This essay first appeared in our weekly Scripture reflection newsletter on February 21, 2025.
Jesus’s command to “love your enemies” is as radical today as it was when he first uttered it—and just as difficult to do. But to ignore, downplay or explain it away because of its radicality or difficulty would be wrong, both in Jesus’s time and in our own.
In the time of Jesus, much of Greek philosophy and popular thinking would have considered it perfectly fine to hate your enemies. The classics scholar Mary Whitlock Blundell, author of Helping Friends and Harming Enemies, wrote, “Greek popular thought is pervaded by the assumption that one should help one’s friends and harm one’s enemies. These fundamental principles surface continually from Homer onwards and survive well into the Roman period.” One can imagine people nodding their heads at that today, especially if you spend any time on social media or at political rallies.
The Torah, of course, asks the people of Israel to “love our neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18), including the “alien” or “stranger” who resides in the community (Ex 23:9). The Book of Exodus enjoins people to return the lost ox or donkey of an enemy (23:4). And the Book of Proverbs counsels, “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat. If he is thirsty, give him water to drink.” That verse continues, “In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you” (25:21-22).
In the reign of God, the ethical standard is not simply to love as you would want to be loved, but something more difficult: to love as God loves.
As a devout Jew, Jesus deepens these teachings with the fourfold command to love your enemies, do good to those who persecute you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who mistreat you. In saying this, he invites us into the ethos of the reign of God, where one does these things without the expectation of being repaid. As he says, pointedly, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.” No; in the reign of God, the ethical standard is not simply to love as you would want to be loved, but something more difficult: to love as God loves. In the Sacra Pagina series, Luke Timothy Johnson notes, “As God is kind towards all creatures, even those who are not themselves kind, even wicked, so are these disciples meant to be.”
One way of looking at this is that Jesus dissolves the boundaries between who is “in” and who is “out.” When confronted with demands from his own family, Jesus says, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Mt 12:48-50). In a sense, he is saying that in the reign of God we are all part of one family. With the command to love our enemies, he is saying, in the reign of God we are all friends.
I can imagine someone saying, “Easy for him to say! But practically speaking, that’s impossible.” Well, it’s important to remember that Jesus is speaking practically. For one thing, he presumes that you have enemies, a very real-world presumption. Otherwise, the command to love them makes no sense. And can anyone doubt that Jesus had enemies? Certainly, in the end, the Romans, or at the very least Pontius Pilate, who condemned him to death, were his enemies. And growing up in Nazareth, he must have seen people at odds with one another. So, Jesus understood human nature.
Most times, we can try to enter the reign of God by choosing to treat our enemies with love and kindness, even while expecting no recompense.
Is it possible to love your enemies today? Well, one insight that has helped me is St. Ignatius Loyola’s dictum, “Love shows itself more in deeds than in words.” My sense is that Jesus was not talking so much about an emotional response (far less a romantic form of love) than the way that we act towards people. So, while you may not have much affection for a person who trashes you online, makes fun of you in school or opposes you at work, you can certainly treat them with love. You can choose to act lovingly. And perhaps, through God’s grace, you might begin to see them as God sees them.
The shift from act to thought is a big one. I don’t know if I’ve ever loved (with affection) someone who was still my enemy, but I’ve always tried to treat them with charity and love. As the saying goes, it’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.
And you can always ask for the grace to see the person the way that God sees them. Usually, a person who is hateful to you has experienced a great deal of hate in his or her own life.
It may be close to impossible to feel warm feelings towards people who mistreat us. And I’m certainly not advocating putting up with any forms of abuse or being a doormat. Most times, though, we can try to enter the reign of God by choosing to treat our enemies with love and kindness, even while expecting no recompense. In this way we can enter the reign of love that God desires for us all, knowing that we are doing what Jesus asks, the knowledge of which is no small thing.
