love ur enemy

The world says -- rightly -- "Love your friends. Be loyal to your friends. Look out for your friends." Why? Friends will look out for you. Loving your friends is just smart. This also goes to loving your wife or your husband. As the Apostle Paul observes, "Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself" (Ephesians 5:28). Loving your wife is a no-brainer unless you're self-destructive. Loving your friends and your spouse is just enlightened self-interest. But it's altogether another thing to love an enemy, someone who has your disgrace or destruction as a goal. Notice as Jesus teaches his disciples in this passage he uses the familiar rhythm of Hebrew parallelism. "Love your enemies, Do good to them who hate you." Jesus uses some heavy words to describe the Christian-haters: Greek echthros means "the (personal) enemy"[1] from echtho, "to hate." Ethros means "hateful," and as a noun, "adversary, enemy, foe." Greek miseo means "hate, persecute in hatred, detest, abhor."[2] These are people with an active desire for our hurt. Miseo is particularly used as "to persecute." There is a malicious attitude. These are people you can't turn your back on. Greek kataraomai means "to curse." Curses are utterances that are designed to bring harm by supernatural operation.[3] Greek epereazo means "threaten, mistreat, abuse."[4] But Jesus says that we are not to just force a smile and mind our own business when we are hated and mistreated. We are to actively try to do good towards our attackers. Agapao is a rare word in Koiné Greek. It was developed almost exclusively in Christian literature to refer to the kind of love that doesn't serve itself, but extends itself for the sake of another. The other Greek words for love are eros, erotic love, philos, love for family, brotherly love, and stergos, natural affection. Agape love is really a different category of love that the world hadn't seen in action until Jesus came along and infected his followers with it. Jesus uses four very strong action words in these verses: Greek agapao -- love your enemies Greek poimeo kalos -- do good to those who hate you. Greek eulogoeo -- to speak well of Greek proseuchomai -- to pray for, to intercede for. None are in the passive voice. They don't just take care of themselves. They are active verbs describing deliberate action to do good to one's enemies.