CT068 - Love Your Enemies

Today's episode closes Matthew 5 with what Jesus saves for last — love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. The "hate your enemy" half of verse 43 was never in the Old Testament; it was a folk theology graft on top of Leviticus 19:18, and Jesus erases the line. The Father's indiscriminate love — sun on the evil and the good, rain on the righteous and the unrighteous — becomes the standard. Loving the enemy is how the family resemblance starts to show.

And verse 48's "be perfect" isn't a demand for moral flawlessness; it's a call to let love grow up into its full design — to become complete in love the way the Father is complete in love. Christ embodied this passage from the cross before he ever taught it. Grace doesn't excuse us from the call. Grace is what makes the call answerable.