Loving My Enemies

Loving My Enemies

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 in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax-gatherers do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew 5:43-48

Man oh man, Lord, how can I ever love my enemies? You are asking the impossible. It’s much easier to love those who believe and live as I do.  It’s much easier to hate my enemies, not love them.  Like Linus in the Peanuts cartoon strip says, “I love mankind, it’s people I can’t stand.” In other words, I love everyone, except for the person who cut me off in traffic yesterday; except for the person who enslaves innocent girls for monetary gain; except for the person who isn’t of the same political ilk, except for the person who said cruel things about me (or my family), except for the person who murders innocent school children.

Perhaps one of the most difficult verses to swallow is verse 44 that gives one of the deepest meanings of love for your enemies. It says, “I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” John Piper writes  “Prayer for your enemies is one of the deepest forms of love, because it means that you have to really want that something good happen to them. [Prayer] for them is in the presence of God who knows your heart, and prayer is interceding with God on their behalf. It may be for their conversion. It may be for their repentance. It may be that they would be awakened to the enmity in their hearts. It may be that they will be stopped in their downward spiral of sin, even if it takes disease or calamity to do it. But the prayer Jesus has in mind here is always for their good.”
I have a mental prayer list and on my  list are my beloved friends and family members—not my enemies. I want to believe that I don’t have any enemies, but I do, and Jesus calls me to pray for them.  When I pray for my enemies, I begin to understand transformative grace, knowing that I once had enmity toward God. To pray and to forgive “is to be perfect, as my heavenly Father is perfect.”  It’s a tall order, but it’s not impossible—at least not impossible for the One who is in me.


During this unpredictable election year, it is natural to pray for my candidate of choice, but not for the opponent. Yet, this is exactly what Jesus calls me to do. And whether we like November’s outcome, prayer includes yielding to the will of my Father .  I am not only to pray about my debts, I am to pray for my debtors. To pray for my debtors, I will be revealing God’s Son in me. Galatians 1:15-16. Praying for my enemies ain’t easy, but it is what our Father asks of me and of you.

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