1997 issue 7 - sermon on luke 6:17-49 - the command to love our enemies and the imprecatory psalms -...

8/12/2019 1997 Issue 7 - Sermon on Luke 6:17-49 - The Command to Love Our Enemies and the Imprecatory Psalms - Counsel of Chalcedon

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The ommand to Love

loving lips of our Lord jesus.

fulness if

we

are

to

know

Him

as

'

..

O U

Entmtes and the

These

prayers signal alarm to

all

He

really is.

He

is, of course, the

Imprecatory Psalms

who

are

still enemies of

King

loving and merciful Savior who

A problem arises

for

some and

jesus.

His

prayers will be

forgives sin; but He also clearly

it is this: how is it possible to

answered God's wrath is revealed

tells us that He is the one who is

harmonize loving our enemies and

upon

all who oppose Christ.

coming in judgment on those v.:ho

praying the imprecatory psalms

Anyone who rejects God's way of

disobey the gospel, Thes. 1:

6f.

"-

with reference

to

our enemies?

forgiveness

in the cross of

Christ

Adams,

pg.

4Of.

First, we must define and identify

will bear

the

dreadful curses

of

God." -

Adams,

pg. 33.

The Prayers ofJesus

for

the

the imprecatory psalms. They

are

Forgiveness ofSinners and for

those psalms which pray for the

"All the enemies of the Lord

theJudgment

of

Sinners

curse and wrath of God

to fall

need

to

hear these prayers of

upon His enemies. These psalms

Christ proclaimed today. They

These prayers, (imprecatory

include: Psalm 58:6-10;

are not the prayers of a

careless

psalms), then, for woes

59:12,13; 69 :24-28; 55:15; 6:10;

and com passionless tyrant, but

unutterable upon enemies, are the

83: 17. Should Christians who

are

the effectual prayers of the Lamb

prayers of Christ

Himself. But

the

called to 'love their enemies pray

of God

who

bore the curse of

God

difficulty to many minds about

such psalms of imprecation?'

for

the sins of

all

who

bow

their

this is that it seems inconsistent

Here are some

with

His

helpful

prayet for

comments on

enemies,

this issue by

'Father,

jamesE

forgive them;

Adams from

for they bow

his book WAR

. not what they

PSALMS

OF

do.' , .That the

lliEPRINCE

two prayers

OF PEACE.

fell from His

Jesus nd the

lips, we know;

Imprecatory

and thatthey

Psalms

represent

two

The same

different

Christ who

thinj1:s which

issued the

He

'received

as

,cdmtriand to love our enemies

a commission

from

the Father to

knee to

Him.

The wrath of

the

do, we know. He has power on

also:

prays

imprecatory psalms.

psalms must be preached as

the

earth

to forgive

sins, and

He

has

these psalms have historically

wrath of the Lamb of Cod. God's

power on earth to execute

been understood as being the

kingdom is

at war "- Adams,

pg.

judgment upon enemies ... The

voice of Christ. Augustine wrote

on Psalm 58, "The voice of Christ

34.

Psalms themselves present both

and His Church'was well-nigh the

These

"war

psalms" which

sides of His Mediatorial character

only voice to be heard in the

Christ prays

for

God's

vengeance,

and work in this respect." - james

Psalms ... We ought

to

recognize

must not dilute the

force

of

Dick quoted in Adams, pg. 38. '

His voice in aU the Psalms."-

Christ's command

to love

our

'Jesus is indeed the forgiving

Adams,

pg.

32.

"The

Lordjesus

enemies. Is jesus' prayer for

Savior, and

we who

have

Christ is praying these prayers of

God's vengeance on His

enemies

a experienced

His

forgiveness

vengeance. The prayers that cry

contradiction of His prayer oflove

gratefully

give Him

the praise of

out

for

the utter destruction of the

for their forgiveness and ofHis our being. But this does not

psalmist's enemies can only be

command to love? NO "

We

negate that He is also tlie

grasped when heard from the

must receive jesus Christ in

His

awesomejudge."-

Adams

.

pg.

