Seventh Sunday after Epiphany: Gospel, Luke 6:27-38                

Luke 6:27-38

This morning as I read again from Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, I was brought face-to-face with the truth that in this message, as is true of the “Mount Message” from Matthew, Jesus is giving self-description. He begins this section with perhaps the most challenging of all His teaching: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (v. 27). Not merely those with whom you may disagree or who have painted their neighboring house the wrong color. No. “Those who hate you.” I cannot do that. Read it again and go on. Layer upon layer of the impossible.

And then it hits. Like a slap on the cheek, skin to skin, on a frosty morning. This, all this is Jesus Himself. Of course I cannot do these things, for whenever God speaks “law” or His command of what we must do, our only course in ourselves is failure. Caution here. Because it isn’t either that we can do this with God’s help. We can. But the issue of the blessed gospel is this: He has done it FOR US. The gospel, the life of Jesus, His blessed Word: these are the real deal.