Love Your Enemies
Matthew 5:43–48
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you, that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? If you only greet your friends, what more do you do than others? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.
World English Bible
This morning the sun came up on everyone. It rose over the hospice nurse and the con artist, the missionary and the man who defrauded his own mother. The rain that waters the generous farmer’s field does not swerve around the cruel one’s. Jesus points at the weather (ordinary, daily, indiscriminate) and says: that is what your Father is like. His kindness falls on people who will curse Him by lunchtime.
Then comes the command with no parallel in any ethical system the world has produced: love your enemies. Not endure them. Not avoid them politely. Love them, and pray for the very people whose mistreatment of you is ongoing. Notice the reason Jesus attaches: “that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven.” Family resemblance. Children pick up their father’s mannerisms, and the unmistakable mannerism of this Father is generosity toward the undeserving. When you love an enemy, you look like Him. When you love only those who love you back, Jesus says, you look like everyone. Even tax collectors manage reciprocity. The world already runs on that economy: I will love you if you love me. It requires no grace, no Spirit, no cross.
Praying for enemies is where this stops being theory. Try it and you will discover why Jesus prescribed it: it is nearly impossible to keep hating someone you are honestly asking God to bless. Prayer does not always change them. It reliably changes you, loosening the offense’s grip, replacing the cartoon villain in your imagination with a human being God is pursuing.
“Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” The word means complete, mature: love grown all the way up, with no one fenced out. None of us is there yet. But that is the destination of this whole sermon: not better-behaved people, but people being remade into the likeness of a Father whose sun rises on His enemies. He knows how to love enemies. He loved you while you were one.
Reflect
- Who is the person I have quietly fenced out of my love, and what would it cost me to pray for their good?
- Is my kindness mostly reciprocal, flowing toward people who can return it? What does that reveal about whose child I am imitating?
- Have I forgotten that God loved me while I was His enemy, and how would remembering change the way I treat mine?
Pray
Name your hardest person before God today (not their offense, their name) and ask Him to genuinely bless them. Confess where your love has been a closed circle of people who love you back. Thank the Father that His sun rose on you even when you were His enemy, and ask Him to grow that same indiscriminate love in you.