matthew 5:43 through 5:45

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 

44 But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, 

45 that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

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Boom.  There it is.  It could not be any simpler.  Jesus, here, in two sentences, lays down the highest possible law of human morality.  He says simply that, while the ancient Jewish custom was to love one's neighbor and hate one's enemy, he thought it best for his followers to love both their neighbor and their enemy.  

(I know, I know; a concept more foreign to modern "Christianity" simply could not exist.  Modern Christian culture is often predicated on hatred of one's perceived enemies, be they personal, political, or otherwise.  Modern American Christianity exists as if Jesus never said these words at all.  I know.)

Today, to increase our understanding of these transcendent verses, we're going to take our usual course: first, we'll check out some of the original ancient Greek words that constituted this writing.  Next, we'll look at the ancient context for "loving one's enemy," including both the Jewish context and the context at large.  Last, we'll consider the actual meaning of these verses, and the implications of this teaching on Christian life.  Let's get started with some fresh Greek words.

Fresh Greek Words

Today's first word of consequence is "love." We come to the word "love" by the ancient Greek "agapaó," meaning, alternatively, "to show affection to," "to be pleased with," "to be fond of," or "to take pleasure in." "Agapaó" gave rise to the term "agápē," a noun describing a universal love of all humans regardless of circumstance. Agape is one of the most important Christian ideals, and will be the subject of considerable study for us in the future. For now, just know that "agapaó" means "to love" and that "agápē" means unconditional, universal, Christian love.

The next word we'll check out is, perhaps obviously, "hate."  We come to this word through the translation of the Greek "miseó," meaning, very simply, "to hate."  "Miseó" comes from the noun "mîsos," which means "hatred," and "mîsos" has its origins in a very ancient Proto-Indo-European word meaning "to complain or be emotional about."  The spectrum of translation for "miseó" is very narrow.

We arrive at "neighbor" from the Greek "plésion," which is also narrowly translated.  The closest translations are "nearby" or "neighboring," in the most ancient Greek, and "fellow man" in later forms of Greek.  It is understood here that by "neighbor," Jesus meant "a friendly member of one's own community."

The last word to glance at today is "enemy," which we get from the ancient Greek "echthros."  "Echthros" is a Greek adjective meaning "unpleasant," "displeasing," "hated," "hostile," or, simply, "enemy."  Like the other keywords from today's reading, the possibilities of translation here fall within a small margin.  The translation we see above is very fidelitous to the original Greek.

Ancient Context, Jewish and Otherwise 

As we've already mentioned, today's verses make up the sixth of the Six Antitheses, or the six special instances in the Sermon on the Mount wherein Jesus eliminates and replaces portions of the Old Law.  It is important to note right away, however, that little evidence of a written law to specifically "hate one's enemy" in the ancient Jewish tradition actually exists.  In regard to most of the other Antitheses, it is easy to find the portion of the Old Law to which Jesus refers written in the Old Testament.  One will come up empty handed, however, when searching for Moses' specific written commandment to "hate one's enemy."

Just because there is no evidence of a "law of hatred" in the written ancient Jewish tradition is not to say, though, that there wasn't an oral tradition to "hate one's enemies."  Recall that many ancient Jews relied heavily on oral traditions to inform their understanding of their faith.  Indeed, one cannot say that the written Hebrew Bible Canon reflected the entirety of the Law.  Since we cannot know the exact nature of the oral traditions of First Century Palestinian Jews, it is difficult to say with certainty to what Jesus refers when he says "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy."  We are not, however, splitting hairs when we note that Jesus does say "you have heard that it was said," not "you have read what is written."  A specific oral tradition of "hating one's enemies" absolutely could have existed.

Despite the lack of a specific written law to "hate one's enemy," as we've noted before, the Law of Moses did condone corporal and capital punishment in various forms.  It is not too far of a logical leap to say that laws about stoning women to death before their fathers' houses, or gouging out an opponent's eyeball, are laws that implicitly condone hatred of one's enemies.  The Law of Moses is a brutal one, and corporal and capital punishments definitely coincide better with hatred of one's enemies than with love of one's enemies.

It is also worth noting that Psalm 139 seems to imply the lawfulness of the hatred of one's enemies, although it stops short of saying that one must hate their enemies.  From Psalm 139, verses 21 and 22:

21 Do I not hate, LORD, those who hate you?
Those who rise against you, do I not loathe? 

22 With fierce hatred I hate them,
enemies I count as my own.

So what can we say for sure about the ancient Jewish context for today's verses?  Perhaps little more than this: the ancient tradition does not seem to have prohibited hatred, as Jesus does in Matt 5:44, but, rather, seems to have encouraged hatred, as evidenced by frequent prescriptions of barbaric punishments for legal transgressions and the elevation of hatred as some kind of ideal in Psalm 139.  To be sure, Jesus' idea about "loving one's enemy" would have seemed like a paradigm shift to the audience listening to his Sermon on the Mount.

