CHARLO, New Brunswick, July 10, 2023 – Jesus famously summed up the Old Testament as “love your neighbour as yourself” or “as you would have others treat you, that’s how you should treat them”. By extension, the New Testament can be summed up as “love your enemies” or “as God treats others, that’s how you should treat them”.

God loves everyone because he is love. Love is one of his core characteristics which means that God cannot NOT love. If he didn’t love, he wouldn’t be God.

We, on the other hand, have to work at loving most people. But love them we must, as Jesus said that by our love we’re known as his followers.

It might help to know that you don’t have to like people to love them.

I admit that I dislike some people. I can’t stand what they do and I can’t stand how they are and I can’t stand being around them. A few of these people I dislike intensely. Still, I need to love even those I dislike intensely or I can’t claim to be a follower of Jesus.

Thank God I can look to the Gospels and see that Jesus didn’t like some people, too. This makes me understand that disliking people is not a spiritual flaw in me but an honest response to unlikeable behavior and mindsets. In fact, Jesus was outspoken in his dislike for most Sadducees, Pharisees, scribes, lawyers, politicians, etc.; he didn’t hide his dislike behind a fake smile or a limp handshake: he openly disliked those he disliked and avoided being around them. He was honest about his dislike for some people and explained why he disliked them. Mostly he disliked them for being hypocrites

Yet even for those he intensely disliked, Jesus was able to pray to God to “forgive them for they know not what they do” and to do so as they were torturing and crucifying him. If Jesus could pray for people who were killing him as they were killing him, surely we can find it within ourselves to pray for people who are just being nasty to us.

The first step in loving your enemies is knowing who your enemies are. In spiritual terms, our enemies are all those who are not born-again followers of Jesus. That’s a lot of enemies. For Jesus, his closest family members were also his enemies because they didn’t believe he was the Messiah and they didn’t support his ministry work. In fact, they actively tried to end his ministry. So did the people at his hometown synagogue, who went a step further and tried to kill him for stating he was the Messiah. It’s hard not to see people who are trying to kill you as your enemy, even if they’re your family and friends. It can be even harder to pray for them, as you’re also battling your failed emotional expectations of them.

We’re not promised an easy go of it on Earth as born-again believers. Jesus invited us to take his yoke upon us, as it would ease our burdens. He didn’t say we wouldn’t have burdens; he said that our burdens would be lighter bearing his yoke than the world’s (the devil’s). For me, one of the most difficult emotional burdens is to love people who fail me emotionally. Once the emotions get involved and are further complicated by expectations, it’s difficult to view things objectively. It’s difficult not to get offended.

That’s when we need to remember Jesus telling us that we’re to be offended in nothing and that’s why we have commands like “love your enemies”. We don’t have to reason with a command or even understand it; we just have to do it. So if the command is to love people who fail us emotionally, love them we must. We love them not by liking them or pretending to like them, but by praying for them and blessing them, as Jesus instructed us to do.

Our love for our enemies is known to God, not necessarily to our enemies, since our promise to love our enemies is to God, not to our enemies.

Needless to say, our enemies could not care less if we loved them. We don’t have to tell them we’re praying for them; we just need to do it. As difficult as it might be to wrench out a “forgive them, Father”, we need to do it. God will bless us for it.

The main takeaway from this is that you don’t have to like people to love them, and by loving them I mean praying for them and blessing them. When I was a child, I ruthlessly persecuted my widowed grandmother who looked after me during the day. Yet that same grandmother was always blessing me with money to go to the corner store or with books and other treats she’d picked up for me specially while shopping. When my tormenting got too much for her, she’d retreat to her room for a few minutes and come out sniffling. I knew she’d been crying, and I tormented her for that, too.

But what I didn’t know until after I was born-again was that she wasn’t just crying in her room, she was praying for me. I also didn’t know until after her death that not once had she told my parents what she’d endured from me as a child; she simply prayed for me (without telling me) and blessed me more than she did her other grandchildren. She knew what was wrong with me, and she knew how to deal with it, however difficult it was for her at the time. For 36 years she prayed for me, and when I was born-again, she was the first person I told because I knew she was the only one in my family who would understand what had happened to me.

I learned from my grandmother’s example not only what it means to love your enemies, but that those under your own roof will be your worst enemies. I certainly was hers.

We likely won’t like those who hate us or hate Jesus, but loving those who hate us doesn’t require us to like them. We don’t have to like them. The command is not to like them but to love them and to do so not with our emotions but with prayers and blessings.

Even more importantly, our promise to love our enemies is to God, not to our enemies. So when we pray for and bless those who hate us, we’re keeping a promise to God.

Ultimately, loving our enemies is about keeping a promise to God. And God, when we keep that promise, will bless us.