Reshaped • A Life Formed By Jesus • Week 8
Luke 6:27–36 • Romans 12:14–21 • Romans 5:6–10Our Enemies: Love
Loving people who love us is natural. Jesus calls His followers toward something radically different: a love that extends even toward those who oppose, hurt, or mistreat us. It is a love shaped not by what others deserve or return, but by the mercy we have first received from God.
Key Concept
Jesus reshapes how we love others, calling us to extend the same mercy we've received from God even to our enemies.
Reflection Questions
- Where have I allowed someone's treatment of me to shape the way I treat them?
- What is one practical way I could extend love to someone I find difficult to love?
Scripture
Luke 6:27–36
Romans 12:14–21
Romans 5:6–10
Most of us have a small number of people in our lives who are easy to love. They know us, care for us, stand beside us, and make love feel almost effortless. But Jesus' teaching about love begins to press on us when we ask a harder question: What about everyone else?
What about the difficult person?
The person who irritates us.
The person who has disappointed us.
The person who has harmed us.
The person rooting against us.
The person we might genuinely describe as an enemy.
How are followers of Jesus supposed to love them?
We naturally calculate who deserves our love.
Much of the time, we are making these calculations without even realizing it.
Is this person safe?
Can I trust them?
Will they treat me well?
Do they deserve my kindness?
How much of myself am I willing to give?
That kind of love operates according to reciprocity.
I will love you according to the love I believe I will receive from you.
That is a normal way for relationships to function in the world.
Jesus introduces another standard.
Jesus is reshaping our understanding of love.
Throughout this series, Jesus has been contrasting the patterns of His Kingdom with the patterns of the world around us.
Power looks different.
Attention looks different.
Work looks different.
Rest looks different.
And now Jesus tells us that love looks different too.
He does not merely tell us how to love.
He expands the boundaries of who that love includes.
The Kingdom of Jesus extends love beyond the people who are easy to love.
Enemy-love does not mean remaining in abuse.
Before we go any farther, an important distinction is necessary.
Jesus' command to love our enemies is not a command to remain in abusive or dangerous situations.
It is not a command to ignore injustice.
It is not a command to refuse appropriate boundaries.
We can protect ourselves.
We can protect other people.
We can seek justice.
The question Jesus addresses is different:
When evil is directed toward us, will evil determine what comes back out of us?
Jesus speaks to people who understood hostility.
Luke 6 takes us into the middle of Jesus' Sermon on the Plain.
He is speaking to His followers and to a larger crowd gathered around them.
They live under Roman rule.
Many would have known what it meant to live beneath political, social, or economic hostility.
And Jesus knows something else.
People who live according to His Kingdom will not always be welcomed by the kingdoms around them.
To those disciples Jesus says:
Love your enemies.
Luke 6:27Jesus makes love concrete.
Love can easily remain an abstract idea.
Jesus refuses to leave it there.
He gives His followers tangible expressions of enemy-love:
- Love your enemies.
- Do good to those who hate you.
- Bless those who curse you.
- Pray for those who mistreat you.
Love. Do good. Bless. Pray.
Jesus is not merely describing a feeling we should attempt to manufacture.
He is describing a way of acting.
A posture.
A pattern of life.
This is an almost impossible kind of love.
The tension in Jesus' words is obvious.
Loving people who love us can already be difficult.
Doing good, blessing, and praying for someone who has actively hurt us feels far more demanding.
We may hear Jesus and immediately think:
I cannot do this.
And in our own strength, that may be exactly the point.
Enemy-love requires hearts that are being reshaped by Jesus.
Sometimes the first step is simply prayer.
We may not be ready for a grand gesture.
We may not know what reconciliation could look like.
We may still be deeply hurt.
But perhaps one beginning point is to pray.
Not because prayer instantly makes the pain disappear.
Not because the wrong suddenly becomes acceptable.
But because praying for a person places our heart before God.
Over time, something can begin to soften.
God can begin changing our hearts even before anything changes in the person who hurt us.
Jesus tells us to resist retaliation.
Jesus then gives the example of someone striking another person on the cheek.
In that social world, such an act could carry not only physical harm but public humiliation.
It could be an attempt to diminish someone.
To make them feel powerless.
Small.
Ashamed.
The instinctive response is familiar:
You hurt me.
Now I have the right to hurt you back.
