What does First B Jackson teach about love your enemies?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First B Jackson, the teaching on loving your enemies is rooted in Luke 6, where Jesus moves from the beatitudes directly into the command to love those who hate, exclude, and revile you. The message on "Blessed Are You" treated this command not as a warm encouragement but as the natural and demanding conclusion of everything Jesus had just said about blessing and woe. The preacher held both sides of that teaching together deliberately, noting that some churches lean toward only blessing and others toward only condemnation, and said the goal was to hold both the way Jesus did.
The love-your-enemies command in Luke 6 was read against the full weight of who was in that crowd and what they had come through. People had traveled from Tyre and Sidon. Some carried physical illness; others were pressed down by unclean spirits. Jesus healed them before he taught them, and the preacher was clear that those signs were not incidental. They authenticated the message. What Jesus then asked of those people, and asks of anyone who follows him, is not abstract. It is a call to stop putting your stock in the things of this world, to hold loosely to comfort and reputation, and to extend to others, including enemies, the same mercy that has been extended to you.
The personal cost of that kind of love was not softened. The preacher shared that week that his cousin had just lost a son, and the promise attached to weeping and exclusion, that those who mourn will laugh, that those hated for Jesus' name have a great reward in heaven, was spoken into that real grief, not around it. The teaching here does not present love for enemies as easy or immediate. It presents it as the shape that a life takes when it is genuinely oriented around Jesus and what he has promised.
Taught from Luke 6:27-36 · Luke 6:20-26 · Luke 6:17-19 · Isaiah 61:1 · Isaiah 35:5-6
The passage taught · 1 Peter 4
1 Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind; for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin;
2 that you no longer should live the rest of your time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.
3 For we have spent enough of our past time doing the desire of the Gentiles, and having walked in lewdness, lusts, drunken binges, orgies, carousings, and abominable idolatries.
4 They think it is strange that you don’t run with them into the same excess of riot, blaspheming:
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- November 15, 2021 Blessed Are You A look at the Sermon on the Mount in Luke 6, covering the beatitudes, the woe statements, loving enemies, and what it means to live as a follower of Jesus.
Mentioned along the way
- October 23, 2016 Don't Be Owing Nothing to Nobody Romans 13 shows love fulfills the law. Pastor Ray McDaniel walks through scripture, the Good Samaritan, and what it means to love everyone, not just our own.
- March 22, 2015 Stand Fast in the Faith A Wyoming pastor works through 1 Corinthians 16, calling his congregation to stand firm in biblical faith, act with maturity, and let love govern every godly action.