Sermon On How To Treat Others

Loving The Way God Loves: A Sermon On Treating Others

We all know what it feels like to be treated badly. And if we are honest, we all know what it feels like to treat someone else badly, too. Maybe it was a sharp word we said when we were tired. Maybe it was the cold shoulder we gave someone who had hurt us. Maybe it is a relationship right now that we have quietly written off because the other person simply does not deserve our kindness. That feeling, that instinct to draw back and protect ourselves, is deeply human. And Jesus knows it.

What makes Luke 6 so striking is that Jesus does not pretend that instinct does not exist. He looks right at it. He names it. And then he says something so unexpected that his original listeners must have leaned in to make sure they heard him correctly.

Let me read from Luke 6, beginning at verse 27, from the Christian Standard Bible.

"But I say to you who listen: Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If anyone hits you on the cheek, offer the other also. And if anyone takes away your coat, don't hold back your shirt either. Give to everyone who asks you, and from someone who takes your things, don't ask for them back. Just as you want others to do for you, do the same for them. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. If you do what is good to those who do what is good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do what is good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High. For he is gracious to the ungrateful and evil. Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful."

Now hold that last line. We will come back to it because it is the key to everything else.

Then turn with me to Philippians 2, verses 3 and 4, where Paul writes this to a congregation he loves dearly.

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others."

Two passages. Two different authors. Two different settings. But one consistent call. The way we treat other people is meant to flow from something deeper than social convention or personal preference. It is meant to flow from the character of God himself.

So here is the central claim of this sermon: the way we treat others is not primarily a matter of manners or morality. It is a matter of whose children we are and whose mind we carry.

Let us stay with Jesus for a moment, because what he is doing in Luke 6 is genuinely radical. He is not giving a general lecture on civility. He is speaking to people who are already under pressure. The word he uses for enemies is not abstract. These are people who actively work against you, who hate you, who curse you, and who mistreat you. Jesus is not asking us to be polite to people who are mildly annoying. He is asking us to love people who are genuinely difficult, who may have caused real harm.

And notice the specific actions he calls for. Love. Do good. Bless. Pray. These are not passive. They are not simply the absence of retaliation. They are active, intentional, costly movements toward the other person. Jesus is describing a way of living that runs directly against every natural instinct we have when we feel threatened or wronged.

Then he asks a question that cuts right through our self-justifications. He says, if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. That is a bracing thing to hear. Jesus is essentially saying that loving people who are easy to love does not require any transformation at all. It does not require grace. It does not require God. Anyone can do that. The question is what happens when the person in front of you is not easy to love.

Now, before we go further, we need to be careful about what Jesus is not saying here. He is not saying that we should pretend harm is not harm, or that we should place ourselves in danger, or that there are no appropriate limits in broken relationships. The Bible elsewhere speaks honestly about conflict, accountability, and the need for wisdom in difficult situations. What Jesus is addressing here is the posture of the heart. He is addressing the reflex of contempt, the habit of exclusion, the quiet decision to write someone off. That is what he is targeting.

And then he gives us the reason. Not a rule. A reason. Look at verse 35 again. "Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High. For he is gracious to the ungrateful and evil." And verse 36: "Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful."

That phrase, your Father, is doing enormous work in this passage. Jesus is saying that the way God treats people who do not deserve his kindness is the model for how we treat people who do not deserve ours. God is gracious to the ungrateful. God is good to the evil. That is not a comfortable thing to sit with, because most of us, if we are honest, would prefer a God who reserves his goodness for the deserving. But that is not the God of Scripture. The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. The sun rises on the evil and the good. God's mercy is not rationed according to merit.

And here is the thing. We were once on the receiving end of that mercy. Before we came to faith in Christ, we were not God's friends. We were not seeking him. We were, as Paul puts it elsewhere, enemies of God in our minds through wicked works. And yet God, in his mercy, sent his Son. Jesus did not wait for us to become lovable before he loved us. He loved us while we were still sinners, while we were still ungrateful, while we were still far away. That is the gospel. And that gospel is supposed to reshape the way we live.

Which is exactly what Paul is getting at in Philippians 2. He is writing to a church that is experiencing some internal friction. There are people in that congregation who are not getting along, and Paul traces the problem back to a very specific root: selfish ambition and conceit. He says, do nothing out of those things. Instead, in humility, consider others as more important than yourselves. Look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.

Now that word humility is not a word that meant weakness in the ancient world. It was actually a word that carried a somewhat negative connotation before Christianity began to transform it. What Paul is doing is redefining it. He is saying that genuine humility is not self-contempt. It is not pretending you have no needs or no perspective. It is the deliberate choice to put the other person's well-being ahead of your own agenda. It is the willingness to ask, what does this person need from me right now, rather than, what do I need from this person?

And Paul does not leave that as an abstract idea. He immediately grounds it in the example of Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be exploited. He emptied himself, took on the form of a servant, and became obedient to the point of death. The mind of Christ is the mind that moves toward others rather than away from them, even at great personal cost.

So what does this actually look like in the ordinary texture of our lives? Not in dramatic moments of heroism, but in the everyday fabric of how we treat the people around us.

It looks like choosing not to return a cutting remark with another cutting remark. It looks like praying for someone who has genuinely hurt you, even when that prayer feels like a discipline rather than a delight. It looks like asking a genuine question about someone else's life instead of steering every conversation back to your own. It looks like giving the benefit of the doubt to the person who frustrates you rather than immediately assuming the worst. It looks like noticing who is being left out and moving toward them rather than away.

None of these things are heroic in the way the world measures heroism. But they are exactly the kind of daily, ordinary, grace-shaped choices that Jesus is describing. And over time, they form us into people who actually look like children of the Most High.

Here is something worth sitting with this week. Think of one person in your life who is genuinely difficult to love right now. Not someone you simply find annoying, but someone who has actually hurt you, or someone you have quietly written off. And ask yourself one question: what would it look like to pray for that person this week? Not to fix them. Not to change the situation. Just to bring them before God with an open hand. That is where this kind of love begins. Not in a grand gesture, but in a quiet, honest prayer.

The Father is gracious to the ungrateful. The Son moved toward us when we were far away. The Spirit is at work in us, forming the mind of Christ. We are not doing this on our own. We are being shaped by a God who has already shown us what this love looks like in the flesh.

So let us go and treat others the way our Father has treated us. Not because it is easy. Not because they have earned it. But because we are his children, and we carry his name.

Sources Consulted

Bock, Darrell L. Luke 1:1-9:50. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1994.

Fee, Gordon D. Paul's Letter to the Philippians. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995.

Green, Joel B. The Gospel of Luke. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997.

Keener, Craig S. The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993.

Thielman, Frank. Philippians. NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995.