What Loving Your Enemies Means

The last thing I wrote said make no peace with evil, ever. This one is going to sound like the opposite, and it is not, and the difference between the two is one of the most important things a man can get straight.

Evil gets no peace. Your enemy gets your love.

Because your enemy is not evil. Read that again. Your enemy is a human being. He is flesh and blood, made by the same God who made you, a man carrying his own long list of sins the same way you carry yours. He is not the darkness. He is a person the darkness is working on, exactly like it works on you. When Jesus tells you to love him, He is not telling you to love evil. He is telling you to love a man.

That is the whole key. Most men choke on "love your enemies" because they picture loving evil, and their gut rightly refuses. But that is not the command. God never told you to love the sin. He told you to love the sinner, and He gave you that command from the mouth of His own Son.

"But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

Matthew 5:44, NASB 1995

Now I have to tell you what that does not mean, because this is where good men get hurt by bad teaching.

Loving your enemy does not mean liking him. You are not commanded to have warm feelings about the man who wronged you. Feelings are not on the table here. This is a decision, not a mood.

Loving your enemy does not mean trusting him. Love and trust are two different things. Trust is earned and can be lost, and a man who has proven he will hurt you has not earned it back by you forgiving him. You can love a man and not hand him the keys again.

Loving your enemy does not mean dropping every boundary. Jesus loved everyone and still walked away from crowds, still went silent in front of Herod, still told people no. Love is not the absence of a fence. Sometimes love is the fence.

So what is it, then. If it is not liking and not trusting and not tearing down every wall, what did He actually command? Three hard, specific things.

One. Refuse revenge. This is the spine of it. You do not get to pay him back. Not with your hands, not with your words, not with the quiet campaign you run against his name when he is not in the room. Vengeance is off the table for you, completely, and here is why it is not you being weak.

"Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,' says the Lord."

Romans 12:19, NASB 1995

You are not letting him get away with it. You are handing the case to a Judge who sees everything you did not see, who cannot be lied to, and who will do perfect justice, which is more than your revenge could ever manage. Refusing revenge is not surrender. It is transferring the file to a higher court.

Two. Pray for him. Actually pray for him, by name, for his good and not through gritted teeth for his downfall. This is the one that changes you more than it changes him. You cannot hold a knife for a man and pray for him at the same time. The praying makes you set the knife down. That is half the reason God commands it. He is not only working on your enemy. He is prying the knife out of your hand.

Three. Leave justice to God. Whatever was done to you, if it was real, it will be answered, either at the cross where Christ already paid for it or at the judgment where the man will. Nothing gets skipped. You do not have to be the one who balances the books, and the relief in that is enormous once you actually let go of it.

That is the command. Refuse revenge, pray for him, leave the justice to God. Notice what is not in there. It does not say pretend it did not happen. It does not say call the harm good. It does not say make yourself unsafe. You can do every one of those three things and still be the hardest man in the world to walk over.

Here is the picture I want you to carry. The man who wronged you is not your enemy the way the darkness is your enemy. He is a fellow prisoner of the same sin you fight, losing his own war, and God loves him and wants him back the same way God wanted you back on your worst day. You are not asked to approve of what he did. You are asked to want for him what God wanted for you when you were the one in the wrong.

Hate the evil. All of it. Give it nothing. And then love the man, because he is not the evil. He is just a man, like you, and the God who reached down and got you is reaching for him too.