“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies …” (Matt. 5:43, 44)

There are few passages in the New Testament Scriptures as well known and as misused as this one. Traditional Reformed exegesis insists that Christ is correcting rabbini­cal distortions of the law of Moses. Did the Pharisees and their teachers before them have any justification for teach­ing that the Jews should hate their enemies? Did Moses teach this principle either directly or by implication, or did this concept arise from ethnocentric bigotry that led to twisting and adding to the Word of God? Pink finds no Old Testament justification for the idea of hating one’s enemies:

The Pentateuch will be searched in vain for any precept which required the Israelites to entertain any malignity against their foes: thou shalt “hate thine enemies” was a rab­binical invention, pure and simple.^[1]

Lloyd-Jones devotes several pages in his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount to discuss how the Jews may have mis­construed God’s command to kill all the inhabi­tants of Canaan as a command to hate them as enemies. He also discusses the imprecatory Psalms where David ex­presses how much he hates the enemies of God. Lloyd-Jones in no way justifies the Pharisees; he simply attempts to state the case fairly. He emphasizes that we must con­sider both the Canaan incident where God commanded the killing of all men, women, and children, and the impreca­tory Psalms as national and judicial and in no way per­sonal.^[2] Philosophically, Lloyd-Jones is correct, but at the same time, it seems unlikely that an individual could re­main emotionally neutral while carrying out wholesale slaughter of God’s enemies. It would have been difficult for an Israelite to convince either the Canaanite, or his own heart, that he really loved his enemy while he was killing the man and his family.

We found no commentators who used the following passage in their discussions of the supposed rabbinical teaching to hate your enemies:

“You shall not seek their [Ammonites or Moabites] peace nor their prosperity all your days forever. You shall not abhor an Edomite; for he is your brother. You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were an alien in his land.” (Deut. 23:6, 7)

Let us look at this passage in the Old Testament Scrip­tures and apply traditional Reformed methods of interpre­tation. We will extract, or deduce, the good and necessary consequences from the specific commandments in Deuteronomy 23:6. This may help us to see whether the Jews had reason to believe that it was their duty to hate their enemies. Let us state, in abbreviated form, Thomas Watson’s rules of interpretation of commandments in Scripture:

Rule 2. More is intended than is spoken.

(1) Where any duty is commanded, the contrary is for­bidden.

(2) Where any sin is forbidden, the contrary is com­manded.

Rule 3. Where any sin is forbidden in the command­ment, the occasion of it is also forbidden. Where murder is forbidden, envy and rash anger are for­bidden, which may occasion it.

Rule 5. Where greater sins are forbidden, lesser sins are also forbidden.

Rule 7. A commandment forbids not only the acting of sin in our own persons, but being accessory to, or having any hand in, the sins of others.^[3]

What did Moses command in Deuteronomy 23:6, 7? He gave two commandments that involve the treatment of certain kinds of people. Moses commanded the Israelites not to seek the peace or prosperity of some people, and not to abhor some other people.

First thing commanded: “Do not seek the peace or the prosperity of the Ammonite or the Moabite.” This was in retaliation for their treachery against Israel, as explained in verses 3 and 4.

Second thing commanded: “Do not abhor an Edomite or an Egyptian.” This was because of racial relationship and gratitude as explained in verse 7.

Verses 6 and 7 command opposing attitudes and actions based on either retaliation or gratitude. Let us apply Wat­son’s rules to these commandments.

Rule number 2:2: Where any sin is forbidden, the contrary is commanded. The sin forbidden is that of seeking the peace and prosperity of the Ammonites and the Moabites. What is the opposite of seeking peace and prosperity? The oppo­site of peace is war and the opposite of prosperity is pov­erty. According to Watson’s rule, the good and necessary consequences deduced from Deuteronomy 23:6 prove that it was Israel’s duty to seek the destruction of the Moabites and the Ammonites. Watson’s rule that the prohibition inherently carries the duty to do the opposite allows for no other conclusion. This is a true application of Watson’s second rule of interpreting the commands of Scripture. Would not Watson’s rules make the Jews duty-bound to hate the Ammonites and the Moabites as enemies and constantly seek their destruction?

What happens when we apply Rule 2:2 to the second thing commanded? The forbidden sin there is that of ab­horring an Edomite or an Egyptian. What is the opposite of abhorrence? The opposite of abhorrence is love. In this specific context, abhor is set in direct opposition to seek peace and prosperity. If Watson’s rules of interpreting command­ments are correct, Moses commanded the Jews to abhor, or hate, some people (the Ammonites and the Moabites), and to love some other people (the Edomites and the Egyp­tians).

