Luke 6:27-36
"God's Love for the Wicked"
Does God really love the wicked? This is a crucial question for more than pure theological reasons. We are to pattern our lives after God. If God does not have compassion for the wicked then how can we? Thus the answer to this question most directly affects our relationship to the world around us.
Now of course for some this might seem to be a rather silly question. For the modern who is governed only by feelings, God's love is the only attribute that really matters. It is the only attribute that can practically help us to get through the difficult seasons of life. But for we who hold to objective revelation; for we who want to know God in the way that He has revealed himself in the Bible, we cannot be satisfied by what helps us feel better. We want to know what God has revealed about himself concerning this matter, and Scripture is the only infallible source for this question.
But the question becomes even more difficult when we approach it from the standpoint of election. You know that we affirm the doctrine of election at this church and in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The doctrine of election is the other side of the coin of the doctrine of original sin. All men are born sinners by virtue of Adam's fall as our covenant representative. And as sinners by nature, apart from God's Spirit bringing us spiritual life we would gladly remain in our sins. We would never choose God.
So for us the question is a bit more difficult. We know that God loves His people, and He expresses that love by sending His Son to die in their place, and by the sending the Spirit to bring them spiritual life. That love for His own is an everlasting love, a love wherein God promises by virtue of our union with Christ to be our God forever.
But what about the person who remains in his sin? What is God's attitude towards that one? We know from Scripture that God's wrath remains upon the one who does not repent of his sin and place his faith in Christ. But while God's wrath is on that person, is there also a sense in which God still loves him and has compassion for him?
The answer to that question, according to Luke chapter 6, is yes. God does have compassion for the wicked, even those who remain in their wickedness. But we must remember that the love God possesses for the lost is distinct from the love He possesses for those He saves. In theology this distinction has aptly been defined as the difference between God's special grace and common grace, and we must not confuse the two.
In Luke chapter 6 Jesus instructs His people on His Father's present attitude toward unbelievers, and as a result He commands us to exemplify that same attitude in our relationships with unbelievers. Luke 6 of course is part of the famous Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is the description of the righteousness necessary for entrance into the kingdom of God. Jesus as the new Moses ascends the mountain and describes the righteousness required for entrance into heaven, that kingdom inaugurated with the first coming of Christ.
Thus Jesus did not come to do away with righteous requirements found in the OT, on the contrary, the ethic of the kingdom of heaven is even higher than the ethic of the Law. That is the point of the Sermon on the Mount. But do not despair, while Jesus did not come to abolish the Law, He did come to fulfill it, and that on behalf of His people. Thus this righteousness that is required for heaven cannot be earned, but it will come down in the gospel as a gift from God.
Beginning in v. 27 Jesus describes how the righteous in His kingdom will treat their enemies. He begins with the phrase, "But I say to you who hear." When we match this with Matthew's account of the sermon, we have the full statement, "You have heard that it was said, `love your neighbors and hate your enemy,' but I say to you who hear, love your enemies and do good to those who hate you."
In the Old Covenant, the Israelites were prohibited from doing good to their enemies in Canaan. They were to love their neighbor within the covenant community, but hate their enemy. That hate is not really describing a feeling, but an action. What were the Israelites told to do with regard to their enemies when they entered the Promised Land? Love them and treat them well? No, they were to destroy them. They were to wipe out every last pagan man, woman and child in the land. Putting to death every single person is not an act of love; it is an act of judgment. As a matter of fact, when the Israelites ignored this and treated the Canaanites well, God chastised them!
But Jesus as the divine lawgiver has the authority to change the law. Now you are not to seek your enemy's destruction, or call down curses upon them, but in My kingdom you are to love your enemy; you are to bless them and treat them well, even when they curse you and use you.
Thus the Sermon on the Mount must be seen as a progression in the history of salvation. Jesus is saying that in this age your relationship with the enemies of God will be different from it was in OT Israel. Now in one sense all of you understand this instinctively. I haven't heard anyone suggest that because the Lord instructed the Israelites to slaughter their enemies that we should also. We all are aware that something has changed from the Old Covenant to the New.
