Tom is one of the most genuinely kind people I know. Steady, generous, the kind of guy who remembers your kids’ names and asks follow-up questions. But a few years back he got into a nasty dispute with a neighbor. A long story involving a fence, a property survey, and what I can only describe as a truly legendary level of pettiness on both sides. It dragged on for months.
One Sunday Tom came home from church and recounted The minister preached on loving your enemies.” Long pause. Then: “I didn’t care for it.”
I’ve thought about that a lot. Not because Tom was wrong to push back. But because his reaction is so honest. Most of us, if we’re being straight about it, don’t actually want to love our enemies. We want to be vindicated by them. Or, failing that, we want to win.
“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”
-Luke 6:27-28 (NIV
A Verse That Should Come With a Warning Label
Luke 6 is not the kind of verse you stumble into casually. Jesus is mid-sermon, and he says to 1) love your enemies, 2) do good to those who hate you, 3) bless those who curse you, and finally, 4) pray for those who mistreat you.
Four commands. One sentence. Each one more uncomfortable than the last.
Love your enemies. That’s already a lot. Do good to those who hate you — okay, we’re past uncomfortable and into something that sounds almost clinically unreasonable. Bless those who curse you. And pray for those who mistreat you.
I’ve read this passage probably a hundred times. I still feel friction every single time. Because Jesus isn’t speaking theoretically here. He’s not talking about mildly annoying people or friends who let you down. He says enemies. People who actively hate you. People who curse you, which in the ancient world carried real weight, not just colorful language.
He’s describing people who mean you harm. And he’s telling you to bless them!
The Word Behind the Instruction
The word translated “bless” here is the Greek eulogēo, which is exactly where we get “eulogy.” To speak well of. To say good things about. Not mumble something grudging under your breath. Speak well.
That’s not just hard. In a lot of contexts today, it feels borderline impossible.
Think about the landscapes where enemies actually show up in our lives. Not in the abstract. Real ones.
The political leader whose policies you believe cause genuine harm to real people you know and love, people who are vulnerable. The corporate CEO who lobbied against social good community projects to protect their corporate profits. The church member who circulated rumors about you, or worse, about someone you were trying to protect. The family member who consistently dismisses and minimizes your opinions, faith or causes at family gatherings.
Now bless them. Speak well of them. Pray for them.
If that instruction doesn’t produce at least a little internal resistance in you, I’m not sure you’re reading it right.
This Isn’t the Same as “Both Sides”
Here’s where I want to slow down, because there’s a version of this teaching that gets used in a way Jesus almost certainly didn’t intend.
“Love your enemies” does not mean pretend the conflict isn’t real. It doesn’t mean refuse to name injustice or stop advocating for people who are being harmed. It doesn’t mean sit quietly in the pew while someone uses the church budget as a personal ATM, or stay polite at the city council meeting while a community is being bulldozed for a parking structure.
Paul, in Romans 12:14, writes about blessing those who persecute you in the very same passage where he says “do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Those two things aren’t in tension. The call to bless is not a call to be passive. It’s a call about how you engage, not whether you engage.
Advocating for the marginalized, speaking truth to power, standing up for what’s right — all of that is still on the table. In fact, if we’ve been paying attention to the earlier pieces in this series, it’s still required. The call to act justly and love mercy doesn’t have an asterisk that says “except when things get really serious.”
But here’s what Luke 6 adds to that picture: the way you do it matters. The spirit you carry into the fight matters. If you’ve dehumanized your opponent in your own mind (quietly stopped thinking of them as a person made in God’s image and started thinking of them as simply an obstacle, or an enemy, or a category), that matters enormously.
Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: you can be entirely right about an issue and still be responding to it in a way that looks nothing like what Jesus describes here. The rightness of your cause does not automatically sanctify your conduct.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. That’s not a bumper sticker. It’s actually a pretty good summary of Luke 6.
What Blessing an Enemy Actually Looks Like
I’m not going to pretend this is simple. But I think it’s more concrete than it first appears.
Rachel works in advocacy, specifically around youth justice. She’s been doing it for years, and she’s very good at it. She’s also, by her own description, someone who has had to wrestle seriously with this question. Because some of the people she opposes in that work have done things that caused real suffering to real families. It’s not abstract for her.
She told me once that she decided early on to never refer to her opponents by a nickname, never mock them publicly, and never let herself stop praying for them, even when she was furious with them. “Not because they deserve it,” she said. “Because I need to keep seeing them as human. The moment I stop doing that, I become exactly what I’m fighting against.”
That’s not softness. That’s discipline. It’s a practice, the same way justice is a practice.
Blessing your enemies doesn’t mean endorsing what they do. It means refusing to strip them of their humanity in your own mind and in your public words. It means praying for them (actually, genuinely, not as a performance) which does something to you even before it does anything to them. It means checking whether the way you talk about the people you oppose would make someone who overheard you think: that person follows Jesus.
That last one is the hardest one for me. Especially online. Especially right now.
Why This Might Be the Point
Jesus doesn’t just give the command in Luke 6. He gives the reason. He says: love your enemies, do good and lend without expecting anything back, and your reward will be great and you’ll be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.
There it is! The reason we bless enemies isn’t because they’ve earned it. It’s because God is kind to people who haven’t earned it. And if we’ve received that kind of grace, the unearned, frankly unreasonable kind, then becoming people who extend it is the whole project.
The call to justice isn’t canceled by Luke 6. But Luke 6 puts the frame around it. We pursue justice and advocate for the vulnerable and refuse to look away from suffering. And we do all of that as people who have themselves received mercy. Which means we do it without writing anyone off. Without making our cause more important than our character. Without letting the righteousness of what we’re fighting for become permission to become something we wouldn’t otherwise want to be.
Tom eventually settled the fence dispute. I asked him once if he ever actually managed to pray for his neighbor.
He thought about it for a second. “Once or twice,” he said. “Mostly I prayed that he’d realize he was wrong.” Pause. “I don’t think that’s quite what Jesus had in mind.”
No. But it’s an honest start. And maybe honest is where most of us actually begin.
Our job isn’t to make sure the other person gets it right. Our job is to make sure our part is the right.
For Further Reflection
Think of someone you genuinely consider an adversary — politically, socially, or closer to home. When you talk about them, or talk to them, would someone listening know you follow Jesus? What would it look like to bless them this week, not as a performance, and not as an endorsement of what they’ve done, but as a practice of seeing them the way God sees you?
Incredibly practical and needed discourse on a topic that is causing serious division and harm in the world and the church itself. If we might all pause and reflect how we are applying this scripture to our lives, we would truly be blessed. I will certainly start by intentionally avoiding the dehumanization and judgment that comes when I view a group of people and lump them into a nickname. That’s a tool of the evil one for sure! I also appreciate how you made it clear we can still focus our attention on speaking up for the disenfranchised but without the need for sowing hate against people. May God grant us greater insight and understanding and the heart to put this into practice. Thanks Harvey!
In God's image. Yes, that is the key! The key to race, status, gender, etc. Who are we to have forgotten the grace given to us, only to face the world with a pocket full of prejudices? Your point about not creating nicknames so as to not dehumanize is something practical we can exercise. If I'm being honest, my first step-and often my last-to loving my enemies is to not escalate the issue. The guidance you've expressed in this series is so helpful. Praying for your enemies is part of walking humbly with your God.