Summit Church
The Kingdom Way Pt 6 | How to Really Love Your Enemies | Jim Ladd
Locations & Times
Summit Church
7200 S Clinton St, Centennial, CO 80112, USA
Sunday 10:00 AM
The Big Idea: Turning the other cheek is not the surrender of the weak; it’s the strategy of the strong.
Nothing reveals your faith more than how you respond to being mistreated.
Only people who are truly free can truly love.
True freedom is choosing your behavior regardless of how you are treated. As long as your behavior is determined by the behaviors of others, you are not free and, therefore, cannot truly love.
Challenges in Four Dimensions of Life:
- Relational - slaps your right cheek
- Legal - someone sues you
- Political - forces you to carry one mile
- Economic - begs to borrow from you
- Relational - slaps your right cheek
- Legal - someone sues you
- Political - forces you to carry one mile
- Economic - begs to borrow from you
“Jesus’ position is revolutionary: love for enemies instead of their destruction, unconditional forgiveness rather than retaliation, readiness to suffer rather than use force, and blessing for peacemakers instead of hate and revenge. What He set going was a non-violent social and political revolution emerging from man’s heart, from a radical change in man’s thinking, from a conversion.” - Hans Kung
Jesus does not depict a weakling who offers no resistance. Rather, He depicts a strong person whose self-control and love for others are so powerful that the person rejects absolutely every conceivable form of retaliation.
The Kingdom Way to Love Your Enemies:
1. Refuse to Retaliate
1. Refuse to Retaliate
The Law of Exact Retribution and Non-Retaliation
Strategy 1: Not only refuse retribution and retaliation, but blow the earthly system away by going the extra mile.
2. Overcome Evil with Good
The Principle of Love
“This is not the natural course of action for man. Only the disciple who has been born of the Spirit, who knows the enabling grace of Christ, can live by this standard. It is the extension of Christ’s love, not of natural affection - a love which is an act of the will more than of the heart. Such love is not primarily something you feel but something you do, opening your life in the Spirit of Christ even to your enemy.” - Jewish scholar C.G. Montefiore
Strategy 2: Not only forgive your enemy, but blow the earthly system away by loving and serving them.
3. Choose the Pathway to Perfect
Strategy 3: Not only love your enemies, but choose suffering as the pathway to wholeness.
Response:
- Turn away from justified retaliation
- Join Jesus in suffering
- Who in my Oikos needs me this week?
- Turn away from justified retaliation
- Join Jesus in suffering
- Who in my Oikos needs me this week?
Community Group Discussion Guide
OPENER QUESTION:
What are the summer plans that you are looking forward to?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. When have you found it difficult to forgive another person?
READ MATTHEW 5:38-48.
2. The real test of love does not come in how we relate to the kind and lovable but in how we relate to the cruel and despicable. How is this a true measure of our faith?
3. What was the purpose of the “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” law of exact retribution?
4. How did Jesus model the principles “Do not resist an evil person” and “Love your enemies”?
5. How does loving and praying for our enemies display our relationship with God?
6. What do you find most difficult about Jesus’ instructions in these verses?
7. When has someone turned the other cheek, handed over the coat or gone the second mile for you, and with what results?
8. Think of people (both individuals and groups) you find easy to love and welcome; think also of those you find difficult to love and welcome. Why do you think you respond to each person/group as you do?
9. How can Christians do “more than others” in the sense of verses 46-47?
10. What is one idea that you and your group can put into practice this week?
Pray for one another.
What are the summer plans that you are looking forward to?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. When have you found it difficult to forgive another person?
READ MATTHEW 5:38-48.
2. The real test of love does not come in how we relate to the kind and lovable but in how we relate to the cruel and despicable. How is this a true measure of our faith?
3. What was the purpose of the “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” law of exact retribution?
4. How did Jesus model the principles “Do not resist an evil person” and “Love your enemies”?
5. How does loving and praying for our enemies display our relationship with God?
6. What do you find most difficult about Jesus’ instructions in these verses?
7. When has someone turned the other cheek, handed over the coat or gone the second mile for you, and with what results?
8. Think of people (both individuals and groups) you find easy to love and welcome; think also of those you find difficult to love and welcome. Why do you think you respond to each person/group as you do?
9. How can Christians do “more than others” in the sense of verses 46-47?
10. What is one idea that you and your group can put into practice this week?
Pray for one another.