Love Your Enemies: The Standard No One Else Sets | Stay on Mission
Matthew 5:43–48 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.²” (ESV)
You have likely had someone close to you hurt you. The deep cut left a scar that seems to only fade and, depending on the day, may still sting. To be human is to be hurt, and we were never made to be invincible or without feeling. We are designed to love, and love is best put on display when it costs something.
In this sixth antithesis, Jesus speaks again in the pattern he has used throughout, confirming the law but lifting the standard. The religious leaders had redefined the term neighbor so narrowly that it came to mean only those within a tight circle of lovable people, and in some communities had gone so far as to command hating your enemies outright.
Jesus says love them anyway. Not just the easy-to-love people around you, but the very ones who make you carry their loads, strike you, persecute you, and overtax you. In today’s vernacular, the ones who make fun of you, block a promotion, or overlook you when the invitations go out.
This is the unnatural, emotionally conflicting action that sons of the Father are called to. His love is the template, and our love is meant to mirror it, a supernatural standard that parts company with every other ethical system known to mankind. You have heard forgive and forget. Jesus goes further: forgive, lay down the offense, and actively pray for the one who caused it.
In 1947, Corrie ten Boom was speaking at a church in Munich when she recognized a man filing out with the crowd, a former SS guard from Ravensbrück, the camp where her sister Betsie had died. He approached her, hand extended, asking for forgiveness. The sight of him sent a wave of conflict through her that she could not resolve on her own. She prayed, extended her hand, and felt a warmth flood through her arm that she knew did not come from herself. She later wrote, “And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”¹⁰
The standard is His. So is the power to meet it.
Who do you need to be praying for today?
Who do you need to forgive and show love?
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