Matthew 5:44
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
When We Were God’s Enemies
Jesus tells us to not only love our enemies but actually pray for our persecutors. Easy to say but so very hard to do it, isn’t it? I know that we were once enemies of God (Rom. 5:10) and wicked sinners (Rom. 5:8), but God saved us through faith in Christ. Our enemies are not really our enemies but enemies of Christ. They may not actually hate us as much as they hate Him Who is in us (Matt. 10:22; John 15:18). If we love only those who love us, what makes us any different from those in the world since even sinners love their own family? To make us more like the sons and daughters of God, we are commanded to love our enemies so that we might be more like the children of God (Matt. 5:45).
Loving the Unlovable
Since God loved us enough to send His Son to die for us, which is truly something we didn’t deserve, should we not also love and pray for those who are persecuting us and those who are our enemies? We are giving them what they don’t deserve, just as God gave us what we didn’t deserve–we call that grace. What we truly did deserve we didn’t actually get–that’s what I call mercy. How many of us were living in sexual immorality and were greedy, slanderers, adulterers, thieves, drunkards, and swindlers (1 Cor. 6:9-10)? I would imagine that most of us were some, if not most, of these things at one time, but by God’s good grace, that is all now behind us because we’ve been washed in the blood, sanctified by God’s Spirit, and justified by the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 6:11). We now have the righteousness of Christ through Jesus’ work on the cross, and the Father sees us as having Jesus’ own righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21). We should have the same compassion on those who are not yet saved as God had for us.
Being Different
Since we have now been justified by God in Christ and have been saved by grace (Eph. 2:8-9), we should be witnessing to the lost, loving those who are our enemies, and praying for them because God doesn’t want anyone to perish (2 Pet. 3;9), and neither should we. If we respond in like manner to the way we are treated, we’re no better than the unsaved tax collector in Jesus’ time (Matt. 5:46). If we only receive our own brothers and sisters, aren’t we the same as those in the world (Matt. 5:47)? The answer to that rhetorical question is no, we are no different than the unsaved. Christ calls us to better things than that and to strive for perfection (Matt. 5:48) and not live like the world.
A Closing Prayer
God, I truly need help in praying for my enemies because it is not natural for me to do so. Please empower me by Your Spirit to have the ability to love my enemies and pray for those who are my persecutors because I cannot do it in my own strength, and I pray for these things in Jesus’ name.
Amen
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