Love your enemies
Love the people you can’t stand
The hardest sentence Jesus ever said, and maybe the most important.
Key points
- What it means: Anyone can love their friends, Jesus says. God makes the sun rise on good and bad people alike, and sends rain on both.
- Try this: Pray for, or simply wish well, one person you resent. One sentence is enough.
- The good news: “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” God loved us before we loved him back.
What he said
“Love your enemies, bless those who curse you”
Matthew 5:44
Find it: Matthew 5:43–48
Read Matthew 5:43–48
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 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, 45 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. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? 47 If you only greet your friends, what more do you do than others? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? 48 Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.
World English Bible, public domain. The whole chapter on Free Scripture → · Read in the NRSVue, the ELCA’s standard translation →
What it means
Anyone can love their friends, Jesus says. God makes the sun rise on good and bad people alike, and sends rain on both. Be like that.
Love here doesn’t mean liking someone, trusting them, or pretending they did nothing wrong. It means wanting good for them, and refusing to treat them as less than human.
Martin Luther King Jr. preached on this verse and built a movement on it: hate the injustice, never the person.
At work
- Compete hard and fair. Don’t sabotage, don’t gloat, don’t badmouth.
- The coworker who undermines you still deserves honesty and basic respect.
With people
- In politics and online, never treat the other side as less than human. That is where real harm begins.
The hard part
It may be the hardest thing Jesus asked. Love doesn’t cancel consequences or boundaries, and it often starts as a decision long before it becomes a feeling.
Try this
Pray for, or simply wish well, one person you resent. One sentence is enough.
Go deeper
The good news
“While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” God loved us before we loved him back.
Nobody lives this perfectly. How to read it