It is hard to return good actions for evil ones, and yet this is what the Christian is called to do: ‘Do good to them which hate you,’ Jesus said. It is easy to do good to those who love us, who hold us in high regard; but to be kind, generous and thoughtful to those whom we know despise us, requires all the grace that the human soul can bear.
Jesus goes on, ‘Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you’ (6:28, NASB). Now Jesus isn’t asking us to do anything foolish here. He is not asking us to pray that our enemies would prosper above all people, or that they would have their way in everything they do. David, in his psalms, prayed some very difficult prayers; he asked that God would vindicate his saints and bring the wicked to ruin. He also declared, ‘I hate my enemies with perfect hatred’ (Psalm 139:22, NASB). A perfect hatred would seem to mean an unbridled hatred, a hatred that has no let up. But that is not what David meant. A perfect hatred is a hatred that has nothing but contempt for the wickedness of the perpetrator. It is a complete hatred, but, at the same time, it does not carry with it an ultimate desire for the total ruination of the soul of the evil-doer. Christ prayed for his own enemies. He didn’t pray that they would be successful in their evil, but he prayed that their hearts would be changed, that they would be spared the final confrontation with the wrath of God, that they were moving towards. He prayed that their ways would be changed, that they may be redeemed.
R. C. Sproul, A Walk with God: An Exposition of Luke (Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 1999), 116–117.
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