Have you thought which verse in the Bible is the most difficult to you? I don’t mean to say which verse is the most difficult to understand, but which verse is the most difficult for you to obey and do. You will say to me there are so many of them in the Bible, and I will agree with you. For me, I don’t know if I can definitively say I have one verse that is the most difficult to obey and do, but Matthew 5:44 has to be one that is way up there. Here it is.
Matthew 5:43–48 "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, so 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 do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
God commands us to love our enemies. Notice he didn’t just say we must love. He said we must love our enemies, because he knows those are the ones in our lives we have a hard time loving. God knows I have no problem loving those who are lovable. Anyone knows how to do that. But I have a much harder time loving those who are unlovable. I have a much harder time loving my enemies.
Who is your enemy, or enemies? Can you think of someone who is an enemy in your life today? I suppose it is possible that you say to me you don’t have enemies, but not likely. The way it is written in Matthew implies that every person on the planet has at least one enemy, or even enemies. Jesus answers who is your enemy and who is my enemy in two verses. Furthermore, these two verses say there are two kinds of enemies.
In Matthew 5:44, Jesus implies that the first kind of enemies is those who persecute us. Some examples of persecution done to Christians in the 1st century include the confiscation or destruction of property, incitement of hatred, arrests, imprisonment, beatings, stoning, torture, even executions. Today, examples of persecution done to Christians in the western world are milder in comparison to those in the 1st century, but they are still persecution nonetheless. Those who persecute Christians today may intentionally look the other way when they pass by them in schools or in the office. They may give them “the look”. In a nutshell, those who persecute Christians try to make life very hard for Christians.
Just two verses later in Matthew 5:46, Jesus implies that the ones who are our enemies are those who don’t love us. In comparison to the enemies of Christians who persecute Christians, those who don’t love Christians seem like angels. But they are enemies, all the same. They do not outwardly and visibly make life hard for Christians. Rather, they do the same thing more subtly. They do not go out of their way to show love. They pretend they don’t see you. They avoid eye contact. People who choose to not love us are our enemies.
It is not insignificant for me to say here that persecution is not limited to persecution from being a Christian. Persecution includes making one’s life harder for other reasons. Sadly, sometimes those who try to make life harder for us come from fellow Christians. No matter if persecution that is targeted at us comes from Christians or from others, we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. It makes no sense for Jesus to expect us to love those enemies who persecute us because of our Christian faith, but he does not have the same expectation if we are persecuted for other reasons. Jesus commands us to love all our enemies, period.
Moving along, what does it mean to love our enemies? Jesus answers this question too! Firstly, and according to Matthew 5:47, loving someone means to greet someone whom the Jews did not call their brother. In the 1st century, the Gentiles greeted other Gentiles. They did not greet those who were not Gentiles. They did not greet Jews. For this reason, I sense the Jews did not greet the Gentiles too. They greeted fellow brothers, or fellow Jews. But greeting the Gentiles? No. They passed by each other in the city, in the markets, and in the streets, and they greeted only those who were Jews. Is it possible they remained silent, or even looked the other way when they passed by a Gentile? I think so. If there were only one Gentile in a room among Jews, they greeted everyone but him. Loving our enemies means greeting everyone in the room.
Secondly, and according to Matthew 5:44, loving someone means to pray for those who persecuted them. Considering the context, Jesus was thinking about those who were the Gentiles. Say it isn’t so that Jesus was asking the Jews to pray for the Gentiles. How difficult was that! Jesus did not qualify how they were to pray for the Gentiles, but I am certain he did not mean they were to pray for the Gentiles to come to their senses and recognize their own wrongdoing. I am even more certain he did not mean praying for misfortune to come to the Gentiles. Jesus meant praying a blessing to them. I don’t have to explain to you how hard it is for the Jews to pray for God to bless precisely those who were making life very hard for them. Loving our enemies means to pray for God to bless them.