But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return, and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be sons of [the] Highest; for *he* is good to the unthankful and wicked.
Jesus tells His disciples how to treat people who give nothing back: enemies, and borrowers who never repay. It links a command to love and lend with a great reward, with the name "sons of the Most High," and with God's own kindness to the ungrateful and the evil.
Love that outruns what any sinner can do
The Lord has just measured ordinary decency and found it common. Loving people who love you back takes nothing more than ordinary human nature. The same goes for lending in the hope of getting something out of it.
To love those who love us is not the point for a Christian; it is a mere human principle. As the Lord says here, "even sinners love those who love them." Matthew has tax collectors or Gentiles; Luke has "sinners," which suits the ordinary moral tone of this Gospel. This was true of man everywhere, and the word "sinner" fits exactly and carries weight. Not only men, but bad men, may love those who love them. Doing good to those who do good to us is only a fair return, and even evil people can make it. The same is true of lending, when they hope to borrow or to receive.
Lending that expects nothing
This is not advice about managing money. It touches the person who asks for a loan he never means to repay, and it settles who takes the loss.
Genuine love is much more than this. It has honest care even for enemies, doing good and lending without expecting to get anything back (v.35). Some people would never ask for a gift, yet they will readily ask for a loan, though they have little intention of paying it back. It would be wrong for us to encourage dishonesty in anyone. But for ourselves, it is better to suffer wrong than to demand our rights. Faith on our part can leave such things in the hand of God.
Grace, not law
Commentators set this teaching apart from anything the law asked.
And here I find what is entirely beyond law. Law tells me to love others as myself; grace tells me to give myself up entirely for my neighbour or for anybody. Did not God forgive you? You go and forgive your enemies. Is He kind to the unthankful and the evil? You go and be the same. It tests all the fibres of our hearts, all the pride and vanity and selfishness that are in us.
Sons of the Most High — a character, not a wage
The behaviour Jesus calls for does not earn the relationship. It shows what family the person already belongs to.
They were to be gentle and yielding toward their enemies. They were to treat others as they would want to be treated. They were to remember whose children they were, and to show by their behaviour the outflow of the Divine nature — that they were sons, as we should read, of the Highest, who is kind to the unthankful and to the evil (6:35).
The pattern is not an ideal but a Person. What Jesus asks of the disciples, God has already done to them.
They were to show God — to unfold what was displayed in Him. The grace that was in Him in fullness and perfection should come out in them, though we all fail sadly in this. That is the principle of our path. "Love your enemies," etc. God loved us when we were His enemies, and we have now to show practically what God is.
Because He is kind to the unthankful and the evil
The last clause of the verse is the reason for everything before it.
He gives the increase of the earth in answer to man's toil upon it. Every good and perfect gift comes down from Him. He keeps giving, though the crowds never so much as thank Him for His gifts. He makes His sun rise on the evil and the good. He sends rain on the just and the unjust, and He is kind to the unthankful and the evil.
The promised reward
The verse promises a great reward, yet writers warn against making that promise the motive.
The service of love is never influenced by recompense. Reward is not held before the soul as the motive for doing anything. But when we find the path of service hard, then the crown is held before us to encourage us to go on.
Summary
- Source — God is kind to the unthankful and evil. He loved us while we were His enemies, and His kindness is the reason the verse gives.
- Standard — Loving those who love you, and lending to get back, is what any sinner does. The new standard is love with nothing expected in return.
- Grace — Law said love your neighbour as yourself. Grace says give yourself up, and it tests all the pride and selfishness in us.
- Sonship — Acting this way does not buy the relationship. It shows whose children we already are and lets the Divine nature flow out.
- Reward — The reward is real and great. But it encourages us on a hard path; it is never the motive, since love that serves for pay is not love.