Biblion Bible Commentary
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Love Your Enemies
Luke 6:27-36
27 “But I tell you who hear: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, · WEB
The hardest instruction in the sermon, argued from what God is already like toward the ungrateful.
"But I tell you who hear: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you" Luke 6:27.
The teaching is given at length in Matthew's account Matthew 5:38–48. Three features of this telling are its own.
The first is the address. I tell you who hear — spoken directly after the woes, to whoever is still listening. This is not general instruction; it is aimed at the people who have just been told that being hated is part of the arrangement. Love your enemies is said to people who now have some.
The second is that it is all verbs. Love... do good... bless... pray Luke 6:27–28, then giving, lending and turning the cheek. Nothing is asked about feeling. Every item is something a person can do on a day when they do not feel like it, which is the only form such a command could take.
"Give to everyone who asks you, and don't ask him who takes away your goods to give them back again" Luke 6:30. The instruction is stated without the qualifications a careful reader immediately wants, and the lack of them is deliberate. It sets a direction rather than a policy; a rule with the exceptions written in would be obeyed only in the exceptions.
"As you would like people to do to you, do exactly so to them" Luke 6:31. The rule is put positively, which is the whole difference. Not doing what you would hate is achievable by staying home; doing what you would want requires going out.
The third feature is the argument, and it is the strongest part of the passage. "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them" Luke 6:32.
The test applied three times is whether the behavior distinguishes anything. Loving those who love you, doing good to those who do good, lending to those who will repay — all three are perfectly decent and all three are what everybody already does. The standard is not be good; it is be more than reciprocal, because reciprocity is universal and therefore says nothing about whose child you are.
"But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing back; and your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind toward the unthankful and evil" Luke 6:35.
The reason given is not that it works, or that enemies will be won over, or that it is noble. It is that God is like this already. He is kind toward the unthankful and evil — which is a description of how the world is currently being run, with rain and harvests going to people who never acknowledge where they came from.
"Therefore be merciful, even as your Father is also merciful" Luke 6:36. The summary in this account is mercy, where the other has perfection. Both are the same standard named from different sides, and mercy is the one that tells you what to do on Monday.
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