The world's standard is often like for like. Jesus tells us not to let retaliation determine our response.
Retaliation allows someone else to shape us.
There is a hidden cost to revenge.
When someone does something harmful and we automatically respond in kind, that person has begun determining our behavior.
They become the reason we speak cruelly.
The reason we become vindictive.
The reason we act in a way we would not otherwise act.
Retaliation allows another person's actions to set the terms of our own behavior.
Jesus says:
Do not give them that power.
Let Me shape your response instead.
Someone else's evil does not have to become ours.
That does not mean what happened was acceptable.
It does not mean pretending there is no harm.
It means refusing to allow the harm we received to reproduce itself through us.
The insult does not require another insult.
The hatred does not require hatred.
The cruelty does not require cruelty.
Following Jesus means refusing to let another person's sin determine the kind of person we become.
Jesus also challenges our instinct for self-protection.
Jesus speaks about coats, possessions, lending, giving, and people who take from us.
The principle extends beyond physical belongings.
Sometimes we feel that someone is trying to take our reputation.
Our credit.
Our position.
Our recognition.
Something we believe belongs to us.
Our instinct is to close our hands tightly.
Protect everything.
Preserve ourselves at all costs.
Jesus calls us away from a life governed primarily by self-preservation.
Then Jesus gives us the Golden Rule.
In Luke 6:31, Jesus says:
Do to others as you would have them do to you.
Luke 6:31Most of us know these words.
But their location matters.
Jesus gives them in the middle of a conversation about enemies.
This is not merely advice for getting along with people who already like us.
It is part of Jesus' description of a love that goes beyond reciprocity.
Jesus turns the Golden Rule toward active good.
Variations of the idea existed before Jesus and were often expressed negatively:
Do not do to someone else what you would hate for them to do to you.
Jesus frames the principle positively.
Do.
Act.
Seek the good.
Offer the kind of care you would hope to receive.
Kingdom love does not merely avoid doing harm. It actively seeks the good of another person.
And Jesus removes the expectation of reciprocity.
This may be the most difficult part.
If we are speaking about enemies, the person may not respond well.
They may not appreciate the love.
They may not apologize.
They may not change.
They may not do good in return.
Jesus still says:
Love.
Do good.
Bless.
Pray.
We do good because it is who Jesus is forming us to be, not because we are guaranteed a good response.
Reciprocal love is ordinary.
Jesus asks:
If you love those who love you, what is unusual about that?
Everyone does that.
If you are generous only when you know the favor will be returned, that is simply normal human exchange.
Jesus is describing something beyond exchange.
Grace begins where our calculations of what we will receive in return begin to disappear.
Why would we ever love this way?
Jesus grounds the command in the character of God.
He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Luke 6:35–36Our first instinct may be to think:
Exactly.
God is kind even to that terrible person.
But Jesus' words turn the mirror toward us.
We are among the ungrateful.
We have turned away from God.
We have ignored His goodness.
We have been selfish.
Ungrateful.
Sinful.
And God has still shown mercy.
Enemy-love begins not with remembering how wrong someone else has been, but with remembering how merciful God has been to us.
Our love reflects the Father.
Jesus says that His followers should live as children of the Most High.
The point is not that loving our enemies earns God's love.
We are not trying to make God accept us.
We love this way because we already belong to Him.
The reward is becoming people whose lives increasingly reflect the mercy of our Father.
Our standard of love is no longer:
How did this person treat me?
Our standard becomes:
How has God treated me?
Paul brings Jesus' teaching into ordinary Christian life.
Romans 12 shows that enemy-love was not meant to remain an inspiring idea from one sermon.
Paul writes:
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.
Romans 12:14Then:
Do not repay evil for evil.
Live at peace where possible.
Do not take revenge.
Feed an enemy who is hungry.
Give drink to one who is thirsty.
And finally:
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:21Peace is not always entirely within our control.
Paul includes an important qualification:
If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
Romans 12:18Sometimes peace is not possible.
We cannot control another person's response.
We cannot force repentance.
We cannot manufacture reconciliation.
We are responsible for what depends on us.
Forgiveness, reconciliation, and trust are not the same thing.
This distinction matters when relationships have been deeply wounded.
Forgiveness is something we can choose before God.
We can release our demand to personally exact revenge.