41.

4 .f THE COUNSEL

o

Chalcedon f August

1997


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The Lavefor Our Enemies and

the

Vengeance o

God

There is never a

place for

seeking personal revenge in the

lives of God's people, Rom.

12:19-21. However, God says,

Never take

your

awn revenge,

beloved,

but

leave

room

Jar

the

wrath oj God, Jar

it

is written,

'Vengeance is

Mine,

will repay,

says

the Lord. '- Rom. 12:19. All

of our

vengeance

must

be given

over to the

Lord. Every impulse

to

gratify

ourselves by

avenging

a

wrong

done

to us is surrendered

to the Lord as we truly

follow Him.

-

Adams,

pg.

46.

To pray the imprecations

of the

Psalms

is

to

surrender

all rights

for vengeance to

God. It

means

being

prepared to snffer and to

endure without personal

revenge

or hatred as Christ

did. It

involves being gentle and loving

even when I am

reviled

and

persecuted. It encompasses

acknowledging in all

my

ways

that

God's cause

is more important

than I

am. -

Adams, pg.

56.

Therefore,

where do we get

the idea that it is wrong to ask

God

to

bring judgment upon the

wicked?

-

Adams, pg. 47.

Righteous retribution is one of

the

glories

ofthe divine character.

If it is right that

God

should

desire

to

exercise

it, then it cannot

be

wrong for

His

people

to desire

Him to exercise it.' Dabney in

Adams,

pgs.

47-48.

We

should pray that our

enemies

be

converted and become

our friends, and if not, that their

doing and designing

be

bound

to

fail and

have

no

success

and that

their persons perish rather than

the

Gospel

and the

Kingdom of

Christ. Thus the saintly martyr

Anastasia, a wealthy, noble

Roman

matron, prayed against her

husband,

an

idolatrous and

terrible ravager of

Christians, who

had flung her into a horrible

prison, in which she had

to

stay

and

die. TIlere

she lay and

wrote

to the saintly Chrysogonus

diligently to pray for her husband

that, ifpossible, he

be

converted

and believe; but if not, that he

be

unable to carry out his plans and

that

he

soon

make

an end

of

his

ravaging.

Thus

she

prayed him

to

death, for he went to

war

and did

not return home. So

we, too,

pray

f 1: our

angry enemies,

not that

God

protect and strengthen them

in their

ways,

as

we

pray

for

Christians, or that He help them,

but that they

be

converted, if

they

can be;

or,

ifthey

refuse,

that

God

oppose them, stop them and end

the game

to

their harm and

misfortune. - Martin Luther

quoted by

Adams,

pg.

62.

The

Struggle Between the

Kingdom of Light and the

Kingdom of Darkness and the

Command to Love Our Enemies

The

church that

is

conscious

of the

life

and death struggle

between the

two

kingdoms

will

not exclude hatred for

Satan's

kingdom

from

its

love

for

God's

kingdom.

The

church is

compelled to show love unto all

men and to pray

for

their

conversion. At

the same

time,

with her

eye

fixed on the promise

of the coming of the

day

of the

Lord

in which all God's enemies

will

be

crushed eternally, the

church prays

for

the hastening of

the day of judgment. - Harry

Mennega

in Adams, pg. 50.

God's kingdom cannot come

without Satan's kingdom being

destroyed. God's will cannot

be

done in earth without the

destruction of

evil.

Evil cannot be

destroyed without the destruction

of men who are permanently

identified with it. Instead of being

influenced by the sickly

sentimentalism of the present day,

Christian people should

realize that the glory of God

demands the destruction of

evil.

Instead of being

insistent upon the assumed,

but really non-existent;

rights of men, they should

focus

their attention upon

the rights of

God.

Instead of

being ashamed of the ImpreCatory

Psalms.

and attempting to

apologize

for

them and explain

them away, Christian people

should glory in them and not

hesitate to use them in the public

and private exercises of the

worship of God. - Johannes G.

