In a sermon titled, “But I Say to You, Love Your Enemies” (Matthew 5:44-45), Dr. John Piper said,
So when Jesus says, back in Matthew 5:44, “But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, 45 in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven,” he does not mean that loving our enemies earns us the right to be a child of God. You can’t earn the status of a child. You can be born into it. You can be adopted into it. You can’t work your way into it. Jesus means that loving our enemies shows that God has already become our Father, and that the only reason we are able to love our enemies is because he loves us and has met our needs first.
To read or listen to the entire sermon, click here:
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