According to Watson’s rules, it was Israel’s God-given duty to seek the peace and prosperity (which means love) of some men and to abhor (which means hate) some other men. Israel must not hate the Edomites or the Egyptians, but they must hate the Ammonites and the Moabites. Israel dare not seek the peace and prosperity of the Ammonites and the Moabites, but must actively follow a course de­signed to destroy them. In contrast to this, Israel must do all she can to seek the peace and prosperity of the Edomites and the Egyptians.

What happens when we apply Rule 3 to the first thing commanded in the passage? Israel must consistently avoid any and every occasion that might possibly lead to a Moabite or an Ammonite enjoying peace and prosperity.

Watson’s Rule 5 applied to the first thing commanded more than justifies Israel’s hating her enemies. What must Israel include on the list of lesser sins so as to think and act under all circumstances to be sure she does not help, in the least, the Moabite and the Ammonite to have peace and prosperity? To the contrary, what specific things must she do to ensure that the citizens of those two nations suffer the just consequences of their sin against God and his people?

When we apply Rule 7 to the first thing forbidden, we find that Israel is commanded to make sure that every person over whom she has any influence does not seek the peace and prosperity of the Moabites and the Ammonites, but instead, will also do the exact opposite and seek their destruction.

We have made our point and need not continue in this vein. It is ironic that the exegetical method of Covenant Theology, when applied to this Old Testament text, pro­duces a logical deduction that Covenant Theology con­demns as a distortion when they attribute it to the Jews of Jesus’ day. There is no way for us to know for sure, from the text in Matthew 5, if the Pharisees had taken Moses’ teaching from Deuteronomy 23:6 to an extreme beyond Moses’ intention. Perhaps they had taken a national in­junction and turned it into justification for personal enmity. Perhaps they had extended the proscription against two nations to include others that Moses never mentioned. Without access to their teaching, we cannot know.

It may be that this is one of the instances where Jesus does correct a distortion of Moses’ law, but we arrive at such a conclusion by speculation, and not by exegesis. Deuteronomy 23:3-6 refutes Pink’s statement, “The Penta­teuch will be searched in vain for any precept which re­quired the Israelites to entertain any malignity against their foes: thou shalt ‘hate thine enemies’ was a rabbinical in­vention, pure and simple.” The precept to hate the Am­monites and the Moabites is implicit in Moses’ teaching; the proscription against doing good to enemies is explicit: “You shall not seek their peace or their prosperity all your days forever” (ESV). Jesus’ command to love your enemies is a contrast to Moses’ command to refrain from seeking their good. Jesus Christ, in his role as the new lawgiver, gives new law here.

Devotees of Covenant Theology may say that we have caricatured and misused Thomas Watson. Objective read­ers will realize that the Jews had more justification for be­lieving that God wanted them to hate their enemies than the Reformers and the Puritans had for killing brethren in Christ who “re-baptized” believers and rejected the sacral sign (infant baptism) of the state church. History proves that Rome, the Reformers, and the Puritans used logic to deduce from Scripture not merely the justification, but the command to hate and persecute other Christians who dis­agreed with the state-authorized church.

There is a parallel between the alleged attitude of the Pharisees and the history of futile attempts by Covenant Theologians to make the fine points of the law to be the chief instrument in a Christian’s sanctification. The places, faces, and specific issues may differ, but the method of approach and the disastrous results are identical. If the Pharisees had interpreted Deuteronomy 23:6 in exactly the same manner that Watson interpreted the Ten Command­ments, they would have been more than justified in be­lieving that God’s Word commanded them to hate their enemies.

The case against the Reformers and the Puritans for their atrocities is far more damaging than is the case against the Pharisees. If the Pharisees had indeed distorted Moses’ teaching, they had to misunderstand only a few Old Tes­tament Scriptures in order to deduce their duty to hate and persecute those who disagreed with them. The Puritans and Reformers had to distort not only those same Scrip­tures; they had to contradict both the entire tenor of Christ’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, and the clear commandments of the New Testament Scriptures that speak about loving the brethren.

Jesus in Matthew 5:43-48 commands love for enemies and assumes love for friends. The ascended Christ, through his writing disciples, defines love for friends in the context of the church, and makes love of the brethren to be one of the practical tests of assurance of salvation (1 John 3:14). When we draw our system of conduct out of the law of Moses, we fail to see that Christ has given higher and more spiritual rules of conduct. We become law-centered instead of Christ-centered. When church leaders are law-centered, they act like God’s sheriffs instead of his shepherds.^[4] Abuse of God’s sheep by tyrannical elders is far more than a personality or a temperament problem. Its roots lie in the theological misunderstand­ing that is the subject of this book.