Vos

in Adams,

pg.

50.

The Enemies

o

God s

People

According to the Pharisees

The Pharisees perverted the

Scriptures, misinterpreting those

Scriptures to teach that there is

justification

for

hating anybody

they did not like,

as

their enemies.

In so doing they destroyed the

great principle oflove so clearly

taught in God's Law. Your enemy

could be JUSt about anybody,

whether he was God's enemy or

not. Included among those

identified as the enemies of the

Jewish people were the oppressive

non-Jewish overlords in control of

the civil government, whom the

August,

997

j THE COUNSEL

ofChalcedon

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Jews were taught to hate.

Furthennore, there was hostility

between the

GOOD

Israelites,

who were devoted

to

the

traditions of the scribes and

Pharisees, and the BAD Israelites,

who were not so devoted to thei.r.

traditions. And then there were

racial and ethnic hostilities .

between Jews, Samaritans and

Gentiles. This environment bred

hatred between people.

"It was in the midst

of

his

intensely narrow-minded,

exclusivistic, and intolerant

environment that Jesus carried on

is ministry. All around im

were those walIs and fences. He

came for the very purpose of

bursting those barriers, so that

love---pure, warm, divine,

i n 6 n i t e ~ w o u l d be able

to flow

straight down from the bean of

God; hence

from His

own

marvelous hean, into the hearts of

men.

is

love overleaped

all

the

boundaries of ace, nationality,

patty, age,

sex, etc." - Hendriksen

The

Way

to Love OUT Enemies

Jesus said

we

are

to

love

olir

enemies by doing good

to tbj:m

when they hate us, and to

bless

those who curse us, and to pray

for

those who mistreat us.

2

This

is how the Christian is to respond

when he is insulted by others

beCause of Christ.

His

command

t us here is to return benevolent

actions fot spiteful actions, retum

kin(f words for bitter words:

And

when we are being cruelly '

persecuted by our enemies

because we are Christians, we

milSt

sincerely ptay fot those

who

persecute us. We must get on

our knees, and talk to ourSelves .

before

we

talk

to God.

Instead of

being bitter and harsh,

instead of

reacting in these tenns ofself and .

ina desire to get our own way, we

must remind ourselves that in

everything we do we


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pacifidsm, the refusal

to

resist

evil, or self-defence when our

well-being is threatened, is a

misuse of this verse. A slap in the

face

or the demand

for

our coats,

may be insulting, humiliating and

inconvenient, but it is not a threat

on our life. It is an insulting

experience, but not a

life-threatening experience. It

may cause us discomfort and

inconvenience, but not real injury.

The EJ(:ample

ofJesus

tnJohn 18:22,23

Jesus

is

commanding

love

that

acts

wisely,

courageously and with

intelligent purpose. Rather than

to

give way

to anger when he is

snuck unjustly on the cheek or

even to strike back in anger

as

natural right dictates, the disciple

who has this love in his hean will

offer

the

other cheek

for

a second

blow that would otherwise not be

struck. A false literalism would

make a farce ofJesus' precept.

The faCt that anything of this kind

is excluded

we see

in the action of

Jesus Himself when He was struck

without cause in John 18:22,23,

. where

He

furnishes us the

commentary on this precept.

Lenski.

The Control o Anger by Love

The point Jesus is making is

that

LOVE

CONTROLS ANGER.

If the civil government, with its

power of the sword acts as the

enemy of your filmily, and tries to

insult and intimidate you, and to

make demands on you, (regarding

your coat), which ii has no right

to demand, do not argue with

your enemy over your rights, take

the insults and overbearing

demands, out oflove

for

your

family. Don

't make your enemy

angry

so

that he will try

to do

serious harm to

you

or your

family ; do whatever is possible to

get him away from your door. Be

more concerned with your

DUTIES than your

RIGHTS.'

