43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers,[a] what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew 5:43-48
Are there some people who you just don’t like?
To be honest, I dislike a LOT of people, and for various different reasons. Sometimes I just had a bad history with them, sometimes I just don’t like them for their behaviour and personality, sometimes I don’t like the way they treat me, or sometimes I dislike them because of the rumours I’ve heard about them.
But on the other hand, I like a lot of people. My friends, some classmates, my family and others, also for various different reasons. I like them because they make me feel loved, they treat me well, they sacrifice a lot for me, and in my opinion, their personalities are great!
At the moment I’m sure you’ve felt the same way about some people as well. In the verse above Jesus is talking to the Pharisees about the Gentiles. Jesus explained that they might have heard to love your neighbour, and to hate your enemies but radically tells us instead to actually love and pray for our enemies. He told the Pharisees that if not, they were no better than the Gentiles. The Pharisees would only greet their ‘brothers’ and so would the Gentiles, so how are they better than the Gentiles?
Nowadays, it’s quite the same for us: we usually dislike people for particular reasons, don’t we? But we have a biased point of view that makes us feel like we are actually better than them in our brains. In real life, we are just as bad as them: firstly for judging them, and secondly, because we all have our own weaknesses. They might be lacking in something, but we too are lacking somewhere, though we may or may not realise it. And by judging them, that’s already something that we’re lacking in. Love!
Jesus said, if we love only those who love us, what reward do we get? It’s easy to love those who love us, and it’s become natural to do good to people who do good to us, isn’t it? Don’t others do that to us as well? What difference do we have to the people we dislike? You see, it says in the verse above, that God makes the sun rise for everyone, the evil, and the good, and God makes the rain fall on the just and the unjust. This is a perfect example for us to follow. God is not biased like us, and He loves everyone, those who are for him, and those who are against him.
Another good example of loving our enemies is Jesus. We’ve all heard of him, haven’t we? We were actually his enemies, but what did he do? He chose to die on the cross just for us, while we were still his enemies. We should be like this too, even if it’s hard. And I’m not saying that it will be easy, because this is something that I definitely struggle with until this day. I know the struggle is real, but, let’s try to love our enemies, just like Jesus did for us.
