Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Luke 6:27-36, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), no. 13
- Date: Sunday, April 6, 2025 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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Love That Costs Something
It will come as no surprise to anyone who has spent more than five minutes around other people that some are easier to love than others. There are also circumstances in which loving them is easier than in others. When I speak of love, I mean love in the biblical sense, not merely warm feelings. There is nothing wrong with feeling warmth toward someone.
But biblically speaking, love goes beyond emotion. It is active. It is something we do and something for which we sacrifice. If we love somebody, we are willing to put their good ahead of ours.
We often do this almost instinctively with our children. My three-year-old can persuade me to give her almost anything. We are not trying to spoil her, but she is the baby of the family. She smiles with her whole face, seems to have five hundred teeth, and melts nearly all my resistance.
Yesterday, I needed to go to Wichita Falls to pick up some equipment for the chicken coop that I had been trying to find for months. Charla had also told me that Abigail and JoJo had been asking to go to Chick-fil-A. I wanted to make the trip quickly, but I decided to be a good father and stop at Chick-fil-A first. I’ll take them with me. We’ll go to Chick-fil-A.
I was sacrificing some time because those girls wanted to go. We’re going to go to Chick-fil-A. While we were eating, she looked at me and asked, “Can we get ice cream?” “Okay, baby. We will get ice cream.” Basically, she received anything she asked for that day, although I held the line on buying geese. We did not get geese.
She saw baby geese and wanted some. It is very easy to love that little girl. Most days, it is very easy to love all my children. If you have raised children, you know that some days they are less lovable than others. The same thing is true of us.
But most days it’s easy to love my children. It’s not always easy with other people. We may love our children sacrificially almost by instinct, but we are not always as instinctive with other people. If you have driven on I-44 during the recent lane closures, you have seen this.
Letting someone merge will not cost you minutes of your life. You may arrive only a few seconds later. Yet many people are unwilling to make even that small sacrifice. Of course, some people do let others merge—or others force the issue—or traffic would never move.
But it’s easy for our default setting to be selfishness. “I am not going to let them get in front of me.” “I am not going to let that person ahead of me in line.” “I am not going to stop and listen to this person’s story or request.” But we have been called as believers in Jesus Christ to love other people sacrificially, as unnatural as that is for us.
As we continue our study of Luke, we come to the section of chapter 6 that Bible scholars call the Sermon on the Plain. We are going to look at the next portion of that sermon, where Jesus describes the sacrificial love He expects from His followers—an extraordinary, abnormal, and unnatural love that should become our default response.
In Luke 6, Jesus calls us to show in difficult circumstances the same kind of love we more easily show in favorable ones. Luke records, But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also. and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either. Give to everyone who asks of you and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back. Treat others the same way you want them to treat you.
If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you?
Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back that same amount. But love your enemies and do good and lend expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For he himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful just as your Father is merciful.
To keep the passage in perspective, remember that Jesus is speaking to His disciples. He is teaching them what it means to follow Him, including what they must be willing to suffer and lose as they go out in His name. And then He turns to this idea of loving people even when it’s difficult.
This passage gives us three major lessons about the love disciples of Jesus Christ are called to display. I am using the word disciple in two related senses. At this point in the story, it refers broadly to students who had come to sit at Jesus’ feet and learn from Him. And over time, that idea of disciple has become somebody who’s a follower.
These were not merely the apostles or the inner circle. Many were still deciding whether they would truly follow Jesus. And eventually, those, you know, those who follow Him, we recognize that term to be disciple. Jesus calls them to get off the fence and accept the cost of following Him, including whatever they might be required to lose. And part of that cost involves loving other people.
Love at Great Personal Cost
Disciples are called to love at great personal cost. We see this in the first few verses here. It is significant that verse 27 begins with the word but. In both Greek and English, that word introduces a contrast between what came before and what follows.
In verse 26 and the preceding verses, Jesus pronounces woes. He describes what will be lost by those who turn away from Him in order to hold on to temporary things. We saw that last week. There were people in that group who were going to be tempted to not follow Jesus because what they were afraid they were going to lose.
And he points out that they were going to lose those things anyway by not following Jesus. But he talks about how they would cling to wealth, they would cling to prestige and a good reputation, they would cling to these things, and they would try to do this by being in the good graces of those who were going to mistreat true believers. He contrasts the mistreatment believers would receive from those who rejected Jesus with the way believers should respond.
