Love Your Enemies

Of all the things Jesus taught, this may be the one most admired and least practiced. "Love your enemies" sounds noble in a sermon. It sounds very different when the enemy is real: a rival, an attacker, a nation, the other side.

You have likely seen Christians who are quickest to call for retaliation, treat political opponents as enemies of God, and cheer for force. If you've pointed that out to people you love, you know how alone it can feel. This lesson shows what Jesus actually said, how plainly the first Christians obeyed it, and when the church changed its mind.

Read it3 min

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus quoted the old rule of fair retaliation and went past it.

Luke records the same teaching, with a line that leaves no room for exceptions.

The world behind the words4 min

Jesus spoke these words in an occupied country. Roman soldiers were everywhere in Judea and Galilee, and the people listening had real enemies: soldiers, tax collectors, landlords, rival groups. Some of their neighbors wanted to rise up and drive Rome out by force, and within forty years of his death they did, and Jerusalem was destroyed.

Every example he chose came from that world. The scholar Walter Wink argued that a strike on the right cheek meant a blow with the back of the right hand, an insult, the way a master struck a servant. Being sued for your coat was the fate of the very poor, whose coat might be all they owned. And "Whoever compels you to go one mile" referred to Roman practice: a soldier could force a civilian to carry his pack for a mile. Jesus said, carry it two. These were not abstract ideals. They were instructions for how to treat the occupying army.

Notice also what he quoted: "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." The first half is in the Law of Moses. The second half is not. It was a common attitude, and some groups wrote it down; one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, found in caves near the Dead Sea, instructs its members to love "all the sons of light" and hate "all the sons of darkness." Jesus named that attitude and overturned it. God, he said, "makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good."

He lived it to the end. When Peter drew a sword to defend him at his arrest, Jesus stopped him: "Put your sword back into its place, for all those who take the sword will die by the sword" Matthew 26:52. And on the cross, Luke records him praying for the men executing him: "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing" Luke 23:34.

How it drifted5 min

For roughly the first three centuries, Christian writers whose words survive taught that Jesus' command ruled out killing. Justin Martyr, around 150, wrote that Christians who once killed one another now refused even to make war on their enemies. Tertullian, around 200, put it in one line: in disarming Peter, the Lord disarmed every soldier. Origen, around 248, answered a pagan critic by saying Christians served the emperor with prayer, not weapons.

Then the church met power. In 312 the Roman emperor Constantine won a battle after, by his account, seeing a Christian sign, and had it painted on his soldiers' shields. Within a lifetime Christianity was the favored religion of the empire, and the empire had wars to fight. Around 400, Augustine of Hippo, the most influential theologian of the Western church, developed what became the "just war" tradition: war could be right if waged by a proper authority, for a just cause, with right intentions.

The just-war idea was meant to restrain violence. Seven centuries later, it was stretched into something else. In 1095 Pope Urban II called the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont, promising crusaders the remission of their penance. In 1099 the crusaders took Jerusalem and slaughtered much of its population, Muslim and Jewish. Holy war had come full circle: the cross that had disarmed Peter was now sewn on soldiers' clothing.

The drift continues in a quieter form. In 2009, a Pew Research Center survey found that Americans who attended religious services at least weekly were more likely than those who seldom or never attended to say that torturing suspected terrorists could often or sometimes be justified.

What they'll say back3 min

"Jesus told his disciples to buy swords." In Luke 22:36 he did say, "Whoever has none, sell his cloak and buy a sword." Two verses later the disciples show him two swords, and he says, "That is enough," and a few hours later, when one of those swords is used, he stops it and heals the wounded man. Whatever the sword saying meant, he did not let it be used to defend him.

"Loving enemies doesn't mean letting evil win. Governments must protect people." That is a serious argument, and Christians have made it in good faith for centuries. But it is an argument about governments, and Jesus was speaking to his followers. Even if a state may defend its people, nothing in the just-war tradition permits a Christian to hate an opponent, wish them harm or cheer their suffering. That part of his teaching has no exceptions.

Measured against the center2 min

Measured against the center, there is little room for argument, and this is a contradiction, not an add-on. Jesus said love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you, and put away the sword. The first Christians took him literally. Crusades, revenge and contempt for opponents in his name are not additions to his teaching; they are its reversal.

What you noticed is real. When Christians call for revenge or treat the other side as subhuman, they are doing the opposite of what their founder said, and the earliest Christians would have recognized it at once. You can say so calmly; Matthew 5:44 is on your side.

A keeper1 min

"Love your enemies" is the hardest teaching here, and one of the most powerful in practice. It does not mean pretending wrong is right. It means refusing to return hatred, wishing your enemy well, and doing them good when you can.

Martin Luther King Jr. built a movement on these verses. In his sermon "Loving Your Enemies," first preached in 1957 and published in Strength to Love in 1963, he wrote: "Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

You don't need faith to see the wisdom in it. Refusing to hate the person who wronged you frees you, and kindness to an opponent disarms them more often than force does. Plenty of people outside any church have lived this better than the Christians around them.

Reflect2 min

1. Where have you seen Christians treat their opponents as enemies of God?
2. Did the history of early Christian nonviolence surprise you? Why or why not?
3. Is there someone you would find it hard to wish well? What would change if you did?

Take your time with each one. There is space to write your answers in the book and the PDF.

Practice this week1 min

This week, notice how the Christians around you talk about their opponents, in person, in the news and online. Write down one example of contempt and, if you find one, one example of genuine kindness toward an enemy.

Bring it back1 min

Remember it

Love the enemy. Matthew 5:44: "Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you." The one who said it prayed for his executioners.

Two circles, overlapping: a dark circle and a coral circle meet, and where they overlap the paper turns to gold. Love the enemy.

1. What did Jesus say to Peter when Peter drew his sword?
   "Put your sword back into its place, for all those who take the sword will die by the sword" (Matthew 26:52).
2. What did the earliest Christian writers teach about killing?
   That Christians do not kill; in disarming Peter, Jesus disarmed every soldier.
3. What did a Roman soldier have the right to make a civilian do, and what did Jesus say to do?
   Carry his pack one mile. Carry it two (Matthew 5:41).

Show the answers