In a broader ancient context, Jesus' "love of enemies" concept may be less innovative.  For instance, Bible scholar John Nolland notes that the ancient Babylonian text known as the "Counsels of Wisdom" contains a similar teaching.  The text in question reads as follows:

Do not exchange hostilities with your opponent;
repay your evil-doer with goodness.
Grant justice to your enemy;
show a cheerful heart to your foe.
Guide […] even the one who gloats over you.
Do not let him set your mind on evil.

Scholars debate the age of this writing, with some placing its authorship almost two millennia before the birth of Christ.  Ancient, indeed.  Mr. Nolland also notes, along the same vein, the ancient Egyptian text known as the "Instruction of Amenemope," which contains the following words:

Row that we may ferry the evil man away,
For we will not act according to his evil nature;
Lift him up, give him your hand,
And leave him [in] the hands of god;
Fill his gut with your own food
That he may be sated and ashamed.

The "Instruction of Amenemope" predates Jesus' teaching to love one's enemy by at least one thousand years.  Knowing this, we cannot say that this teaching in Matthew chapter 5 was exactly unique to Jesus, even at the time it was spoken.  It is arguable, though, that neither Jesus nor his followers would have had even a peripheral awareness of these more ancient teachings at the time of his Galilean Ministry.

So...

What Does This Teaching Mean?

As with the other Antitheses, it is difficult to escape Christ's meaning today.  He says what he says without ambiguity, and offers no exception to this rule here nor elsewhere in the gospels.  In fact, today's teaching is multiply attested; we will see Jesus repeat the exact phrase "love your enemies" twice more by the time this study is complete.  I will reiterate: this teaching is completely devoid of ambiguity.

The earliest Christians took this teaching to heart.  The New Testament is full of instances of affirmation of this rule.  Consider the Book of Acts, 7:58-60, in which the first Christian martyr, Stephen, is being stoned to death by enemies of the early Christ Movement.

58 They threw him out of the city, and began to stone him. The witnesses laid down their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul. 

59 As they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 

60 Then he fell to his knees and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them”; and when he said this, he fell asleep.

Like Jesus, who called out for the forgiveness of his executioners, Stephen shows the ultimate love of an enemy by calling out to God for the forgiveness of those who are actively killing him - an absolutely amazing act.

Consider also the words of Hegesippus, one of the earliest chroniclers of Christian history, as he describes the execution of James, the brother of Jesus, which occurred in Jerusalem in the 60's AD:

So they went up and threw down the just man, and said to one another: "Let us stone James the Just." And they began to stone him: for he was not killed by the fall; but he turned, and kneeled down, and said: "I beseech Thee, Lord God our Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

Again, we see one of the earliest Christians begging God to forgive those who are actively executing him.  A more perfect rendition of "love of one's enemy" cannot be imagined.  Early Christian history abounds with such stories.

While the first Christians understood Jesus well, we all know that history is chock full of examples of so-called "Christians" engaging in an endless slew of violence, malice, and hatred toward any manner of perceived "enemy," even down to modern times.  How, then, did we get from the unambiguous teaching of Christ to love one's enemy, which was obviously well understood by his earliest ancient followers, to the modern situation where "Christians" are known for their bigotry, bitter judgmentalness, and historical violence?  This is the big question.  There is no easy answer, but a good case can be made that the roots of Christian violence grow directly out of the year 312 AD, when the Emperor Constantine began to transform Christianity from a niche faith of pacifists that pledged allegiance to no State into a Roman State-Instituted religion of violent empire.

The question at hand is far too big to unpack completely, let alone answer, here.  In the future, we will spend thousands of words learning about Constantine, the first "Christian" Emperor.  We will spend countless hours studying the corrosive influence of Statism on the nature of historic Christianity.  Eventually, we will come to a common understanding of how we got from Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount to the bigotry and hatred of the Westboro Baptist Church and any number of prominent American "Christians" today.

The historical course Christianity has taken, unfortunately, has been an ugly and patently anti-Christian one.  The only way to begin to restore Christianity to its original form now is to look candidly at just how perverted and crooked that historical course has been.  I pray that our study together will be the beginning of just such a Great Restoration.

Let's learn to love our enemies, today, and begin to restore the long missing true Christ to the world.

Merry Christmas again.  Thank you for spending the year with me.  There are many more to come.  Happy New Year.

Love.
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To read what came prior to this, click here.