In Matthew 5:44-45, Jesus tells us, “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
In this passage of the New Testament, we are told that the Lord sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous. Why is this?
Why doesn’t God just send rain on the righteous and let the unrighteous dry up? In this article, we are going to discover why the Lord sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
1. The Significance of Rain
In order to understand Jesus’ statement in Matthew 5:45, we have to understand the broader context of the passage. When Jesus is speaking about sending rain on the righteous and the unrighteous, He is giving His Sermon on the Mount.
The Sermon on the Mount is one of Jesus’ most famous lessons to His followers about the right way to live, how to love others, and the Kingdom of God. In the verses prior to Matthew 5:45, Jesus is talking about loving your enemies.
The Lord says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:43-45).
In this passage, the Lord is telling us to love our enemies in order to extend the same love God has given to us. The Lord sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous because He loves them both.
During the time when Jesus walked on the earth, the society He was in was an agrarian culture. An agrarian culture means the society was focused on farming and producing crops. In order to have prosperous crops, the rain was needed.
Therefore, when Jesus is talking about sending rain on the righteous and the unrighteous, it meant that the Lord was going to provide abundant crops for not only the righteous but also the unrighteous.
This would have been radical teaching to the people of Israel because they would have understood its meaning. Most Jews would have believed that God would only give good things to those who obeyed Him rather than to all people.
By Jesus telling them that God sends rain on those who obey Him and those who do not would have given those who were listening a great shock. It would have been shocking because the Jews would have thought God only provided for and cared about those who fully followed Him.
Jesus was teaching something radically different by telling them that God loves the righteous and the unrighteous equally. In a way, we are all unrighteous until we know Christ. We are not made righteous by anything that we do, but rather we are made righteous because of Jesus.
2. God Provides for Everyone
The Lord sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous because He provides for everyone. Just as He provides food for wild animals, He provides rain for all people, which in turn provides crops and food for all people.
God provides for all people because He loves all people and desires for them to know Him (1 Timothy 2:3-4). The Lord loves all people, even those who do not follow Him.
God created every single person in the world, which means He dearly loves them. There is no one in the world who loves you as much as God does.
The Lord loves you unconditionally. Unconditional love means the person loves you no matter what. Even if we mess up a million times in a single day, God still loves us the same. His love for us does not waver nor does it fade.
The love He has for us remains forever. This is why God sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous — because He loves everyone. God’s great love for us is so strong that He sent His Son, Jesus, to die on the cross for our sins.
Jesus died on the cross in order to restore our broken relationship with the Father. John 3:16-17 tells us, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
If God loved us so much that He would send His Son to die for us, then surely His great love would include sending rain on the righteous and unrighteous. God has never discriminated between people because He has created us all the same.
We are all humans wonderfully created by our Creator (Psalm 139:13-16). The Lord does not withhold His providence and love from anyone.
3. Loving Our Enemies
A crucial part of this passage of Matthew 5:44-45 includes Jesus’ command to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. This can be hard to do especially when someone is mean to us or bullies us. Even if someone is mean to us, we still need to forgive them (Ephesians 4:32).
Forgiveness does not mean we forget what they did, but rather, it means that we give the situation over to God and forgive them even if they do not deserve our forgiveness. As Christians, we should not really have any enemies.
We should only view others as our friends and brothers and sisters in Christ. It is not right to hate others in our hearts or to label them as our enemies. Jesus teaches us that even if a person is mean to us, we should extend His love and pray for them (Matthew 5:44-45).
When we choose to love others and pray for them, we are truly obeying God and following in His footsteps. Just as the Lord sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous, we should extend love to our fellow believers and unbelievers alike.
By sharing Jesus’ love with unbelievers, it would help them to know Christ and accept Him as their Lord and Savior. As Christians, we should always be striving to follow Jesus and to do what He commands.
There is no place for envy, hate, or sabotage. Instead, we should choose to extend Jesus’ love and kindness to the entire world. Since the Lord provides rain for all people out of His great love, we too should do all we can to extend Jesus’ love to others.
It can be hard at first, but God can help us and soften our hearts to love others as He commands us to. Praying for those who have hurt us is a great way to soften our hearts toward others.
Once we start praying for them and try to see things from their perspective, the better we will become at loving others with help from the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, the Lord sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous because of His love for them. God does not show favoritism because He loves all people the same.
Whether a person has accepted Him or not, the Lord will continue to send rain on all people in order for them to have food, crops, and clean water.
For further reading:
What Does it Mean ‘Many Are the Afflictions of the Righteous’?
What Is the Sermon on the Mount?
What Does it Mean to ‘Love Your Enemies’?
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