Loving Those Who Hate You – The Second Great Commandment

Loving Those Who Hate You

Matthew 22:37-39

And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Matthew 5:44

“But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”

Loving our enemies reflects God’s love for us.

When we were yet His enemies, God loved us, providing for our daily needs, granting us good and abundant lives, and sending His own Son for our salvation (Matt. 5.45; Rom. 5.10). When the love of God is operative in us, we will love even those who hate us, even our avowed enemies. That doesn’t mean we become naïve concerning their plots and schemes, or that we do not take precautions to protect ourselves against them. It simply means that we may not take vengeance into our own hands and we must continue to show the love of God for them by whatever means are available to us. Such as prayer: do we pray for our enemies? For those who hate us and wish to do us ill, even to destroy us? It seems to me that love requires even that we find some ways of exercising the mirror image of God’s love toward those who hate us. Prayer is the place to begin, but in each case, God is able to show us other ways of demonstrating His love for those who wish us ill. Our job is to discover those ways and practice them consistently.

Pray

It’s clear, Lord, that loving my neighbor as myself requires more of me than I have been giving. I want to love as You do, Lord. Help me to be alert to ways of loving those around me so that they might see in my love for them a token of Your own.

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“In the Gates” is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.