Daily Bible Reading Plans to help you read and understand God’s Word

Scripture Reading: Exodus 23:4-5, Matthew 18:15-20, Luke 6:27-36, John 18:15-18, John 21:15-19, Colossians 3:12-13

I used to speed-read through the mandate to love my enemy because the word enemy felt too jarring to define any of my relationships. While I had experienced conflict with some people—along with the heated emotions that came with those conflicts—I didn’t think of them as enemies. That term evoked images of warfare and international conflict. Surely it was meant to describe an adversary threatening our well-being and safety, I reasoned. 

That changed when my grandmother pointedly asked me why all the verses I quoted about loving others and doing good were applicable to everyone but a specific family member. She mentioned our relative by name, and the question pierced my freshly converted heart. This person had wounded me numerous times with careless comments and harsh words, and I harbored resentment. My granny’s question propelled me to wrestle with God and these verses because I had not understood the mandate to love any more than I had understood the definition of enemy. Begrudgingly, I recognized that Jesus welcomed all parts of us—including the thoughtless words of my family member and my failing to see my relative as a person still in need of Jesus’s love. 

We hurt others in many ways, and our ability to hurt one another can make an enemy out of any of us. Our next-door neighbors, our own child, the cashier at the supermarket, a best friend, a parent, a spouse, or even you can become your own antagonist. There is nothing foreign about this reality, the ability to hurt one another; it wages war within ourselves and with others. The wounds we inflict complicate our ability to connect with others, ourselves, and God. And while we detest what hurts us, Jesus receives the whole person—all our complexities, insecurities, shame, struggles, tempers, and complicated histories. 

When we endeavor to welcome others in the same way—that’s where my emotional brakes screeched as my granny challenged me to walk the talk—the good we are called to do mirrors what Jesus did for you and me. It’s to receive others despite their lack of merit. It’s not sweeping under the rug the wrong done to us. But it’s believing He finds them worthy even when we find them hard to love. 

“But I say to you who listen: do what is good to those who hate you...” 
—Luke 6:27

There is something about bringing Jesus to the battlefield of our emotions, as He makes us whole and receives us in whatever state we’re in. To love our enemy is a call to hope. Jesus makes room for possibility where, without Him, nothing but hatred might grow. 

Written by Paola Barrera