"Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." (Matthew 5:44, NIV). It is today's Daily Words of Jesus, and it may be the hardest sentence He ever spoke. In a season of sharp division, it still asks more of us than anything else in the Sermon on the Mount.
One simple fact
Jesus' command to love enemies appears in two Gospels. Matthew places it in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:43-48), and Luke records it in the Sermon on the Plain: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you" (Luke 6:27-28).
In His own words
"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."
— Jesus, Matthew 5:43-45 (NIV)
Jesus did not only teach this. Nailed to a cross, He prayed for the men driving the nails: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34).
Old Testament foreshadowing
The seed of this teaching is already in the Hebrew Scriptures. Proverbs says, "If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink" (Proverbs 25:21-22). And Isaiah's Suffering Servant "bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors" (Isaiah 53:12). Christians see that prophecy fulfilled on Calvary, when Jesus interceded for His executioners.
A historical reference: "hate the sons of darkness"
Where did anyone hear "hate your enemy"? Leviticus 19:18 commands love of neighbor, but no Old Testament verse commands hating enemies. Scholars point to the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Community Rule (1QS), found in Qumran Cave 1 in 1947, required members "to love all the sons of light ... and to hate all the sons of darkness, each according to his guilt" (1QS 1:9-10). You can compare the two texts side by side at intertextual.bible, read a scholarly discussion in Ari Mermelstein's "Love and Hate at Qumran" (Yeshiva University), and see the background explained in Religion Online's chapter on the Sermon on the Mount. The Qumran sect drew its circle of love tight. Jesus threw it open to include the very people trying to harm you.
A witness: "Forgive him"
Content note: this account describes domestic violence.
Robyn F shared her experience with the Near Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF, NDE 7209). She reports that after she asked for a divorce, her husband attacked her, stabbed her, and told her he would kill her. Bleeding and close to passing out, she had been praying, "Please Dear God, let this cup pass from me." She writes:
"I left my body and passed through a tunnel of light, which took me to a door of brilliant light. The door opened. I knelt down ... I looked up to see Jesus in front of me nailed to the cross. He looked down directly into my eyes. I've never seen eyes like those before or since. As he looked into my eyes, I asked him, without speaking words, 'What do I do?' He answered without speaking words, 'Forgive him.' As he 'said' the words, it was done. The forgiveness happened in that very instant."
She reports that when she returned to her body "everything had changed," and that she found herself speaking calming words she did not consciously choose, which de-escalated the attack. Her full account is at NDERF. Forgiving an enemy, in Jesus' sense, is not staying in danger. It is refusing to let hatred have the last word. If you are unsafe at home, in the U.S. you can reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
Living it today
Pick one person you find hard to love, maybe someone across a political or family divide, and pray for them by name today. Not that they would change to suit you, but that your Father's sun and rain would fall on them too.
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