Love Your Enemies

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you (Matthew 5:44).

When Jesus said "love your enemies" He wasn't talking about having affection for enemies―He was talking about an act of the will. The Greek word that Matthew used here when He quoted Jesus is agapao. The noun form is agape. Agape is not driven by feelings. Agape is a stubborn commitment of the will to do right by someone despite what they do to you. As commentator William Barclay puts it, agape "means a determination of the mind, whereby we achieve this unconquerable goodwill even to those who hurt and injure us."

Jesus used the verb form of agape in John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…." It is very doubtful that God the Father found any warm, fuzzy feelings in the prospect of His Son coming to this earth to be subjected to the cruelest kind of punishment man could inflict while the Holy Angels stood by and did not intervene. Yet for our good, God looked beyond those awful feelings according to Romans 5:8 and sent His Son anyway, demonstrating His great love (agape) in that "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

Why does God call on us to love our enemies? Because that is what He does – and when we love to do what He does we prove that we are His children. In much the same way as a little boy wants to grow up and be just like his father, a Christian wants to grow in his faith to be like God. Look at the text in Matthew 5 again. Verse 44 says, "Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you." Why would you want to pray for persecutors? Verse 45 holds the answer: "…that ye may be the children of your Father who is in heaven; for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."

The Jews despised the Romans because they oppressed Gods people, but Jesus told them to love these enemies. Such words turned many away from Christ. You can't "fall into" this kind of love―it takes conscious effort. Loving our enemies means acting in their best interests. We can pray for them, and we can think of ways to help them. Jesus loved the whole world, even though the world was in rebellion against God. He asks to follow His example by loving our enemies.

Bible Reading: Matthew 5:43-48