The Necessity o the

Denial of Self

The spirit of retaliation is a

deadly one. To practice this

command ofjesus

we

must repent

of such spirit; and we

can

do

that

only when we deny ourselves. To

be the kind ofloving disciples

Jesus demands,

we

must become

dead

to

ourselves. I must have a

proper attitude to my self, so that

I won't want to take revenge on

those who insult or embarrass me;

and a proper attitude toward my .

possessions so that I won't want

to

take revenge when unjust

demands are made on them by

civil government. It is not that

our Lord is giving us here a

complete

list

of what

we

have to

do in every circumstance and

condition which

we

are likely

to

meet in life.

He tells

us first that

we have to die

to

self. What does

this

mean?

This paragraph, Mat.

5:38-42, shows us how

we

can

do

that; it shows us some

ways

in

which

we

can test ourselves

as

to

whether we are dying

to

self or

not. - Uoyd-Jones, pg. 280.

We must rid ourselves of this

constant tendency to be watcbing

the interests of self,

to

be always

on the look-out for

insults or

attacks or injuries, always in this

defensive aUitude. That is the

kind of thing He has in mind. All

that must disappear, and that of

course means that

we

must cease

to be sensitive about self. This

morbid sensitiveness, this whole

condition in which self is on .the

edge' and

so

delicately and

sensitively poised and balanced

that the slightest disturbance can

upset its equilibrium, must be got

rid of. The condition which our

Lord is here describing is one

in

wbich a man simply cannot be

hurt. ''':'- A statement which the

great George Muller once made

about himself seems to illustrate

this very clearly. He writes like

this: 'There was a day when

I

died, utterly died, died to George

Muller and his opinions,

preferences, tastes and will; died

to the world, its approval or

censure; died

to

the approval or

blame even of my brethren and

mends; and since then I have

studied only to show myself

approved unto

God.

That is a

statement to be pondered deeply.

I cannot imagine a more perfect or

adequate summary of our Lord's

teaching

in

this paragraph than

that. - Uoyd-Jones, pg. 291f.

The Relationo

Love

and the

Concern

fOT

th Maintenance o

Law and Order

''What our Lord says is that I

am not

to

be concerned about

myself, my own personal honor

and so on. But that is a very

different thing from being

unconcerned about the

maintenance oflaw and order, or

about the defence of the weak and

unprotected. While I must and

should be prepared

to

suffer any

personal insult or indignity that

man can ever inflict upon me, I

should at the same time believe in

law and order. - Uoyd-Jones, pg.

282f.

The Rewncilation ofJe5US

Command and Jesus Example

How do we reconcile such '

Biblical

teachings as Luke 6:29;

Matthew 5:39f with John

18:22,23; Matthew 18:15-11; Acts

16

:37? Our Lord here in the

Sermon on the Mount seems

to

be

saying that invariably you must

tum the other cheek, or if ever

you

are

sued

for

your coat you

August, 997 ' THE COUNSEL of Chalcedon ' 7


5/5

must throw in your cloak as well.

But He Himself, when

He

is

smitten

on

the face, does not tum

the other cheek, but registers a

protest. And the apostle Paul

insisted upon the magistrate

coming down to release Him. f

we accept the original principle,

there is no difficulty at

aU

in

reconciling the two sets of

statements. It can be done in this

way. These instances are not

examples and illustrations of

either our Lord or the apostle

insisting upon personal rights.

What our Lord did was

to

rebuke

the breaking of the law and His

protest was made

in

order to

uphold the law. He said to these .

men,

in

effect: 'Youknow by

striking Me like this you are

breaking the law.'

He

did not

say:

'Why do you insult

Me?'

He did

not lose His temper or take it as a

personal affront.

He

did not

become angry, or show concern

about Himself. But

He

was

concerned

to

remind these men of

the dignity and honor of the

law.

And the apostle Paul did exactly

the same thing. He did not make

a great protest about having been

thrown into prison. His coucern

was that the magistrates should

see that by throwing him into

prison like that they were doing

something that was illegal and

were Violating the law that they

had been appointed to carry out,

So he reminded them of the

dignity and honor of that law.

