April 21, the key to radical love.

Blessed are you, when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil

against you falsely on my account?

Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven.

For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you, Matthew 5, 11 and 12.

One of the questions I posed while preaching on loving our enemies from Matthew 5, 44 was,

how do you love the people who kidnap you and then kill you?

How can we do this?

Where does the power to love like this come from?

Just think how astonishing this is when it happens in the real world.

Would anything show the truth and power and reality of Christ more than this?

I believe Jesus gives us the key to this radical, self-sacrificing love described in Matthew

5, 44 earlier in the very same chapter.

In Matthew 5, 11 and 12 he is again talking about being persecuted just like he was when

he said in Matthew 5, 44, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

What is remarkable about these verses is that Jesus says that you are able not only to endure

the mistreatment of the enemy but rejoice in it.

Blessed are you, when others revile you and persecute you, rejoice and be glad.

This seems even more beyond our reach than praying for our enemies or doing good to them.

If I could do this humanly impossible thing, namely rejoice in being persecuted, then

it would be possible to love my persecutors.

If the miracle of joy in the midst of the horror of injustice and pain and loss could happen,

...