Week 30 · Day 6: The Love of God
Love Your Enemies
Jesus applies God's love to the command He gives about enemies in Luke 6:27-36.
What the labels mean
- Scripture explicitly says
- This states what the biblical text itself says, in the passage being read.
- Direct quotation or allusion
- One part of Scripture quotes or clearly alludes to another. The citing reference is named so you can check it.
- Canonical theme
- A connection across the whole Bible. The passages develop the same theme; one is not quoting the other.
- Interpretive conclusion
- A conclusion drawn from the text. The reasoning is given so you can weigh it against the passage.
- Application
- A step, prayer or question for the reader. Not a claim about what the passage states.
Today’s verse
Loading Matthew 5:44-45…
Matthew 5:44-45
Today’s focus
The truth of the day
Jesus does not ask His hearers to love people who love them back; He specifically names enemies, those who curse, hate, mistreat and persecute. This is the sharpest edge of the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus grounds it in family resemblance: so that you may be children of your Father (Luke 6:35).
The reasoning that follows is arresting: your Father makes His sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. God's love, expressed even in ordinary providence, does not sort recipients by merit. Loving enemies is not an exceptional act of heroism in Jesus' teaching; it is simply what it looks like to resemble this particular Father.
Today’s reminder
Scripture explicitly says- Loving people who love you back proves nothing distinctive.
- God's common grace, sun and rain, already models love without sorting by merit.
- This command is presented as identity, not merely as a difficult duty.
Deeper insight
What the passage says in its own setting
Jesus is directly correcting a popular extension of the law, 'love your neighbor and hate your enemy,' a phrase not actually found in the Old Testament's command in Leviticus 19:18 but inferred by contemporary teaching. By contrasting 'You have heard... but I tell you', Jesus is not abolishing the law but pressing its original intent further than the accepted interpretation had allowed, showing that the command to love the neighbor was never meant to license hatred of anyone outside that category.
Verse 46 follows with a pointed comparison: 'if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Don't even the tax collectors do the same?' Jesus deliberately picks a group his Jewish audience regarded as morally compromised to show that ordinary reciprocal affection requires no special grace at all. The command to love enemies is placed as the dividing line between natural human decency and a love that actually originates in God's own character, ending the section with 'be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect' (5:48), a call to completeness of love, not flawless moral record.
Christ connection
Where this leads to Jesus
Canonical themeJesus' prayer for His executioners in Luke 23:34, 'Father, forgive them,' is the command of Matthew 5:44 lived out at the moment it was hardest to obey, showing believers exactly what resembling the Father looks like.
Reflection
ApplicationWho is the specific person this command is hardest to obey toward right now, and have you actually prayed for them by name?
Today’s action
ApplicationPray by name today for one person who has wronged you, asking God to bless them, and if possible, do one concrete kind thing for them.
Today’s prayer
ApplicationFather, You send sun and rain on the just and unjust alike. Give me the grace to love the person I would rather resent, and to pray for the one who has wronged me, so that I might truly resemble You. Amen.
Another layer