The Reformers and the Puritans, in their own minds, were sincerely obeying God’s commandments when they persecuted and killed fellow Christians for rejecting the authorized creed. Those godly men were merely being consistent with the view of authority and law set forth in their Covenant Theology. Burning or hanging a witch was not an aberrant action of a hard-hearted tyrant; it was the good and necessary consequence deduced from a wrong theology of the relationship between Moses and Christ, and the church and the state.

Since Covenant Theology insists that Jesus is correcting a faulty understanding of what Moses really meant, why do they not apply the same correction to their interpreta­tion? Covenant Theology accuses the Pharisees of being convinced it was their God-given duty to hate the Gentiles and treat them as God’s enemies. The Reformers and the Puritans were just as convinced that God commanded them to hate and persecute all who refused to bow to their particular church creed. They treated those dissenters as enemies of God. Although we have no state church in our country today, the same attitude is all too prevalent in many contemporary church leaders.

What happens if we carry this concept of hating the enemies of God forward into the New Covenant? In some churches, leaders actually do apply it to those who are under elder discipline. We have seen terrible abuse done by tyrannical elders in the name of church authority and love for God’s truth. This is the basis for some church leaders to teach their people that it is their duty to hate all who “prove their hatred of Christ by leaving his church.”^[5] We have witnessed this on more than one occasion, and the reasoning and use of biblical texts for such an exhortation was no different from the alleged rabbinical distortions used by the Pharisees to justify their attitude of hatred of their enemies.

As long as people believe that there can be no real change from the old legal covenant to the new gracious covenant, they will be unable to see and feel the power of the new demands of Christ. They ultimately will lock themselves into a legal mentality that cannot help but work itself out in a rigid, self-righteous, condemning attitude. We have heard men infected with this mentality ridicule and mock love in an angry screaming voice.

Given authority and opportunity, men and women with this attitude and theology could easily punish what they view as heresy with death and feel that they had glorified God and vindicated his truth. It has happened before and it will happen again. The Covenant Theology of the Reform­ers and the Puritans led them to establish governments according to the law of Moses. They patterned their gov­ernments after the theocracy of the nation of Israel, espe­cially as it pertained to the duty of the magistrate to punish all those who dissented from the doctrines or practices of the state church in power. This is an indisputable fact written in the book of history with the blood of Baptists, Quakers, and others. It repeats itself, in another setting, with equally objectionable results, when churches apply it to those under discipline.

It is ironic that some of the very people who see hate your enemies as the rabbinical distortion of Old Testament Scriptures will themselves use distortions of Scripture verses to justify their own hatred of brethren that question or disagree with their authority. They borrow the very principles that they condemn the Pharisees for using. His­tory has witnessed ungodly behavior done under the guise of love for God’s truth. The perpetrators of the cruel deeds may have been sincere in their belief that God approved of their actions, but those actions appear to reveal the same attitude of hatred that the Jews manifested in their treat­ment of the Gentiles. The rationale used by the Pharisees is identical to that used by some church leaders today to justify their wrong attitude toward sincere brethren who, in good conscience, have refused to submit to the “God-or­dained” authority of elders who use their authority in an unbiblical manner.

These elders derive their right to make and enforce this rule from the concept that they are duly authorized ser­vants of God who are applying God’s truth to the situation that arises when someone leaves a local church. They rea­son thusly:

1. Christ loved the church and gave himself for it (Eph. 5:25).
2. These people have forsaken Christ’s church which is the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15).
3. In leaving God’s church, for which Christ died, these people show that they hate the very thing that Christ loves the most (Eph. 5:25).
4. The Psalmist said, “I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee” (Ps. 139:21), and, “I hate them with a perfect hatred” (Ps. 139:22). Since these people have proved their hatred of Christ (by leaving his church for which he died), it is our duty to God to hate these people with a perfect hatred because they have left Christ’s church, which he loves above all else.

The above is an accurate representation of the rationale used by church leaders with a cultic mentality to force their members to despise and shun anyone who dares to leave that particular congregation or group. The only reason these modern-day, duly-authorized defenders of the glory of God’s holy truth have not run a sword through their enemies is that they do not have the civil authority to do so. If harsh words were bullets and odious labels were swords, many of us would already have died a thousand deaths.

Too many of us have seen church leaders who exhibit the same kind of attitudes we import onto and then con­demn in the Pharisees. Oh, that we could learn to live and breathe under the freedom of the New Covenant. Oh, that the power of sovereign grace would grip our hearts and fill our souls with the love of Christ so that we not only would love our enemies, but we also would be able to love our brethren who disagree with our particular creed.

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