“For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?
Do not even the civil servants the same?
And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more than others?
Do not even the Gentiles the same?”
Jesus then draws attention to the difference between what He is describing and what is more common among men. He points to two types of people who would not be looked on with favour, and who would not be expected to have any love for most Jews. The first are the civil servants' or ‘tax collectors'. They were out to screw what they could out of people, (or certainly that was the way in which they were seen), and yet they could still love their family and friends. They loved those who loved them. And the same was true even of the Gentiles. Even they greeted warmly those who were their friends or comrades. So both national outcasts and an outcast world were capable of love. And with the salutation went hospitality. Thus loving others was not in itself a sign of anything remarkable. But His disciples were to reveal how different they were from both by loving those who did not love them, and by greeting warmly and giving hospitality to those who did not greet them. Implicit within these references is that they were also to love the tax collectors and the Gentiles. Otherwise how would they be different from them? Thus none are to be excluded from their love. And they are to do it in order to be like God, in order to reveal that they are true sons of the Kingly Rule of Heaven.