The Impossible Command That Changes Everything
A reflection on Matthew 5:43-48 and the radical call to forgive the unforgivable
“But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Three words that make most people cringe: “Love your enemies.” Everybody’s favorite passage, right? But these three words come directly from Christ, so we have to give serious consideration to them. There’s no getting around these words, no wavering on them, no excusing them.
Let’s not pretend this is easy – it’s never going to be easy to do what Jesus calls us to in this text. It’s much easier to hate people. Being nasty isn’t hard. Just go with your feelings, respond to that little eruption inside that says “get them, go after them.”
It’s hard to love. It’s hard to forgive. It takes something supernatural to love, which is why Jesus insists his followers do it. How we respond to this text reveals something about our hearts.
The Convenient Half-Truth
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’”
Notice the classic religious move here: take half a truth and add your own spin to make it more convenient. The first part – “love your neighbor” – that’s straight from the Old Testament. But the second half? “Hate your enemy”? That’s found nowhere in all of Scripture.
The religious leaders had taken Leviticus 19:18 – “love your neighbor as yourself” – and conveniently left out the “as yourself” part because it was tremendously inconvenient. To love your neighbor as yourself means there’s no limit to what you’re willing to do for others, just as there’s no limit to what you’ll do for yourself.
So where did they get the “hate your enemy” part? They created it out of thin air, then used selective Old Testament passages to justify it. How convenient – you can make up a rule that says “I’ve got to love all the people just like me, but I can be annoyed with, have disdain for, even hate all the people who are not like me.”
They created two classes: those I like and those I don’t. The ones I like get amazing treatment; the ones I don’t – who cares what happens to them?
Our Modern Version of Ancient Bias
This gets convicting when I think about our own modern versions. We get very biased in the church toward people who are like us. We have affinity for someone because they share common interests, goals, life stages – and that’s not necessarily bad. Commonality is good.
But when we begin to only seek out those who are like us, and actively shut out those who are not like us, we fall into the sin of partiality.
We see this everywhere in the church today. We alienate people because they don’t share the same views we do. We look down on those who don’t measure up to our doctrinal level. The megachurch guy is all about lights and smoke, the Methodist is progressive, the Presbyterian is sophisticated and looks down on others because he has superior theology.
We see it within the church as well – especially when it comes to age ranges or life stages. From the young and single to the old widow or widower, we are one in Christ. But we create distinctions where God never intended separation.
The Pharisees had developed a system all too tempting today: being given license to love those you want to love and getting to hate whoever you want. A hypocrite loves people who are just like them.
The Impossible Command
“But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Jesus puts his word above every other word they had heard or made up. Notice the language here: in the original Greek, the word “love” is present, active, and imperative.
Present means now. At this point, there’s immediacy to it.
Active means ongoing – yes tomorrow, yes next week, yes next month, yes next year.
Imperative means it’s a command.
Jesus is saying: “I command you – this isn’t a suggestion or hope, it’s a divine mandate – to agape love (unconditionally love) your enemies (plural), and to pray for those who persecute you.”
It’s ALL your enemies, not just some. It’s ongoing love, not just biting your tongue once. Even if someone is personally hurting you, oppressing you, making your life hell, you’re going to follow Jesus and pray for them.
A neutral position isn’t enough. Jesus isn’t saying, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything.” He says, “I want you present, active, imperative – love them. I command you to be about it, and pray for them.”
The Heart Test
“For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?”
Jesus knew how to get people right where it hurts. The Pharisees’ nerves would have been triggered by this – they hated tax collectors. Tax collectors were the most hated people in Jewish society. They represented Rome, got rich off their own people’s oppression, and were seen as traitors.
Jesus says, “When you love all the people just like you, you biased hypocrites, you’re just like the people you can’t stand.”
“And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even pagans do that?”
If you honor people who honor you and ignore people who don’t, you’re no different than the worst people you can think of with their hypocritical bias.
The Practical Path to Loving Enemies
So how do we actually do this? How do we move from hatred to love, from bitterness to blessing? Here’s the practical pathway:
1. Start by Making the List
In the privacy of your prayer life, name the person who drives you crazy. Who is that person you just can’t stand? We all can list a few people. That’s your prayer list today, tomorrow, maybe every day until the Lord changes your heart.
Be specific. Don’t just pray vague prayers about “blessing those who persecute me.” Name names. Pray for your difficult boss by name. Pray for that family member who hurt you by name. Pray for that politician you can’t stand by name.
2. Pray Yourself Into the Right Heart
It’s really hard to hate people you’re praying for. Sometimes we need to pray ourselves into this mindset through spiritual discipline. “I don’t want to pray for them, but I’m going to pray for them.” As you do, something supernatural happens. The Lord stirs your heart as you walk in obedience.
Start with simple prayers: “God, bless them. God, help them. God, save them if they don’t know you.” You don’t have to feel it at first. Obedience often comes before emotion. But as you persist in prayer, your heart will begin to change.