We can give our anger and pain to God again and again.
Reconciliation is different.
Reconciliation requires two people moving toward truth, humility, repentance, and repair.
Trust is different again.
Trust is built through faithfulness over time.
Loving someone does not require pretending a broken relationship is already reconciled or that damaged trust has already been restored.
We can entrust justice to God.
Paul also tells us not to take revenge but to leave room for God's judgment.
That is difficult when something genuinely unjust has happened.
We want to make it right.
We want the person to feel the pain they caused.
We want the scales balanced.
Paul asks:
Can we entrust God with the wrong we experienced instead of allowing revenge to consume us?
Revenge can allow evil to keep winning.
When anger becomes the lens through which we see everything, the original wrong continues shaping us.
Hatred fills more space.
Bitterness becomes more deeply rooted.
Our enemy may not even be present, yet the harm they caused continues directing our inner life.
Do not allow the evil done to you to become the evil that shapes you.
Paul gives us another way:
Overcome evil with good.
The gospel gives us the deepest reason.
How can we possibly love people who have opposed us?
Paul takes us back to what God has already done.
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8He goes even farther:
While we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son.
Romans 5:10God loved us while we were His enemies.
That is the foundation beneath Jesus' command.
We were not easy to love.
We were not perfectly responsive.
We were not people who had first done good for God and then earned goodness back.
God moved toward us.
Christ gave Himself for us.
Mercy came before we deserved it.
We are able to extend mercy because mercy has already been extended to us.
Communion reminds us what love looks like.
Jesus gave His disciples a meal to help them remember.
Bread.
A cup.
His body given.
His blood poured out.
Communion anchors us again in the reality that we are people who have been loved at enormous cost.
When extending mercy feels impossible, we return to the mercy we have received.
Before Jesus asks us to love our enemies, He shows us how deeply He has loved His.
For some of us, the next step may be healing.
Perhaps the harm is still too fresh.
The wound is still deep.
You cannot yet imagine what loving the person could possibly look like.
Your next faithful step may be allowing God to meet you in the wound.
Bringing Him your anger.
Your grief.
Your fear.
Your disappointment.
Sometimes the journey toward enemy-love begins by allowing Jesus to heal what the enemy has wounded.
For some of us, the next step may be prayer.
Maybe you know exactly whose name belongs here.
And perhaps the most concrete thing you can do this week is pray.
Not a passive-aggressive prayer.
Not a prayer that God would simply prove you right.
But a genuine act of placing that person before Him.
What might begin to happen in us if we consistently prayed for the people who have hurt us?
Love beyond the boundaries you have created.
Jesus' invitation presses us beyond the circle of people who are easy.
Beyond the people who reciprocate.
Beyond those who agree with us.
Beyond those who have earned our kindness.
This is not natural love.
It is Kingdom love.
Jesus reshapes how we love others, calling us to extend the same mercy we've received from God even to our enemies.
Pray before you retaliate.
Think of one person you find difficult to love. You do not need to minimize what happened or force reconciliation. Begin by bringing that person, and your own heart, honestly before God.
- Name: Be honest with God about what this person did, how it affected you, and what you currently feel.
- Notice: Where are their actions beginning to determine your own behavior, thoughts, or posture?
- Pray: Pray for them by name, asking God to work in their life and to keep reshaping your own heart.
- Entrust: Give the injustice and your desire for revenge to God rather than carrying the responsibility to make everything right yourself.
- Act: Ask whether there is one wise, healthy, concrete way you can do good without ignoring necessary boundaries.
Reflection Questions
- Where have I allowed someone's treatment of me to shape the way I treat them?
- What is one practical way I could extend love to someone I find difficult to love?
A Prayer for Enemy-Love
Jesus, Your command to love my enemies is difficult, and I need You to reshape my heart. Thank You that You do not ask me to pretend that harm is good, ignore injustice, or remain where I am unsafe. Give me wisdom to walk with healthy boundaries while refusing to let another person's actions determine the kind of person I become. Show me where retaliation, bitterness, self-protection, or the desire for revenge has taken root in me. Teach me to do good, bless, and pray even when I receive nothing in return. Help me entrust justice to You. And when loving someone feels impossible, remind me that while I was still a sinner and an enemy, You loved me and gave Yourself for me. Let the mercy I have received become mercy that flows through my life. Amen.