What has not changed is the eternal attitude of God toward sin. God has not softened his stance against sin from the Old to the New. We know that there will come a time when God will physically judge all His enemies. The doctrine of final judgment is taught with as much clarity in the New Testament as it is in the Old.
But this is exactly why the standard has changed regarding our relationship to the wicked. The Old Testament redemption event parallels the new. The children of Israel, after wondering through the wilderness, were finally given their inheritance. But there were wicked people living in that inheritance. It is those people God called for the Israelites to destroy, not the nations outside the land.
Thus the destruction of the Canaanites stands as a type and a warning of the final judgment to come. When God comes to secure our inheritance in the new Canaan, which is the new heavens and earth, He will clear away all His enemies, just like He did in the old Canaan. But that time has not yet come. God has set aside this period of history as a time of grace; a time of restraint. The Lord is holding back the winds of final judgment while He fulfills His worldwide plan for the salvation of sinners. And so God's disposition toward the wicked is motivated by where we are in the history of salvation. Unlike His eternal love for the elect, God's love and compassion towards the wicked is temporary, it will run out one day.
This New Covenant ethic of compassion towards God's enemies is most clearly demonstrated by our Lord on the cross, when He uttered that famous cry, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." We might have expected the Savior to cry out for His Father to avenge his death and to destroy his enemies, as happened with the Canaanites. But Jesus was displaying the heart of His Father before the fullness of time. Now is the time for mercy, the time for compassion, and the time to love our enemies and desire their salvation.
Now, someone might ask, "If God has compassion for the wicked, why doesn't He then choose to save all of them?" Here we must leave this to the divine mysteries and counsel of God, and only deal with what is revealed in the Scriptures.
How does God demonstrate His love toward His enemies? Well, according to Acts 14, He does good to all men by providing them seasons and rain and good things to eat. He loves all men by virtue that they are made in His image. He loves them in the sense that He takes no delight in their judgment. God's wrath is not presented in the Bible the same as God's love. God's wrath is something that He takes no delight in but He must do by virtue of His holiness. But God's love is the attribute that He Himself enjoys displaying. But most of all, God's love for the wicked is seen by His offering the gospel to them during this time of grace while He patiently holds off His wrath.
Jesus sums up God's actions towards the wicked at the end of verse 35; "For He is kind to the unthankful and evil." This mercy is not saving mercy, but a general disposition of compassion toward sinful man in general. You might remember when Jesus saw the multitudes He felt compassion for them, and we know that most of those rejected Him as Savior.
And so we must keep in mind our biblical distinctions. We must not confuse God's eternal, efficacious love for those He saves with God's temporary compassion for the wicked. But nevertheless we can and must affirm from Scripture that God is indeed kind and compassionate toward to the wicked.
Can we therefore tell unbelievers that God loves them? Well, if we are going to speak the truth in love we must speak the whole truth. Look at the many ways Jesus labels unbelievers in our text; In v. 27 He calls them enemies; v. 32; sinners; v. 35; unthankful and evil. Having compassion on men does not mean we ignore the reality of their condition apart from Christ.
We may tell the unbeliever that God shows his love to them in that even though they are sinners God provides for them wonderful gifts through His creation. And God is showing His love for them in that even though they are enemies of God He is offering them the gospel. He is offering them a way of reconciliation with Him through Jesus Christ.
If there is anyone here who has never repented of his sin and come to Christ, He invites you now to come to Him and trust in Him to save you. Jesus' death on the cross is sufficient to wipe away all your sin. Now is the time while God's compassion still remains for you.
This passage in Luke 6 is filled with commands for believers to be like their Father in heaven. As the Father and the Son exemplified, we as God's people are called to be merciful and kind to all unbelievers. We are to have compassion on them and pray for them. We are to bless them even when they curse us. If they demand of us, we are to give to them.