There should be a clear difference between how followers of Jesus respond to the world and how the world responds to us. This should also reveal a contrast between what the Holy Spirit produces in us and what human nature produces. Human nature leads us to be pretty selfish. That’s why it’s easy to be selfish, and it’s hard not to be selfish.
Human nature leads us to repay others for the way that they treat us. It leads us to do back to them the things that they’ve done to us. If you grew up hearing Jesus’ teaching, you may assume that everyone recognizes this as what good people should do. Even if you didn’t grow up in church, growing up in a culture that has been influenced by the teachings of Jesus to the extent that ours has. We look at this and say, well, of course, that’s what we’re supposed to do.
But in Jesus’ day, some religious groups taught the opposite: justice meant getting even. They twisted Old Testament teachings to justify selfishness and retaliation. Some listeners had been taught, “If someone does something to you, do the same thing back.” It’s only fair, right? That’s what they were being taught.
Jesus stood opposite that approach. Other teachers appealed to scribes, traditions, and centuries of interpretation, but Jesus said, “I tell you.” He did not need to stand on anyone else’s authority. He didn’t have to stand on anybody else’s tradition. He spoke as One who possessed authority in Himself. Regardless of what tradition or other religious leaders said, Jesus declared the truth on His own authority. That was itself an extraordinary claim.
But he came and he taught the opposite. In verse 27, he said, love your enemies. If you have enemies, if you have people that you would look at as an enemy, or maybe you wouldn’t even look at them that way, but they would look at you that way. He says our response to them is to love them. Again, this does not mean warm feelings. It means deliberately seeking that person’s good and being willing to sacrifice for it.
He said do good to those who hate you. In Jesus’ day, this teaching was radically out of step with the culture. Bless those who curse you. Have you ever been yelled at or cursed by someone? It is not a pleasant experience.
And it’s not really my nature to go back at somebody who’s acting that way and do the same thing back to them. But my first thought is not usually, “Let me pray for that person.” My first thought is often, “What is wrong with them?” I may want to get away, have nothing more to do with them, and warn others to avoid them. But to those who would curse you, he says, pray for them.
Even if you are not naturally inclined to answer aggression with aggression, Jesus’ command remains difficult. What Jesus is calling us to do is not the norm for us. It’s hard to do. Last week, I heard a radio interview with Ted Cruz in which he described protesters confronting him at home, at the Capitol, in restaurants, and at airports.
He is a United States senator from Texas. He said they sometimes ran up to him and shouted vile things. He explained that he had disciplined himself to make his standard response, “God bless you.”
He also tries to mean it rather than saying it sarcastically, as we might say, “Bless your heart.” That’s not a compliment. I do not face that level of hostility, but responding that way requires tremendous discipline. God bless you.
He also described occasions when those conversations went further. But that’s what we’re called to do. pray for those who mistreat you. When someone mistreats us, what is our default response?
Our nature is to want to mistreat them back. And again, even if we wouldn’t act on that, it’s certainly not to pray for them. That’s not our natural response. Even if you are not aggressive by nature, your instinct may be to withdraw, close yourself off, and shut the person out of your life.
This does not mean giving people unlimited opportunities to continue mistreating us, but our default response is rarely, “I need to pray for that person.” It takes grace and compassion to recognize that the person is sinning because something is wrong between that person and the Lord. Love desires that the offender be reconciled to God, find forgiveness, and be made right with Him. That is why we pray for those who mistreat us. That’s a hard thing to do, but he’s called us to do the opposite of seeking revenge.
Refusing Revenge
He gives several examples of how this might look. He says, whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also. I do not think Jesus is teaching that self-defense is never appropriate. Other Scriptures address that question, but at minimum Jesus forbids revenge. He’s talking about not escalating situations.
Whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either. We should also remember that they lived in a society with few legal rights or protections. I was reading about this period of history recently. Roman authorities could often take what they wanted with little resistance.
And you really had no recourse except to take to the streets and act like a vigilante. In many cases, somebody would try to harm you. There was no modern police force. At best, if the offender was a fellow Jew, the matter might be brought before a Jewish court. But such authorities were not always concerned with the troubles of ordinary people.
For many people, the only apparent way to obtain justice was to take matters into their own hands. And that’s the sort of thing that he’s talking about here. He says, give to everyone who asks of you in verse 30, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back. Jesus is saying not to gather a group and pursue retaliation in order to recover what was taken. Sometimes it is better to suffer wrong for Christ’s sake than to escalate a conflict and damage our witness.
