There is probably someone on your mind right now. Maybe a coworker who undermined you. A family member who caused real harm. A neighbor who seems to go out of their way to make your life harder. Or someone who hurt you so deeply that even reading the words “love your enemies” feels like a small betrayal of everything you went through.
This article is for you. Not to minimize what happened. Not to tell you the pain wasn’t real. But to sit with you in one of the hardest commands Jesus ever gave, and to take it seriously enough to actually think through what it means, and what it doesn’t.
What the Bible Says About Loving Your Enemies
The command to love your enemies is not buried in an obscure corner of Scripture. Jesus placed it front and center in the Sermon on the Mount, right after addressing hatred and anger. He wasn’t speaking theoretically. His audience had real enemies: Roman occupiers, corrupt religious leaders, neighbors who cheated them in business. He knew exactly what he was asking.
And he asked it anyway.
This is perhaps the most countercultural command in all of Scripture. Every human instinct says: protect yourself, keep score, and at minimum stay cold toward people who hurt you. Jesus says something else entirely. He says love them. Pray for them. Do good to them.
Before we get to the verses, it helps to clear something up. Loving your enemies does not mean pretending the harm wasn’t real. It does not mean reconciling with someone who is still unsafe. It does not mean becoming a doormat or excusing ongoing abuse. Biblical love is not the same as trust, and it is not the same as restored relationship. Sometimes love for an enemy looks like honest prayer for their soul while maintaining firm distance from their behavior.
What it does mean is this: you refuse to let bitterness own you. You release the desire for revenge. You wish them well enough to pray for them honestly. And, when it is safe and possible, you act with grace rather than retaliation.
That is still extremely hard. Let’s look at what Scripture actually says.
Key Scriptures on Loving Your Enemies
1. Matthew 5:44
“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
This is the anchor verse, the line that started a thousand uncomfortable sermons. Jesus delivers it in the context of rejecting the older pattern of loving your neighbor while hating your enemy. He does not just raise the bar; he removes the category of “people I’m allowed to hate” altogether.
The word translated “love” here is the Greek “agape,” the deliberate, willed love that chooses the good of another regardless of how you feel. Jesus is not asking you to manufacture warm feelings toward someone who hurt you. He is asking you to orient your will toward their good, specifically through prayer. Prayer is the starting point because it moves you out of the position of judge and into honest dependence on God. You cannot truly pray for someone and stay purely hateful toward them at the same time. Something shifts.
2. Romans 12:20-21
“On the contrary: ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Paul is quoting Proverbs here (more on that below), and he wraps it in one of the most practical summaries in the New Testament. The “burning coals” image has puzzled readers for centuries. Most scholars believe it refers not to punishment but to shame, the kind that might actually soften a hard heart. When you respond to an enemy’s cruelty with unexpected kindness, you disrupt their narrative. You make it harder for them to keep casting you as the villain.
But notice Paul’s real point in verse 21: do not be overcome by evil. That is what retaliation does. When you respond to cruelty with cruelty, the evil has won twice. It wounded you first, and now it has shaped your behavior too. Overcoming evil with good is not just a strategy for changing your enemy. It is a way of protecting your own soul.
3. Luke 6:27-28
“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’s version of Jesus’s teaching gives us four distinct, concrete actions: love, do good, bless, pray. That progression is worth slowing down for. It moves from the internal (love) to the active (do good) to the verbal (bless) to the relational (pray). Jesus is not giving a single vague instruction. He is giving a full-body response to hatred.
“Bless those who curse you” is particularly challenging. When someone speaks against you, slanders your name, or dismisses your worth, your instinct is to defend yourself or return fire. Jesus suggests something that sounds almost absurd: speak well of them. Not falsely. Not by pretending the harm didn’t happen. But by refusing to let their curse be the last word you carry.
This is also the passage where Jesus famously asks what credit it is to love only the people who love you back. He names that as the baseline, the thing everyone already does. Loving your enemies is what marks a life shaped by God’s own character, because God sends rain on both the just and the unjust.
4. Proverbs 25:21-22
“If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.”
This Old Testament passage is striking because it shows that the ethic Jesus taught was not entirely new. The seeds were already in the Hebrew wisdom tradition. Long before the Sermon on the Mount, God was calling his people to respond to enemies with practical generosity.
The final line matters: “and the Lord will reward you.” This is not a prosperity promise. It is a reminder that you can release the need to settle the score yourself because God sees. You do not have to make your enemy pay because you are not the judge. God is. That awareness is actually what makes genuine enemy-love possible. You can afford to be generous because you are not operating from scarcity or fear. God is the one keeping accounts, and he is trustworthy.
Practical Steps to Actually Do This
Understanding these verses is one thing. Living them when you are angry, hurt, or exhausted is another. Here are a few ways to begin.
Start with honest prayer, not performed prayer. You do not have to begin by praying sweetly for your enemy’s blessing if that feels false. Start with honesty: “God, I don’t want to pray for this person, but I’m willing to be made willing.” That is a real prayer. It invites God into the actual state of your heart, not the state you think you’re supposed to have.
Distinguish between love and trust. Loving your enemy does not require putting yourself back in harm’s way. You can wish someone well and still maintain firm boundaries. You can pray for someone’s redemption and still not answer their calls. Do not let the command to love be weaponized into pressure to tolerate ongoing harm.
Look for one small act of goodness. Paul says overcome evil with good. You do not have to overhaul your feelings overnight. Is there one small, concrete thing you can do this week? Maybe it is refraining from a cutting remark when you have the chance. Maybe it is praying one sentence for someone who wronged you. Start there.
Remember you were once someone else’s enemy. Romans 5:10 says that while we were enemies of God, Christ died for us. You were not reconciled to God because you deserved it. That reality softens the ground. It does not mean your pain is invalid. It means you are praying from a position of someone who has already received grace you didn’t earn.
A Closing Prayer
Lord, this command is hard. There are people in my life who have caused real pain, and loving them feels impossible. I don’t want to manufacture feelings I don’t have, so I’m asking you to do the work in me that I cannot do on my own. Shift my heart. Take the bitterness that is poisoning me from the inside. Help me want good for the people who have not wanted good for me. And protect me from confusing love with the absence of healthy boundaries. Let me be someone who overcomes evil with good, even when it costs me something. Amen.
You may not feel any of this yet. That is okay. The willingness to come to this passage honestly, to sit with it and not dismiss it, is itself a beginning.
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