The reference to offering our tunic most specifically referred to the practice of Roman officials who would demand a believer's cloak when they were cold. The Romans were clearly enemies of God. But instead of calling on God to destroy them like the Canaanites, the Christians were to desire their salvation, and to give to them even beyond what they were demanded of. Thus Jesus says when they demand your outer cloak, also give them your inner tunic!
Jesus reminds us that as believers our ethic is different from the ethics of this world. Any sinner can love those who love them. Any sinner can give expecting something in return. It takes nothing supernatural to produce that kind of love. But the love shown to our enemy is not a love of this world. It is from above; it is the saving love of Christ manifested in us by the Holy Spirit.
Now the problem we often face in obeying Christ here is our tendency to confuse the kingdom of God with the kingdom of man. Remember Jesus said that my kingdom is not of this world. In the kingdom of man, in which we all belong, there are those we consider enemies.
For example, you may interact daily with two unbelievers at work. One may be a person with terrible morals who wants nothing more than to rid this nation of any vestige of morality and prudence. The other unbeliever has a general belief in God, and on the political and social level you might find much with him you agree with. In the kingdom of man one of these men is much more an enemy to our nation and to our well being than the other is.
But we must not elevate the kingdom of man to the level of the kingdom of God. From God's perspective both those men are His enemies, and both those men must be treated equally with kindness and mercy. The church has always gotten in trouble when it fails to keep the nature of the two kingdoms distinct in their thinking.
Now this is also where you parents must be on guard in the raising of your children. I have too often witnessed a weakness among Christian young people who go out into the world on their own. Christian children are correctly taught what is wrong with the world's way of thinking, and they learn to think Biblically. But unfortunately some Christian young people assume by this that they are to go out and win arguments with unbelievers over every issue.
You have been around those who not only have an opinion on every issue, but feel it is their God given duty to share that opinion with everyone within earshot. You don't like to be around those people, do you? This attitude is not becoming of the Christian. Jesus ate and drank with sinners and they enjoyed Him; and even more, He enjoyed them! They knew He cared for them. This does not mean that Christ compromised His principles while among them, but it tells us that sinners were comfortable approaching Christ and even dining with Him? And that should be true with us also.
If you do not have compassion for the lost around you, I can say by the authority of this passage that something is wrong with your spiritual life. The immediate remedy for your situation is prayer. Pray that God would more and more grant you His heart for the lost. If God grants good things toward the wicked, how much more will He grant your request, you whom He has loved with an eternal love in Christ?
The second remedy is to adjust your theology according to the Word of God. Maybe you have confused the kingdom of God with the kingdom of man and you have become bitter at those who you consider enemies. Remember that we are not yet in our Canaan. We do not seek unbelievers' destruction. Jesus made that clear at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount when He promised that the meek shall inherit the earth at the same time they see God.
But for now we are strangers and aliens, and while we still inhabit the kingdom of man we are to love and serve our fellow man. We are to pray that God would engraft them into the kingdom of grace, and in word and deed we are to witness the grace of God in our lives. We are to be kind and humble with them, not demanding our way but loving them as those whom God has compassion.
Finally, we should remind ourselves how it is that we can do these things asked of us in our passage. How can we give more than we are asked? How can we bless when we are cursed? How can we love those who seek to hurt us? We can do so because we have been recipients of God's special, eternal love in Jesus Christ. We can give our inner tunic because we already been given all things in Christ. We have an eternal inheritance that is laid up in store for us.
Because of this we can give not expecting anything in return in this life. We can love even when we are hated, because we are filled with the eternal love of God. And we can be merciful for we ourselves have received mercy when we were wicked sinners. Because the world has focused on God's love to the exclusion of His other attributes, let us not forget that God does indeed love His enemies, and calls us to do the same.
So go out and be kind and merciful to the lost around you. Do not compromise your faith nor the message of your faith, but may those around you know not only that you are different, but that you truly care for them and are willing to serve them, for they are for a time the recipients of God's tender compassion. If you are kind and merciful to unbelievers you will be just like your Father in heaven, and this brings Him much glory. Amen