What did Jesus say about loving your enemies?
Jesus told people to love their enemies and pray for those persecuting them, and he framed it as the thing that distinguishes his followers from everyone else. Loving people who love you back, he pointed out, is not remarkable. Anyone does that. The whole weight of the teaching sits on the people you have every reason to hate.
What Jesus said
In Matthew 5 he quotes the familiar standard about loving your neighbor and hating your enemy, and then breaks it. Love your enemies, he says, and pray for the people persecuting you. The reason he gives is that God does not sort the sunlight and the rain by who deserves them.
Then he makes the comparison that stings. If you love the people who love you, what exactly are you doing that is different. Even people no one admires manage that much.
In the same section he addresses retaliation. The old standard limited revenge to proportion, an eye for an eye, which was itself a restraint. He removes even that. Turn the other cheek, go the second mile, give more than was demanded.
In Luke 6 he adds the mechanics: do good to them, bless them, lend without expecting return. The instructions are all active. None of them are about feeling differently first.
The hard part
This is the teaching most people quietly set aside, and Jesus gave no exemption clause for the enemy who genuinely deserves it. He also lived it all the way to an execution he did not resist, asking forgiveness for the men driving the nails. Taken seriously, it costs more than almost anything else he asked, and pretending otherwise is not honest.
What this looks like today
- •Pray for one specific person you resent, by name. Jesus made it concrete rather than abstract.
- •Do one small good thing for them that they will not know about. The instructions are behavioral before they are emotional.
- •Stop rehearsing the case against them. Contempt is maintained by repetition.
Matthew 5:38-48, Luke 6:27-36, Luke 23:34
Go deeper: this comes up in the 40 days