Loving Your Enemies – Biblical aspects

How do you love your enemies?

Loving your enemies is the most difficult thing to do, and we can’t do it unless we have the faith that we can make it through the help of our God, who himself has commanded us to do so. So without God’s help and intervention it will be impossible for us to do. We need to learn the ways of God on loving your enemies.


Luke 6:27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

What is God’s objectives of why is he commanding us to love our enemies, how can we love our enemies when we are being done with something not good. But since God is perfect and powerful, in every commandment he made there is always a reason behind, and all the reasons will be for our own good, with the double-sided effects, for our enemy and at the same time for the good of ourselves.

1) How do you make enemies? and How do you forgive them?

The more argument you win the fewer friends you have, and the fewer friends you have is  the more likely you can have enemies. This might be a little sad truth or reality, and a more painful set of thinking, but we need to consider them in order for us to change our ideas. Always remember that no matter how we take care with our talking there will always be some people who will not be happy with you, and if you don’t know how to deal with such people then you will be making some enemies out of this situation. But as long as you’re aware of what exactly happened, it will not be hard for you to make peace with them.

2) Be logical about your views towards enemies.

Hearing the phrase, Love your enemies,” does not necessarily mean you have to love them as much as you love your family and friends. Although we are being instructed to love them and to do good to them. But we can’t be obedient to God if we don’t follow God’s commandment. But with God, it’s not difficult for us to do things even if it is against our will, because God who is the source of all love will help us understand why there are people who would like to have enemies rather than friends.

3) Be considerate about giving chance.

Once we are being hurt by enemies our common feelings to arise is the hatred, but if you consider it as a sin, you will have the courage to be patient because for expecting that somebody is going to become an enemy at the same time the Holy Spirit will make you feel and understand why those people became who they are. Yes, it will really take time before we can fully understand the will of God, but if we try to figure out the very essence of all his commandments we will be ending up with the conclusion that his objective of letting it happen, even though sometimes it may start with pain but at the end of it, we will benefit a lot from the same situation which we thought in the beginning as trials or challenges of our faith. So no matter what happens to us as long as we are living with the faith and works with the will of God then all that we are facing whether hardship or comfort we always have to thank God for everything.

4) Don’t expect your enemy to love you back.

Enemies are enemies, they could hardly change themselves, they will never love you, but you are told to love them. Some people they will only forgive unless their enemies will come and apologize to what they have done to them, which is very impossible to happen that’s the reason why we called them enemies because they will not do for you anything pleasing but hurting. Just always think of it that you need to realize that forgiveness and loving your enemy is benefiting both of you because you will have reward from God while your enemy was not being harmed for only doing him good.

5) There is peace obtained as the benefits for forgiveness.

Forgiving enemy is beneficial to your health, because once you have enemy inevitably you will think of them and every time you remember them you will recall also all the things that caused you to become enemy, which are a very disgusting thing to think. Therefore, there is no other better things than to forgive them, because in forgiving you will experience peace of mind, lowering of your blood pressure, your system will be boosted, you can reduce risk of anxiety and depression, and to avoid the possible risk of heart attack. So there is a magical benefit towards your mental and physical well-being, that gives you a higher self-esteem and will improve you mentally and psychologically.

6) To forgive is not the last resort but your first move.

Don’t give a space in yourself anything like irritating thoughts and all the bitterness about your enemies, however, you have to push for a while and digress your thinking to only positive memories and thoughts. Think of something good that you have gained from your experience with your enemies, and throw away all the distasteful memory that caused you to be the best of enemies.

Don’t yield yourself to the pleasure of all resentful thinking about your enemies, it is only making you as a loser, because your enemy is maybe not thinking of it and you are thinking of it alone. Never let them overpower your peaceful thoughts. You are commanded to love them, so to train yourself to follow it, is to at least learn to ignore them and think of something amusing and valuable thinking.

7) Show to your enemy that you care for them even though they don’t.

There are a lot of things that could hinder you for following God’s commandment which is to love them, if you only think of all the negative things that happened from the past. Hence, try to switch your thinking to a different views of life.

Yes indeed, it is so hurting and difficult to erase everything that happened between you and your enemy, you don’t need to kiss them to have peace with them, but at least you will not do anything bad to them, if they had done something very serious at least surrender it all to the law of the government and to the law of God.

8) Be Always humble and always consider others as better than you.

We are just a human being and we are not perfect, we too have said something hurtful and inappropriate, and there are many things which we didn’t notice it was hurting for someone who heard it, so every time in our lives we are committing some small mistakes to our fellow men and to our God. So if you want to be forgiven for all those trespasses, we also have to forgive others so that ours can also be forgiven.

Sometimes due to over confidence, we thought that we never erred, but not knowing that we already have done countless of unintentional mistakes.

By being humble and considering others as much better than us, we will learn to appreciate small and convert it into valuable ones.

Everyone of us is unique in each other, there is something that you can do while others can’t and vice versa.

Respect others and think of them as more knowledgeable than you are and then you will learn to be humble of yourself and knowing that we are just from dust and to dust we will return.

9) Be mindful of yourself, always connect your mouth to your brain before talking.

Being a hot-tempered person is not good, because once you are hot-headed, you are torturing your inner self, and by having an angry feeling is to consume all your serotonin in the body and lacking of it will cause you to be melancholic. So by just your own thinking you have made yourself miserable.

If you want to stay out of trouble be careful what you say, because from the way we talk is where we can make enemies, so always connect your mouth to your brain whenever you are talking specially in front of your enemies. Our enemies are so sensitive to every word that we speak so be mindful, for instead you want some reconciliation, you have aggravated your situations.

