Biblion Bible Commentary
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Love Your Enemies
Matthew 5:43-48
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ · WEB
The sixth and the summit: a command with no precedent, grounded in what God does with weather.
"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy'" Matthew 5:43.
The first half is Scripture Leviticus 19:18; the second half is not, and appears nowhere in the law. It is the inference people had drawn — if the command names the neighbor, the rest are presumably outside it — and the whole paragraph is aimed at that inference. The same misreading is what prompts the question about who counts as a neighbor and gets a Samaritan for an answer Luke 10:29–37.
"But I tell you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you" Matthew 5:44.
Four verbs, and none of them is a feeling. Love here is what you do; bless, do good and pray are its content, and praying for a persecutor is the one that cannot be done insincerely for long. It is a command about action precisely because affection cannot be commanded.
"That you may be children of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust" Matthew 5:45.
The ground is not that enemies deserve it or that the treatment will convert them. It is family resemblance. God's daily provision falls on people who hate him, without distinction, and it has done every morning of their lives — so a child of that Father who withholds good from an enemy is behaving unlike the family he claims. The argument is the same one Paul makes about God's kindness leading to repentance Romans 2:4.
"For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Don't even the tax collectors do the same?" Matthew 5:46.
The measure offered is not whether one's conduct is decent but whether it is distinguishable. Loving those who love you and greeting your own circle are what everybody does, including the people the audience most despised — and the sermon's question is what more the kingdom's people do than others.
"Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect" Matthew 5:48.
The word closes the six paragraphs and means whole or complete rather than faultless — undivided, brought to its intended end, the same idea the Old Testament uses of a heart wholly with God. In context it is precisely about the impartiality just described: God's goodness has no boundary drawn around it, and neither should the love of those who belong to him. As a demand it is impossible; as the sermon's statement of what the kingdom produces, it is the thing the beatitudes promised at the start.
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