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New Hope Fellowship

Love Your Enemies

Love Your Enemies

In this passage, Jesus addresses what comes naturally to us—loving those who love us—and then calls us beyond it: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Jesus does not deny the reality of enemies; He transforms how His followers are to respond to them - prayer. Prayer is the doorway into this kind of love. We cannot manufacture love for those we label as enemies, but we can bring them before God. Through prayer, our view of others, hostility and anger is exposed, and our hearts are reshaped as God’s own love begins to move through us. Loving our enemies is not something we can do in our own strength, but happens through this constant participation in the Father’s , generous love, that He first revealed to us—a love that reveals who God is and who we are becoming as His children - a love we can show to others - even out enemies.

Locations & Times

New Hope Fellowship

5919 Antire Rd, High Ridge, MO 63049, USA

Sunday 5:00 AM

Descriptive meaning: they’re simply describing how someone is feeling, or what is happening
Prescriptive would be like endorsing what is being said or done - i.e. a command
“It is best to understand that, hate your enemies, was a view, though ultimately unbiblical, that derived from putting together a number of Biblical texts and ideas. These include various texts where individuals speak of hating their personal enemies, and those who oppose the things of God. As well as understanding that allowing God’s enemies to live and thrive in the promised land will be a snare to the faithful. None of these statements, which are descriptive rather than prescriptive, command the hating of ones enemies.” - Jonathon T Pennington
“For most contemporary interpreters the term, neighbor, was restrictive. Leaving, non neighbors, outside of that command to love. Hence the popular addition, hate your enemies.” - RT France
Agapē (noun) is often describing God’s love - this unconditional, selfless love.
Agapaō (verb) speaks of our response: to love in that way, as God loves humanity.
“Love is a rugged commitment to be with someone, as someone who is for that persons good, and to love them unto God’s formative purpose.” - Scot McKnight
Enemy, ἐχθρός, (ech-thros’), echthros: used in the New Testament to describe a personal enemy, government, a spiritual adversary, or those at enmity with God.
“If love and praying are parallel expressions, and if love means what we have described. Then praying for those who persecute us is not a cute formula for getting us over the hump of bad feelings or resentment, but a concrete behavior of going to God in hope of reconciliation, love, justice, peace and a Kingdom Society.” - Scot McKnight
Romans 5:6-10 (Paraphrase), For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son.


χάρις, (khar’-ece), charis: Grace, favor, kindness, gift
τέλειος, (tel’-i-os), teleios: Perfect, whole, complete, mature,
“Our character formed by the overflowing, generous love of God.” - NT Wright