10) Admit that it’s your fault because your enemy will never do it.

If both of you will not drop down your prides there will be nothing will happen with you, for the fire can’t be extinguished with same fire but by water or humbleness. To be humble is not a sign of cowardice, not a way of giving up but of growing up. If your enemy happened to be with you around for most of your time like co-worker or sometimes you are living on the same roof, which is the most difficult situation to overcome because your whole day will not be good since you are surrounded always with the one you don’t like. But on the other hand, you have the bigger chances of mending your relationship faster, since you will meet them every day. So then try to take every opportunity to interact with your enemy by showing them your best attitude that in spite of the things they did, you are still able to show them good things. Your kindness and patience with them will already do a big impact for their interest in you and for them to develop some better things of their lives.

If it’s not possible to reconcile with them, at least by showing your kindness and patience you will be able to maintain your low level of conflict.

Respecting your enemies even if they don’t deserve will confuse them and make them start to meditate about your extra ordinary behavior which is for them impossible for them to do to their enemies.

11) Share your thoughts and be considerate towards anyone.

There are the worst situations of enemies that will make you suffer for a trauma, such as murder of a family member, there is no other as painful as this is.

Without our fear to God, we can’t think that there is no more chance for you to forgive, for if you see them you might even kill them as well, but all we have to do is to remember the God’s commandment which is to love and to do good to them.

It sounds ridiculous for anyone without the fear of God, Even God will understand how you feel, but he will help you to accept at the later time, and it’s good to stick on his command which is to do good. What good you should do for enemies like them?

The good that you should be doing is to not to do anything bad like hiring people to kill them in retaliation of what they did to your family.

Surrender it all to God, and God who knows your feelings will be the one to help you heal the wound of your heart.

12) Be friendly even though they’re not.

To turn your enemies into friends is by focusing yourself into a more positive relationships. If you want to find ways on how to know your enemy better, initiate of being nice to them by offering something like coffee or whatever help you can do, specially if they are your colleagues in a company.

Your colleagues who knew about your stories will be amazed and will make them praise you for what you are doing which they can’t afford to do, and then you will gain lots of friends because of that.

Try to join to some friends who are having the same interest as yours, some friends who are kind and God-fearing.

The attitude of friends is so contagious, and you will learn from their way of thinking if you don’t know how to get a way with this kind of thinking your friends have, so be careful in choosing friends and at the same time you continue to show your positive outlook of life base in the ways of God taught in the bible.

13) Take all the privileges by taking advantage of the available counseling.

Take all your privileges in taking advantage of the counseling you can obtain from trusted religious leaders or person whom you think capable of helping you out of your situations, and for looking for ways to make peace with your enemy.

Sometimes in our lives, a time will come that we are having some trouble trusting new friends because of our experiences with them, but always remember, not all friends who smile are real friends, therefore, if you want your secret to not to be known from anyone specially to your enemies, try to minimize telling it to your friends, because friends come and go while enemies accumulate.

Discussion is the way for gaining knowledge and argument is the way for gaining enemies, so if you want to collect friends rather than enemies try be a good friend, and never dream to always win in any argument if you don’t like to collect more enemies.

Indeed it’s true that it is much easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend, but if we are commanded to love our enemy how come it’s difficult to forgive our own friends, so it’s not true that difficult to forgive a friend, it’s easy as they are already your friend, you are maybe just hurt so much for not expecting that your friend will do such thing to you.

Once again we are only human being, we must be aware of it, if you treat everyone as human being who is liable to err then your consideration and patience towards all will get higher, because the more you know yourself is the more you will have patience of what you see in others.

14) Why forgiveness is so vital to be followed?

I would like you to notice the verse below, of how important is forgiveness to our salvation. We have known some commandments of God about sins but we ignored one of the unforgivable sin which is to have and unforgiving heart, that if you don’t forgive them, God will also not forgive you so it is tantamount as unforgivable sin. Read the verse below.

Matthew 6:14-15 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

 

The very main topic of this article is about loving our enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.

Matthew 5:44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

I will explain you a bit about this verse of the bible, for which it becomes the questions of most people, how come we are commanded to love our enemies, and pray for those who persecute us?

We are told to love them because God loves them and by doing them good will encourage them to come to him and repent for all their sins and be saved.

There are many reasons for God to tell us to love our enemies and one of its best reasons is that, once you learn the most difficult task which is to love our enemies, how much more to love our own family.

So if you can’t love your family it is impossible for you to love your enemies, and if you can love your enemies it’s easy for you to love your families.

I hope you learn something from this article, and if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, I will be more than happy to hear it, even if it’s biblical question I will answer it with always the supplying verse from the bible.

Francisco

Founder of the Bookworm or the https://franciscorondinalaurito.com

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2 Comments

  1. Hi there francisco!…your article is very timely and practical,what you have just written can be applied to our current situation now that almost governed by pride and selfishness…most of us are overwhelmed with pride and selfishness that we cannot accept defeat and being underdog by our powerful enemies but as what you have said that we should remain humble under GOD. But we are just humans and is not perfect to follow all God’s commandments. To tell you honestly…it is really very hard to forgive if your  enemies once before tried to take out your life but with God’s grace and guidance …they failed ! and now the most practical thing to do is try to avoid them but keep watchful, be alert always and pray to the almighty for some protection and let God decide and do the rest. Thank you for sharing the article. Keep safe!

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