An Appointment with Christ: a Life of Grace (Luke 6:27)

My dear brothers and sisters, may God bless you. This is Pastor Roberto Miranda speaking, and I welcome you in the name of Christ Jesus to our program, and I send you warm greetings from me and from our congregation, “Lion of Judah.”

As we always say, brothers and sisters, we would love for you to visit us and get to know our church, our community. We share some of these sermons, these brief meditations, with you in the hope that those who listen to us will feel moved to attend a church. If you do not already have one that you attend, we invite you to our congregation, at least to visit us and get to know our community, and who knows whether the Lord might lead you to worship with us.

But we always say in our programs that the Christian life does not consist simply of hearing the Word. That is good, it is necessary, and it edifies us, but there is still another step, which is to obey the Word, and part of that involves joining a community of believers so that, together with us, we may all grow and strive toward the life of obedience and holiness that Christ expects of us. So once again, we hope that these meditations will be a blessing to you, but above all, that they will lead you to a life of putting the things of the gospel into practice.

On this occasion, I want to begin what I hope will be a series of meditations based on the Gospel according to Saint Luke, chapter 6, beginning with verse 27. There the word of Christ tells us—and these are the words of Christ Jesus to those who listened to Him at that time, but also to us:

It says: “...but to you who hear I say: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who slander you. To the one who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other also; and from the one who takes away your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and from the one who takes what is yours, do not demand it back. And as you want men to do to you, do likewise to them.”

In verse 35 it says: “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, because He is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is also merciful.”

These are wonderful words that, to me, constitute the very heart of the Gospel. I believe we would have great difficulty finding words from Jesus Christ that define more precisely what the Gospel is about, what Christianity is about. I believe that in this call from Jesus Christ we find the very essence, that which defines the spirit of Christianity.

Here we have a call from Jesus to a life that expresses grace. A life of generosity, a life of love, a life of total devotion to the well-being of others. A life that does not look to itself and seek its own interests, but lives by loving others to the point that we end up giving them more than they deserve. The Lord Jesus Christ addresses those who are listening to Him and says: “...but to you who hear I say: love your enemies.” That “but” at the beginning of Jesus’ statement tells us something: before He said this, He had said something that was counterbalanced and contradicted by what He is now telling us here.

And indeed, when we read the verses preceding those we have just read, we see there a negative condition in the world. He speaks of: “...woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort; woe to you who are well fed, for you will go hungry; woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.” The Lord is referring to a negative condition in the world in which we live, a condition in which people who have a great deal of money sometimes live at the expense of those who have little money. A world where there is sorrow, a world that is well fed while others are hungry. A world of injustice, a world of exploitation, a world of poverty, of mistreatment of the weak by the strong. And to counteract that terrible state of affairs that characterizes the world in which we live, the Lord speaks these words to us.

The Lord tells us: the world is like this; this is the way men conduct themselves on earth, and one day that negative, oppressive, and unjust condition will come to an end. In the meantime, as you who follow Me, who embrace My teachings, live on this earth, this is the way you are supposed to live—in contrast to that unjust, Darwinian, animalistic way of life in which men currently live. And that is why the Lord says: “...but to you who hear I say: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who slander you.”

In other words, the Lord leads us to a way of life that is far, far beyond the way ordinary human beings live. The Christian, the one who has adopted Jesus Christ’s ethic of life, His conduct, His example, and His teachings, is supposed to live at a very high level—a level so high that he even comes to resemble God. Because if we look at the way of life the Lord is calling us to adopt, it is a way that God has already demonstrated in His dealings with human beings. God certainly loves His enemies.

Many people in the world curse God, deny Him, and even persecute those who seek God; they campaign against the values of the Kingdom of God. Nevertheless, Jesus in the Bible loves the sinner, loves the wicked person, loves the atheist, and loves the one who persecutes the righteous. Because God is love, because God acts, and the unjust. God is a God who loves His enemies, and therefore, the Bible says, if we are going to resemble God, if we are going to imitate His conduct, we too must love our enemies. God is a God who does good to those who hate Him, certainly. As we say in the world, both the good and the wicked are blessed by Him and benefit from Him. God does not limit the oxygen we breathe only to those who love Him; rather, God shares it with everyone.

He does good to those who hate Him. In the Bible we have many cases of people who did evil to the children of God and who persecuted the things of God, and yet God showed His love. The Bible says that while we were mired in sin, Christ died for us. That is, if you want to be like God, if you want to be like Jesus Christ, you have to do the things God does.

God is love, God is generosity, God is mercy, God is forgiveness. God’s love goes far beyond the love of men. Men simply love those who love them. Men do good to those who do good to them. Men do good to those who help them, strengthen them, and bless them. They love their friends, but Christ says to you, “Love even your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who slander you.”

I know that it is a very, very difficult formula to attain and live by; nevertheless, that is what God calls you to do. Ask the Holy Spirit today, at this moment, to give you that heart of God, that attitude toward life that enables you to love your enemies. I certainly intend to do so. Father, may those who are listening to us on this occasion receive that grace of Yours to love even those who are their enemies, to bless even those who hate them, and to do good to them. That is our request. Forgive us for not measuring up to this lofty, sublime calling that You give us. Bless us and give us strength to live as Christ lived. In His name we ask it. Amen.