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Luke 6:32–36
“Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (vv. 35–36).
Responding to maltreatment with hatred and vengeance is not the Christian way, as Jesus makes clear in Luke 6:27–31. Instead of repaying our enemies in kind, we are to do good to them. In fact, we should be proactive in doing good both to those who hate us and to our friends. Jesus tells us in verse 31 to do unto others what we would want them to do to us. We are to intentionally do the kind of good to others that we would want done to us even before others do anything.
In today’s passage, Christ explains that following the ethic of loving our enemies is part of what it means to be children of God. We are sons of our Creator only to the degree that we act as He does in showing kindness to those who are ungrateful and evil (Luke 6:35). Our perfectly holy Father blesses all people, even sinners, by His common grace, sending rain on both the just and the unjust so that their needs will be met (Matt. 5:44–45). If we are to be His children, we must bless all people as we are able. The point here is not that we become sons and daughters of God by doing good works for others, for we know that our adoption as His children comes by faith in Christ alone (John 1:11–13). Instead, Jesus is speaking of family resemblance. Children resemble their parents, so the children of God will share, as creatures, His characteristic of doing good to all people, even His enemies. One is not a child of God if one in no way resembles God’s character.
Christians must reflect not the character of the world but the character of God. It is not inherently bad to love those who love us, but there is no advantage to it, nothing unique about it, since even unregenerate people love those who love them. There is nothing praiseworthy about lending or giving to people who we know will pay us back or give in return, for one does not have to be a follower of Jesus to do that (Luke 6:33–34). True godliness entails loving those who do not love us, giving to those who will not give back. That is what our Father in heaven does (Luke 6:35), and it is something that so goes against our natural sinful inclinations that only the work of the Holy Spirit can enable us to accomplish it. Thus, love for our enemies is one of the strongest evidences that we actually belong to Jesus. Only those who have been transformed by the Lord can actually do it. Only if we have been made children of God can we be merciful as He is merciful (Luke 6:36).
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Christians have the greatest incentive of all to love and show mercy because we have received mercy from God. Dr. R.C. Sproul writes in his commentary on Luke, “We as Christians should be known as people of mercy because we’ve been recipients of mercy, and as God has been kind to us, so we ought to be kind to our neighbors.”
for further study
- Proverbs 25:21–22
- Matthew 5:43–48
- Acts 16:16–40
- Romans 12:14–21
the bible in a year
- Joshua 18–19
- Luke 5:27–39