We Have Met the Enemy… and He is our Neighbor

The six startling contrasts Jesus makes between conventional religious beliefs and practices and the standards of kingdom righteousness, the “You have heard that it was said, But I tell you” section of the sermon, come to a climax and a conclusion on the subject of loving our enemies.  The early church father John Chrysostom considered these words to be “the very highest summit” of Christian character, conduct and virtue.  As we have seen, the Pharisees had a particular knack for narrowing the meaning and scope of God’s commandments, going so far as to even significantly reduce the obligation of the second greatest commandment, to love our neighbor as ourself.  But Jesus had an equal knack for cutting through the fog of disinformation and revealing God’s true purpose and intent, as we’ll see again this morning in Matthew 5:43-48, in an urgently needed message entitled, “We Have Met the Enemy…And He is Our Neighbor”.