The Disposition Behind the Commands
He summarizes what He is calling them to do in verse 30 when he says, treat others the same way you want them to treat you. Several weeks ago on a Wednesday night, I used this as an example of how people claim Christianity is basically the same as other religions. The ethical idea called the Golden Rule—doing to others as you would have them do to you—appears in many religions. But Christianity gives a different reason for obeying it.
It’s the fact that we’re called to do this because we believe Jesus has died for our sins. The core of Christianity is not the golden rule. The core of Christianity is that Jesus died to pay for our sins on the cross and rose again three days later to prove it. Out of gratitude, we live by the Golden Rule in order to represent Him. Other religions may teach a similar principle, but the reason behind it makes an enormous difference.
We’re not trying to do this in order to earn our way into God’s favor. We’re doing this because God the Son purchased that favor for us, and now we’re living out of gratefulness to Him. Each of these commands also requires discernment in light of the rest of Scripture. I have struggled for years with Luke 630 where it says, give to everyone that asks of you.
You have not been around here long if no one has asked you for money. It happens often enough that some days I feel like an ATM, and I can sometimes tell when a request is coming. Last October, my father, my sons, and I were in Amarillo for a hiking trip. After one hike, we returned to town for lunch, and I noticed a man walking several blocks away in the opposite direction. I looked at my father and said, “That man is going to ask me for money.”
He asked, “What makes you say that?” I said, I can just feel it. “He is walking the other way, but just wait.” We were simply gathering our things before getting out of the car.
The man stopped, turned around, looked toward our car, and began walking back toward us. I said, “I told you,” and he did indeed ask for money. I know that I have been taken advantage of in the past. There have been times when I gave with good intentions and later learned the help had been misused.
There have been other times I’ve said no, probably that was the right answer. At other times, saying no was probably the wrong decision. We’re taught to use discernment. Scripture also teaches that if someone is unwilling to work, that person should not eat. Scripture gives guidance about when the church should provide material support and when it should not.
So I don’t think Jesus is in contradiction here with the other Scriptures. We must interpret what the Holy Spirit inspired here in harmony with what He inspired elsewhere. When Jesus says to give to everyone who asks, the historical context and His later comments about lending help clarify the command.
In their day, if someone of means asked for help, you might readily give because you expected that person to return the favor. But a poor person who could offer nothing in return might be refused immediately. And the reason was because you knew you wouldn’t get anything in return.
I do not think Jesus places us under an obligation to grant every request until we become destitute ourselves. He is warning us not to let selfish motives determine our generosity. “I will help this person because I know I will be repaid.” “I will help that person because I may need a favor later.” That that can’t be our motivation.
I appreciate Warren Wiersbe’s observation that Jesus is describing an inner disposition, not a legal duty. That Jesus is not setting out rules here. He’s telling us this is what your default answer should be. Generosity and sacrifice and a willingness to give to other people and to help when needed. But we’re called to love at great personal cost.
Beyond What the World Thinks Reasonable
As we come to the next few verses, we discover that disciples are called to love beyond what the world thinks is reasonable. And I know that many people in this room have done things for other people, people that have come in off the street, people that we’ve met by other ways. We’ve done things for them that they’ve said, why are you doing this? Why would you help me like this?
And the reason why they ask those questions is because it’s not the normal, reasonable standard that people expect, but Jesus expects us to go beyond what the world says is normal and what the world says is reasonable. If you look at verse 32, the world finds it easy and reasonable to love those who love them. Hey, my kids love me. My wife loves me. It’s easy to love them in return.
But what about those who don’t demonstrate love to us? Well, the world would say, then forget them. It’s unreasonable to expect us to love people when all we get is hate in return or hostility. But Jesus said, if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you for even sinners love those who love them? The world, in verse 33, the world finds it easy to treat others well who treat them well.
But he said, if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you for even sinners do the same thing? It’s easy, it’s reasonable to treat others well when they treat you well. But Jesus calls us to go beyond that and treat others well regardless of how they treat us. If we look at verse 34, the world finds it easy and the world finds it reasonable to be generous with those who are in a position to be generous back to us.
That is why I understand verse 30 as confronting partiality and greed in our giving rather than eliminating all discernment. The world finds it easy to be generous with those who are in a position to be generous back. If you lend, verse 34, to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount.
If someone asks to borrow one hundred dollars and you know repayment is certain, that is not sacrificial love. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing either. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do that. But if that’s the only time, we can’t say, oh, I’m being so generous, if we know we’re going to get paid back.
