Matthew 5:43
You have heard that it was said, "you shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy"
The phrase "love your enemies" which Jesus says in the next verse is very well known throughout our culture. Outside the church, people sort of recognise it as the ideal situation even if they don't particularly aspire to it. Inside the church people know it's what they *should* do. But in reality, despite what we say or admit, we all tend to operate more like this saying that Jesus attacks.
Elsewhere, Jesus defines "neighbour" to mean anybody, but here the Pharisees operated on a principle of loving their friends and hating their enemies. Just like we do today. We want good things to happen to us and our friends and family and we're happy for the people who've wronged us to get what we think they deserve. Unless it's our friends or family who have wronged us and then our circle of love decreases even more! We have a very selfish view of love that will define neighbour as narrowly as we want and then point inside that circle as an example of how loving a person we are. "of course I'm a loving person, look how well I love my mother... except that time we fell out for a year!"
We will always move the goalposts to make ourselves look good, and it's that attitude that Jesus attacks here
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