What does Jesus mean, Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you?
Do you find it hard to think kindly toward those who curse you and mistreat you?
What about all those who disagree with you and, in the process of disagreeing, they demonstrate a particular unkindness that you do not believe you deserve or is just?
Have you been on Twitter? Right now it seemingly reeks with hate, unkindness, and unloving words. People disagreeing everywhere. Christians criticizing each other. I read the criticism and it influences my heart toward being critical of the criticizer. God help us!
What about in the church? Has someone disagreed with you in a poor way over masks, vaccines, or some other issue?
Even further, has someone misunderstood you? …walked out on your relationship? …left your church and hurt you or others in the process?
We continue as followers of Christ to go through a very tough season. Pastors – much less all those who are not pastors in the church – report significant struggle right now. As I read them, talk with them, and counsel them, I hear their hurt. Their struggle is real. Many serve without joy as they seek to navigate the waters of disagreement, cultural pressure, and opinionated people. If this is true for the spiritual leaders, how much more true is this of the rest of us as well?
How are we to respond to those who disagree with us, are unkind to us, treat us in ways we view as unfair, hurt our feelings, or otherwise are in relational conflict with us? And there are many.
What says Jesus?
In Luke 6 Jesus discusses this to His disciples. Notice what He says:
27 “But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you. 29 To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. 30 Give to everyone who asks of you. And from him who takes away your goods do not ask them back. 31 And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise.
32 “But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. 35 But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. 36 Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful. (Luke 6:27-36)
In order to best assess what Jesus teaches, let me provide a few key thoughts:
- Jesus’ standard is love and by extension mercy. He challenges all followers to demonstrate mercy just as His Father demonstrates mercy. Mercy means that we do not give to another person what we believe that other person deserves. Grace means that we give them better than what they deserve. Mercy, in this text, flows out of a heart of love. This love represents and is motivated out of the love that Christ has for us (cf., 2 Cor 5:14-15).
- Jesus challenges us to love our enemies. He further describes it as doing good to those who hate us. In other words, the one to whom we are to serve is our enemy or one who hates us. If the other person is in the body of Christ, we certainly can’t say that he or she is our enemy. Although there may be conflict and sin which makes the person a functional enemy, we must recognize that fellow members of the family of God as part of the body of Christ are not enemies. Jesus instructs us though regarding even those who are outside the body of Christ who may in fact be an enemy. He says to love and to do good.
- Jesus describes loving someone who loves you as credit-less. Instead, Jesus commends loving enemies, doing good to them, and lending with hope of nothing in return from them. Jesus sets the standard high.
- Jesus desires for us to treat others just as we would want to be treated by them. Here He instructs us not to treat them in hopes of being treated the same way by them. Instead, He teaches to treat them the way we would want to be treated regardless of how they are treating us.
- Jesus commands and we wonder what he means, Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you?
Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you?
The question remains, What do we do with the person who for various reasons has mistreated us? What if they have talked badly, unjustly, or otherwise unkind to us? How do we respond in our own hearts to the one who has left the church over these or other issues?
We bless the person who has sinned against us or who we believe has sinned against us. Specifically, to bless means to ask God to confer physical and spiritual well-being on the other person (cf., Rom 12:14; Jam 3:9).[1]
Consider what one commentator writes (so you know it is not just simply my opinion):
“These two verses are a single sentence constructed of four imperatives: love, do, bless, and pray. … The commandments are nonintuitive, i.e., they may not seem reasonable, and they enjoin behaviors that do not come naturally. In their ethics, Christians are not to be determined by the prior behaviors of others toward them, but by the character of God. Hence, believers are not to reciprocate in kind, but to respond in ways unlike and disproportionate to the ways they are treated: enemies are to be loved, haters are to be treated with goodness, revilers are to be blessed, and maligners are to be prayed for. … No power in the world is comparable to agapē love, both to keep Christians from becoming like their enemies, and to release their enemies from the prisons of their own hatred.”[2]
What practically does this mean then?
Blessings and Praying for Our Big and Small Enemy
Regardless who your enemy is, meaning a functional enemy or someone who is a real enemy, we are to bless and pray for them as part of the four commands: love, do, bless, and pray. What an incredible challenge!
So what do we pray? We desire and pray God’s very best for the other person. We ask God to shower them with His blessings of every sort. As we can be a part of that, we want to be. We seek to serve alongside the Spirit of God in loving as creatively as possible. When Jesus discusses turning the other cheek, this is what He means. We turn the other cheek by offering ourselves again (not in an abusive way) to the sin of the other person as we seek to love, do, bless, and pray.
Some sample prayer requests:
- God, please bless their family and livelihood – family, relationships, vocation, finances, etc.
- Lord, help them grow in your Word and discernment – spiritual growth.
- Please God, grant them the desires of their heart according to God’s will.
You may think, “But I don’t believe those things in my heart.” I understand. And some days you may not. When you don’t feel it, pray it and ask God to help you in your own struggling heart to love as Christ, show mercy as the Father, and demonstrate grace as a sibling-in-Christ.
Living consistent with these four commands (love – do – bless – pray) will both help you in your own walk with Christ and will bless those that are your enemies. Wouldn’t it be great that in your consistency, God might use this pressure-filled circumstance to both grow you and help your enemy grow as well.
May we do these things for the glory of God.
May God bless our efforts for His glory and the good of His children.
Plus, may the unbelieving world see our demonstration of the love of Christ.
[1] David E. Garland, Luke, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 279.
[2] James R. Edwards, The Gospel according to Luke, ed. D. A. Carson, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.; Nottingham, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Apollos, 2015), 197–198.
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