Likewise, giving because someone may later do you a favor is not generosity. That is business, not generosity. And it’s not wrong, but we don’t look at it as though we’re going the extra mile. If we’re kind to those who are kind to us, that’s not being generous. That’s not being sacrificial.
Jesus calls his followers to go beyond those easy things. He calls us beyond easy things to those that are hard. He calls us to do the things that are unreasonable, at least in the world’s eyes. He calls us to do things that maybe the world looks at as being a little bit weird in the lengths that we would go to to love other people.
Please understand that I do not claim to practice these things perfectly. I am not saying, “I do these things well, so imitate me.” This is me saying, this is what God’s Word says, and this is what we’re all supposed to strive toward even as we inevitably fall short of it.
Jesus calls us to reassess how we respond to the people around us. In particular, what is our default response to people who are suffering or in need? And that doesn’t mean that the answer is never no. Sometimes requests are beyond what we can do and beyond what we can provide.
But is our default to a place of greed? “What is in this for me?” Or is it from a place of sacrifice? “What can I do to help?” We’re called to look at what our default is.
As we consider this kind of sacrificial love, two questions naturally arise. Why would we show love like this? If it’s not our human nature, if it’s not what the world thinks is normal, why would we show love like this? More pointedly, how can we love this way if it is not in our nature? Verses 35 and 36 answer both questions by calling disciples to love as God has loved us.
We are called to do what does not come naturally. We are called to act beyond society’s expectations. Where does that influence come from? The influence comes from God. Love like this is only possible for those who are born of God.
He says in verse 35, love your enemies and do good and lend expecting nothing in return and your reward will be great. The promised reward is a good motive, but notice what He says next: “You will be sons of the Most High.” He is not saying we become God’s children by doing these things. In that culture, being called a son of something meant reflecting its nature.
To act as sons of God is to act like our Father. It is like being at an academic meet when Benjamin answers a question about an obscure classical composer and I say, “That is my boy.” Because I know he’s listened to that composer with me. Or he may be the only child in the room who knows the identity of the Speaker of the House. Again, I say, “That is my boy.”
Because I know that’s my influence. Each of my children occasionally does something that makes me think, “Yes, that child is mine.” Their identity was never in question, but their actions reflect their father. They’re of their father. When we do what the Father does, we give the world a glimpse of His character and act like His children.
Then we come to verse 36, be merciful just as your father is merciful. There we find our motivation. Why would we do these things? We can love this way because the Father loves through us and because we have received His love. And if we’re born of God, we are able to love like God with his help.
But why would we? Because the Father has already been merciful to us. Those who have received God’s mercy should be the people most ready to show mercy to others. Be merciful, he says, not because we’re such good, wonderful people. Be merciful not just because it’s easy.
Be merciful not because it comes naturally, but be merciful because your Father is merciful. God loved us first. God showed us mercy first. When I remember what He has forgiven and the undeserved compassion He has shown me, I am convicted about the times I failed to show compassion to someone who did not deserve it either. But He’s called us to love the way He loves.
That love was displayed most clearly at the cross. We may look at our lives and think, “I am struggling in this area.” I have problems over here. “What proof do I have that God loves me?” “What proof do I have that God even notices what is happening in my life?”
When John 3:16 says that God so loved the world, the word so does not primarily describe the degree of His love. It means the manner in which He loved us, though the verse certainly also reveals the greatness of His love. But God loved us in this way, that He sent His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Romans tells us that God demonstrates His love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
God has shown more love, mercy, and compassion than we could display in a thousand lifetimes. You and I have received that mercy because Jesus came for us when we were unlovable and unworthy. Jesus came and took responsibility for our sins and died in our place so that we could be right with God. And as the recipients of that mercy, that ought to drive us to show mercy to others.
If you have never received that mercy or experienced that forgiveness, the answer is simple: Jesus died to pay for our sins. The sin that separates us from God, Jesus has paid for in full at the cross, and he rose again three days later to prove it. He calls us to believe and receive Him as Savior—to stop thinking we can earn God’s forgiveness and to stop thinking we have sinned beyond His ability to forgive.
And to realize that Jesus was enough and that only Jesus is enough. When we place our full trust in Him and ask for forgiveness, He grants it. If you need to do that, the response is simple. You can speak to the Lord where you are, confess that you believe Jesus died to pay for your sins in full, and ask Him for forgiveness.