3. Remember Your Own Story
You’re never going to be able to love your enemies until you realize what the gospel is actually about – that you were an enemy of God when he saved you.
Romans 5:8-10 says: “But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us… For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son.”
Start looking at other people you’d define as enemies the way God looked at you. You’ll find mercy and love beginning to come out of your heart more than every other feeling you’re tempted to feel, because you remember the gospel.
4. Distinguish Between the Person and Their Actions
Does loving enemies excuse their wickedness? No. Does it give license to sin? No. Even with the most ardent enemies of God, we can be filled with zeal against their demonic behavior yet not filled with hate toward the person.
Remember, our fight is not with the person – we don’t wrestle with flesh and blood, but with the spiritual forces behind their actions. You can hate what someone does while still loving who they are as a person made in God’s image.
5. Work Through the Process of Forgiveness
Forgiveness isn’t a feeling – it’s a decision. And it’s often a process, not a one-time event. Here’s how to work through it:
Acknowledge the hurt. Don’t minimize what they did or pretend it didn’t matter. Real forgiveness requires honest assessment of real wrongs.
Choose to release your right to revenge. This doesn’t mean you don’t pursue justice through proper channels, but you release your personal right to get even.
Pray for their good. This is where love becomes action. Pray for their wellbeing, their salvation, their blessing.
Seek restoration when possible. If the relationship can be safely restored, pursue reconciliation. If not, maintain your forgiveness even from a distance.
Keep choosing forgiveness. When the anger comes back (and it will), choose forgiveness again. It’s a daily decision, not a permanent feeling.
When Forgiveness Feels Impossible
There are situations where forgiveness feels absolutely impossible. When someone has deeply wounded you, betrayed your trust, or hurt people you love, the idea of loving them can feel like a betrayal of justice itself.
Here’s what you need to understand: forgiveness doesn’t mean minimizing the wrong or pretending it didn’t happen. It doesn’t mean you have to trust them again or put yourself in harm’s way. It doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be consequences for their actions.
Forgiveness means you release your right to personal vengeance and entrust justice to God. It’s choosing to let God be God instead of trying to play God yourself.
Sometimes forgiveness is a long process that involves:
Professional help. Some wounds are so deep that you need trained biblical counselors to help you work through the trauma and move toward healing.
Community support. Don’t try to forgive in isolation. You need brothers and sisters in Christ who can walk with you through the process.
Time and patience with yourself. Healing doesn’t happen overnight. Give yourself permission to work through this process without rushing it.
Boundaries for safety. You can forgive someone while still maintaining healthy boundaries to protect yourself and others from further harm.
The Deeper Motivation
Why does Jesus call us to this impossible standard? Two reasons:
First, because it proves we are his children: “…that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven.”
That “so that” means “in order that you prove you’re God’s children – you look like your Father.” Children copy their parents. When we love our enemies, we’re acting just like our heavenly Father, who returned our evil with the good of salvation.
Second, because our God shows grace to the wicked: “For he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
For all the wickedness people do, all the corruption and abuse they engage in, the fact they’re still alive is sometimes nothing short of a miracle. Because God has decided to send rain on the wicked farmer’s crops, because the vile politician still has a warm bed, because God is patient with evil people – we ought to be slow to lash out.
The Perfect Standard
“Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
This quotes Leviticus 19:2: “Be holy, for I am holy.” The word means to be set apart, pure, completely different.
The question becomes: Do you look different? Do I look different? Not only in the truth we speak but in the love we show and prayers we pray?
This is impossible – of course it is. That’s why we need Christ. No one can obey these truths without Christ. But in Christ, by his Spirit, through his grace, we can love like he loves – even our enemies.
The Gospel Pattern
We were enemies when God saved us. He demonstrates his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through his Son’s death.
We have no right to hate our enemies – none. God had every right to damn us to hell, yet he saved us while we were dead, while we were enemies. Now he calls us friends.
When you grasp this truth – really grasp it – it changes everything about how you view the people who have hurt you. You realize that you were once just as much an enemy of God as they are an enemy to you. And if God could love you enough to die for you, then you can love them enough to pray for them.
The Practical Challenge
So here’s your assignment: Make a list. Write down the names of people you struggle to love. People who have hurt you, betrayed you, disappointed you, or opposed you. That’s your prayer list for the next month.
Pray for them by name. Pray for their good. Pray for their salvation if they don’t know Christ. Pray for their families. Pray for their success and blessing.
And watch what God does in your heart as you obey this impossible command.
You might find that the person who changes most isn’t them – it’s you.
Who is on your enemy list? What hurts are you holding onto that are keeping you from loving as Christ loved? What would change in your heart if you truly grasped that you were God’s enemy when he chose to love you? Remember: loving your enemies doesn’t excuse their wrong – it reveals the depth of God’s grace in your own life.