You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
Chesterton made the point that the "Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people". He was prescient in seeing that a lack of love for our enemies would gradually narrow the definition of whom we would consider to be neighbors until it was all but empty. Why? Because neighbors, brothers, and sisters also do wrongs to us, real or perceived. If we are only willing to love those who are doing all good and no evil to us, well, we won't even be able to love ourselves for very long.
But I say to you, love your enemies,
and pray for those who persecute you,
We are called to a love that is more than a reciprocal response that is earned from us by love we first receive. True love is something that need not and cannot be earned, untethered from what we can get from it, a willing of the good of the other for the sake of the other. This is actually hard for our fallen minds to grasp because we have a hard to imagining anything beyond a mere quid pro quo, a mercenary or market based love rooted in a principle of equivalent exchange. We are secretly deeply afraid that anything else would leave us vulnerable and finally empty.
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
Honestly it would probably be reckless to recommend this love to those who haven't first experienced the love of our heavenly Father, who loved us while we were yet sinners, and of Jesus, who came to die for us to reconcile us to the Father when we were still utterly preoccupied with self and under the dominion of sin. But from the love of the Triune God we have experienced that selfless love has infinite creative potential that mere reciprocity can never attain. We have in fact by made new creations by the power of this love. And now our own love can share in that power on a human scale. We can love even those whom it is dangerous and ill-advised for us to love, our enemies and those who persecute us, but only by the gift of the love that we ourselves have first received. Only rooted in God can we love selflessly and yet not come up empty, to give freely, and yet always have enough.
And if you greet your brothers and sisters only,
what is unusual about that?
Whom do we greet? Whose needs to we notice? Is it only those who provide some emotional or material benefit to us such that we feel the need to reciprocate to ensure that such benefits continue to flow? Or do we look more broadly, with eyes inspired by the Father's love, with the searching gaze of the Good Shepherd himself, with the discernment of the Holy Spirit, in order to see not only those who can be a benefit to us, but those as well whom we are uniquely positioned to bless? It is easier to love those who love us, which is why even the pagans haven't entirely neglected to do it. But we are called to more. Only by answering the call can the transformation God intends for the world become a reality.
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
We are meant to be a people defined by love, recognizable by the love we show to others. In this sense we will be seen as a people "peculiarly his own". It is only such a people that he will raise high in praise and renown and glory above all other nations, precisely as a light to them and as a beacon of hope.
and you will be a people sacred to the LORD, your God,
as he promised.
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