I’m thinking about the Sermon on the Level Place in Luke 6. Going through it section by section, but trying to see how the whole thing hangs together. Here’s how it breaks down:
6:27-36 Love your enemies.
6:32-36 This is the behavior of the “sons of the Most High.”
6:37-38 What enemy-love looks like: Don’t judge. Be merciful. Forgive.
6:39-42 Two parables that illustrate the previous points.
6:43-45 Good tree/bad tree [Q: how does this fit?]
6:46-49 Build your house on a the Rock (not sand)
Love your enemies
Jesus is giving instructions for his disciples. “Love your enemies” is the overall theme. It sets a very high standard. Verses 27-31 sum it up. Later he is going to talk about a good tree and a bad tree bearing good and bad fruit. Our behavior flows from our essential being, who we are. Whatever pretensions to righteousness we may claim, the truth is in the fruit. So right here we can say that loving your enemies is the kind of fruit that a good tree produces.
That comment shows the connection between (4) & (1). My thinking is that that (2) thru (4) are subsets of (1), but I just want to take a closer look at that.
So Jesus in (1) sets this very high standard which I’m saying is the controlling idea at least for the next 3 sections. So we can put it this way:
Loving the way Jesus commands will look like this:
Loving enemies: being merciful.
Withholding judgment. [this is very clearly a subset of enemy-loving]
Judging others would be like a blind man leading a blind man.
It would be like presuming you have perfect sight and only others are the ones in need of an optometrist. Don’t be a hypocrite. Remove your log before you give lessons to others.
“no good tree bears bad fruit.” This implies a very serious question: how can I be a good tree? Because only then can I love my enemy as Jesus commands.
Here, being a good tree is like having an umimpeded vision (no log in the eye). It’s also like a sighted man leading a blind man rather than just another blind man leading him. Being a good tree is bearing good fruit, which is the fruit of loving the way Jesus proposes: a love that even extends to enemies. So Jesus is saying here you can’t do that if you’re not a good tree.
So here we have come to the point of a question: how can I be a good tree? I want to be that kind of tree, the kind that produces good fruit. In fact, Jesus is calling these prospective disciples to be good trees among their enemies. The whole sermon has been leading to this. The answer to this question will place you among the blessed or the woeful.
And in the final section Jesus gives his answer: build your house on the rock. I think we should see this as the summation, the drawing together of all that has come before, and the answer to the question, How can I bear good fruit? This is it. This is what the whole section beginning at verse 27 has been leading to.
Set very high bar for loving
Give examples of behavior that makes the bar
And behavior that falls short
Put special emphasis on the problem of claiming to have made the bar when you really haven’t: don’t do that
Be a good person producing good treasure “out of the abundance of the heart.”
How? By building your house (your life) on The Rock. IOW, base everything on Jesus.
Note: At verse 38 Jesus says, “Give and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over into your lap.” This picture of abundance is returned to in verse 45, but instead of receiving abundance now the “good person” is offering it in the form of high-bar deeds of loving kindness. And not only deeds, but speech. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”
Note (2): Jesus himself is speaking out of the abundance of his heart in this entire passage. Jesus, of course, speaks out of the abundance of his heart whenever he speaks. Words themselves are deeds. Words are fruit, good or bad.
In summary, Jesus uses this opportunity in talking to his disciples (this is early in his ministry and they are all quite new, just beginning to learn the true meaning of following Jesus). Jesus throws them into the deep end of the pool right at the start with his call for them to love their enemies.
He has already said that his people will be persecuted (and are blessed because of it!). Now he says, respond to the persecution with love. The call to love his so broad as to include every enemy. The old way was to love those who love you, give to those who give to you, etc. The Jesus Way is to love those who hate you. This love casts the widest possible net.
To love in this way is to be a Jesus follower, a disciple. “Your reward will be great in heaven,” Jesus says. Don’t look for it in the here and now, and above all don’t only love those who can reward you in the here and now (a brown-nosing kind of love). Isn’t God kind even to the ungrateful and evil? To be a Jesus follower is to have that kind of loving kindness for all others.
This kind of loving is elucidated more when Jesus adds, “Don’t judge or condemn people, but forgive them. Then there is a reciprocity offered her, something different than the “reward in heaven.” The like of what you give will be given to you in abundance. Give love, receive love. Give forgiveness, receive forgiveness.
This sort of dynamic will make you worthy to lead the blind (not just another blind person). Right now, that’s what Jesus is: a seeing person (seeing better than any man ever), giving guidance to those who have vision problems. And that’s what he wants his disciples to be. In other words: “everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.” (v.40) They’re also going to be, like Jesus, people with good spiritual vision (spiritual understanding) leading people with faulty vision (faulty spiritual understanding).
But they’re not there yet. At this point, they are more like the person with the log in his eye trying to correct the person with the speck in his eye. The task before the disciples right now, as they sit at the feet of Jesus, is to learn about the log in their own eye and tend to that first. They are never going to be good trees producing good fruit if they don’t do that. They’ll be blind guides leading the blind, or hypocrites trying to fix everybody else when they themselves need the most fixing. Good fruit flows from what’s within (the abundance of the heart) and as we have seen, it is God who puts that abundance there.
Now I should note that Jesus doesn’t suggest that there is a learning period when you receive all this good stuff, and only then comes a practice-time where you go out and actually do the enemy-loving. Not exactly. Jesus calls on his disciples to love their enemies even now, and suggests that the abundance from God will come even as they do that, and out of that abundance, more and better loving might be expected. He pours in, and you pour out, but the first step is to receive your marching order and go do it. Love your enemies. Start now.
At verse 45 Jesus mentions “the good person.” The good person is the person who loves his enemy, who has mercy and forgives, who gives (expecting nothing in return), etc. The good person is the guide with good vision, the good tree producing good fruit. It comes from the abundance within, which itself comes from God.
Note: we who read this may or may not be disciples. Perhaps we hear all this and wonder if we should be. Some of us might back away. Others might be determined to follow, but they naturally wonder if they are going to be able. Jesus has said that God will equip us for the task (v.38) if we would only begin.
And now we come to the big finish (46-49). The ones who are able to do this are not merely the ones who say “Lord, Lord” to Jesus. To claim to be a follower without really following at all is obviously getting back to the idea of hypocrisy, which we saw at verse 42. But to come to Jesus, hear his teaching, and put them into action (loving their enemies, etc.) is like a man who builds a sturdy house that will not fall down in the storm. It’s built on a firm foundation. He dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock beneath. The teaching of Jesus that he is offering in this sermon is that “firm foundation.” To build on anything else is to build on impermanence. It will all be washed away in the storm.
So: listen to Jesus. Do what he says. Trust in the dynamic that Jesus lays out, with God’s abundant love coming to you as you love in the way that Jesus commands. All in all this a revolutionary directive. Enemy-love is going to have a remarkable leavening effect within the empire, but it can be suggested that we in our day have neglected this high calling. To read this sermon is to come back to foundational matters, the stuff on which all else is to be built (if it is to stand). You can’t emphasize this too much. When Jesus gathered is disciples for their first extended teaching-session, this was his message.
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