The Christian is not to be

concerned about personal insults

and personal

defE;Ilce. But

when it

is a matter of honor and justice,

righteousness and truth, he MUST

be concerned and thus he makes

his protest. - Lloyd-Jones, pg.

284f

6:30) The Command to Give

Without Demanding a Return

Give

to everyone

who asks

of

you,

and whoever takes away what is

yours, do

not

demand

t back.

e ~ e

we

have two commands

in

one:

(1). if anyone asks

something from you, and you give

it, do not demand it back; and (2).

if anyone takes away something

from

you, do not demand it hack.

The Constant Readiness

o Love t Help

Love will

always

be ready to

help,

to give

without expecting a

return. But it need not be said

that Jesus could not inculcate

indisCriminate giving such as

fosters

shiftlessuess and other

evils. - Lenski.

Passages

such

as

I

John 3:17,18, Deuteronomy

15:7-10 and Proverbs 21:26

reaffirm this command; and

passages such as

II

Thess. 3:lO,

Exodus 22:25-27, Chronicles

19:2, Proverbs 11:15; 17:18;

20:16 and Proverbs

28:

17 reveal

the limits and conditions

to

this

command.

Of course, this again could be

interpreted

in

a mechanical and

literal manner so

as

to

make it

ridiculous. But what it really

means can be put in this

form.

t

is this denial of self once more. It

is jIlst our Lord's way of saying

that the spirit which says, 'What I

have I hold, and what is mine is

mine; and I cannot listen to the

request of those other people

because ultimately I may suffer: is

completely wrong.

He

is rebuking

the wrong spirit of those who

are

always

considering themselves,

whether they are being struck on

the face, or whether their coat is

being taken, or whether they are

compelled to carry the baggage or

to

give

of their own goods and

wealth to help someone in need.

Let

us now

go

immediately

to

the

qualification, realizing that that is

8 1=

THE COUNSEL

of

Chalcedon ' AllgliSt

997

the principle. Our Lord does not

encourage us here

to

help frauds

or professional beggars or

drunkards. - Lloyd-Jones,

pg.

288. (to be continued)

'An excellent book on the

imprecatory

psalms and

their role in

the prayers of the Christian is WAR

PSALMS OF THE PRINCE OF PEACE:

LESSONS FROM THE IMPRECATORY

PSALMS

y

ja'1les E. Adams, (1991,

Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing

Co., Phil1ipsburg, New jersey).

lThese

imperatives are

in the

present tense denoting continuous

c t i o n c p v e r i n g the entire lives of true

disciples of Christ.

just

as the usual

and continous behavior of our enemies

is to keep on hating, cursing and

mistreating, 50 the usual and

continuous behavior of beliefs toward

these people is loving, doing good,

blessing and praying for them. 1hey

may go on in their wickedness toward

us we too

will

go on in our love and

loving treatment of them; they shall

never outdo us. - l..enski

'Martyn Uoyd-jones makes a

helpful comment on Matthew

5 ; 4 1 ~ A n d whoever

shaII

force

you

to

go

on.

mU.,

o with him two. He writes:

This compelling to go a mile is a

reference to a custom which was very

common in the ancient world by

means of which a government had a

right

to

commandeer a

man in

a matter

of porterage or transport.

A

certain

amount of baggage had to be moved

from one place to another, so the

authorities had the right to

commandeer a man at any place and

they would make him carry the

baggage from that stage to the next.

Then they took hold of someone else

and made him take it to

the

next stage,

and so on. This of course

w s

a

power that was especialIy exercised by

any c.ountry that

had

conquered

another

and

at

this

time

Palestine had

been conquered by the Romans. The

Roman rmy was

in control

of

the life

of the jews, and they very frequently

did this sort ofthing. - THE SERMON

ON THE MOUNT, Vo\. I, pg. 286,

(London, Inter-Varsity Press,

1966

.

1997 issue 7 - sermon on luke 6:17-49 - the command to love our enemies and the imprecatory psalms -...

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