Almost everyone has heard the line “love your neighbor and hate your enemy,” and most people assume it comes straight out of the Bible. It does not. That second half is in no book of scripture anywhere. People added it, and then they lived by it for generations, and for a long time faith and fighting went together because of it. Your side was God’s side. Their side was the enemy.
Then a man stood up on a hillside in front of a crowd, held that saying up where everyone could see it, and told them it had never come from his Father at all.
So let us go up that hill and listen to what he actually said, and then look at the old law ourselves and see what is really written there.
The rule that was never in the book
Jesus was teaching a huge crowd on a hill. People had come from far away just to hear him. And he kept doing a strange thing. He would take a rule everyone knew, hold it up, and then say something bigger.
That day he held up one that everybody had grown up on.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.Matthew 5:43
What comes next is the part that rarely gets quoted.
Jesus did not say “it is written.” He said “ye have heard it said,” and that is a different thing. When he wanted to quote God’s law, he said “it is written.” Here he did not, because “hate thine enemy” was never in God’s law at all.
Go back and read the old law yourself. That line is not in the law of Moses. What is there says do not hate. It says love your neighbor as yourself.
Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.Leviticus 19:18
So where did “hate your enemy” come from? People added it. Whole groups back then taught it, and we even found their own writings buried in caves by the Dead Sea. In those writings they told their members to love the good people and hate everyone outside. The trick was small and sneaky. They took the word “neighbor” and made it mean only “one of us.” And if only your own kind counts as your neighbor, then everyone else is fair to hate.
Jesus said that was wrong, and he got rid of that idea completely.
Love the one you are supposed to hate
Then Jesus said the line that changed everything.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;Matthew 5:44
That was a hard thing to hear. His people lived under a foreign army. Soldiers walked their streets and took their food and told them what to do. When Jesus said “enemy,” everyone in that crowd pictured a real face. Maybe the man next door who had wronged them. Maybe the soldier who occupied their town. He did not soften it. He looked straight at the enemy who hurts you, and he said, love that one too.
But how? You cannot force yourself to feel warm about a person who hurt you. And that is the beautiful part, because Jesus was not asking for a feeling.
The word he used for love here is not the word for a fond feeling. It is a word for a choice. It means you decide to want good things for someone, even when your heart is not there yet. That is why he could command it. You cannot be ordered to feel something, but you can be ordered to choose it. You can choose to bless. You can choose to pray. You can choose to do good.
Just so we are careful and honest here. This word was a normal Greek word, and regular people used it every day. It was not a secret magic word that only Christians had. What made it powerful was not the word. It was who Jesus aimed it at. He aimed it at the enemy.
A Father who does not pick a side
Then Jesus told us why, and this is the heart of the whole thing.
That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.Matthew 5:45
He pointed at the sky. The sun does not shine only on the good street and skip the bad one. The rain does not fall only on the kind farmer and dry up over the cruel one. Morning comes for everyone. The sky treats the enemy and the friend exactly the same.
That was the whole old idea flipped over. For ages people had said God fights for our side. God hates who we hate. God wants us to win the war. Jesus showed them a completely different kind of Father. Not a war god who wants your blades and your enemies dead. A Father whose sun rises on friend and foe alike.
If your Father is like that, Jesus said, then be like that. Anybody can love the people who love them back, and even the worst people manage that much. Loving your own crowd is easy. It costs you nothing. But loving the one who hates you, that is the real thing. That is what makes you look like your Father.
He did it when he was the one in danger
Words are one thing. But Jesus did not only say it. He lived it, on the worst night of his life, with real danger standing right there.
Soldiers came in the dark to arrest him. One of his own men grabbed a sword to fight back and cut off a man’s ear. It was the perfect moment to ask God to fight for him. His side had a weapon. The enemy had come for him. Any war god would have said swing.
Jesus said stop. Then he reached out and healed the ear of the man who had come to take him.
And Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye thus far. And he touched his ear, and healed him.Luke 22:51
His enemy came in the night. His friend drew a blade in his defense. And Jesus used that moment to heal the enemy and put the sword away. It was not a nice idea on a hillside anymore. It was love your enemies, done in real life, with real danger, right in front of everyone.
He had told a story about this too. A man was beaten and left to die, and the person who stopped to save him was the very one everyone had been taught to hate. Jesus made the enemy the hero. He made the enemy the neighbor. Same message every time. The idea that some people do not count has to go.
If you were told you were the enemy
Maybe someone made you feel like you were the enemy. Maybe someone told you that you were too far gone, too wrong, too far outside to be loved, and that God was on their side and against you. Maybe you are scared that someone you love is lost for good, on the wrong side of a line God drew.
Hear this. The sun still rises on you. The rain still falls on you. In the way Jesus showed him, the Father skips no one. Not the person others wrote off. Not the one you are afraid for. Not you. You were never the one meant to be hated. You were always meant to be loved. That was his whole point. No one is left out.
That is what Jesus did on that hill. He took the sword out of religion’s hand. He got rid of the idea that some people are not your neighbor. He forbade getting even. And he traded “God fights for our side” for a Father whose sun rises on everyone. Friend and foe. Near and far. You and the person you cannot stand yet.
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