What It Means to Love Your Enemies and Judge Not: The Handy-Dandy Guide to Luke 6:27-42
Jesus’s instruction to love our enemies and not judge others is often left as a practical how-to that’s too challenging for most of us to adopt. Nevertheless, His words are meant to be taken seriously. And Jesus wasn’t merely speaking in parables here, making it easy for us to put this principle aside as something that we could never possibly apply. Instead, Among the people he was speaking directly to are the men who eventually judge Him and plot His death. The principle was not an option but an imperative command. In this blog post, you will discover the importance of loving your enemies and not judging others, along with some practical advice on how you can do so in your own life—no matter what kind of person they may be or have done to you. What follows is a brief overview of Luke 6:27-42.
The Importance of Loving Your Enemies
The command to love your enemies is one of the most radical and challenging instructions ever given. We’re not only to love those who like us, who agree with us, who are kind to us, who even love us back—but we’re also to love those who hate us, who disagree with us, who are cruel to us, who even seek to kill us. It’s worth noting, however, that the word “love” in this passage is a different Greek word than that used in the familiar verse, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (see Luke 10:27). This other word for love is agape, which is a word often used to describe God’s love for us. We can’t love our enemies the way we love the people we like and agree with, but this higher form of love is the only way to really conquer evil and effect real change in the world.
Love Your Enemies and Don’t Judge Others
This passage begins with a warning about judging others. Jesus says we’re not to judge others as we would not want to be judged. This is an important point because many of us justify our own judging of others by thinking that we’re better than they are. But this judgment we’re talking about here is not a matter of holding people to a higher standard and letting them know they’ve fallen short. The Greek word used here for “judge” means something more like “to estimate or appraise.” So when we judge others, we’re not judging them in terms of right and wrong but instead evaluating them in terms of their value and importance. When we judge others, we’re essentially assigning relative significance to different people and their values. We’re saying that we think someone is more valuable than someone else.
Why It’s Important to Judge Not
Jesus goes on to explain what happens when we judge others. When we judge others, we implicitly judge ourselves, giving others the power to define who we are and what we’re about. When we assign relative value to people, we end up giving others the ability to determine our own worth as well. When we judge others, we are really trying to control them. We’re saying, “this is who you are, and this is what you’re worth to me.” When we judge others, we are essentially saying to them, “You are not good enough the way you are. You are not valuable enough as you are. I have to change you.”
Don’t Just Listen, But Respond With Goodness
Next, Jesus says that we’re not just to listen to others but also to respond with goodness. This is radical. This is saying that no matter what someone does to you, you respond with goodness. No matter how wronged you feel by someone else, you respond with goodness. But Jesus doesn’t stop here. He goes on to say that we’re not just to listen and respond with goodness, but we’re to do so when people “thank” us. We respond with goodness when they insult and lash out at us. We respond with goodness when they do things that we think are harmful or evil. When people do things that we believe don’t deserve a response of goodness—when they don’t deserve our kindness—we’re not to respond with good. We’re not to respond with anything at all.
Judge With Mercy and not Justice
We’re often quick to pass judgment on others, assuming that we know what Justice is and that we’re just. But what if what we think of as Justice is really just us being self-righteous and judgmental? When we judge others, we are trying to impose our idea of what’s right—our idea of what’s just. But we don’t really know what’s just. We don’t know how to judge others in significant ways. But the one thing we know is that we’re not perfect, and our idea of Justice will not always be perfect. Our idea of Justice is fundamentally flawed and corrupt—just as we are. This is why Jesus says that we should judge with Mercy and not Justice. When we judge with Mercy, we don’t assume that we know what’s just—we simply recognize that we don’t know what’s right in all cases.
You Can’t Change People, But You Can Help Change the World
Finally, Jesus says that when we respond with goodness to people who have mistreated us, we actually change them. We don’t change them by trying to make them different but by loving them just as they are, despite their flaws and wrongdoings. When we respond with goodness to people who have been cruel towards us, we change them, and we change ourselves. We change the way they see themselves, and we change the way we see ourselves. We transform the world not by trying to change other people and bending them to our will but by responding with goodness to the people who have hurt us and have been cruel to us.
The Consequences of Not Loving Our Enemies and Judging Not
Jesus finishes this passage by saying that if we do not love our enemies and judge not, we are like a city that is continually being destroyed. When we refuse to love our enemies and refuse to judge not, we refuse to acknowledge that we’re not perfect and that we can’t change people. We’re essentially saying that we’re perfect and that we can change other people. When we refuse to love our enemies and refuse to judge not, we’re essentially saying that we think we’re better than they are and deserve to be treated better than they do. When we refuse to love our enemies and refuse to judge not, we’re essentially trying to impose our will on others. We’re saying that we know better than they do and that we’re just better than they are.
How to Love Your Enemies and Not Judge Others
Finally, we’ve arrived at the last part of this passage—how to love your enemies and not judge others. This is one of the most challenging passages in the Bible and one that people come back to again and again throughout their lives. Here are a few practical ways you can love your enemies and not judge others:
Bottom line
The bottom line is this—if we want to see real change in the world, we must learn to love our enemies and not judge others. These are two of the most challenging passages in the Bible, but they are two of the most important as well. Only when we learn to love our enemies and not judge others will we really see a change in the world. We will be able to conquer evil and bring about real goodness in the world when we learn to love our enemies and not judge others. Only when we learn to love our enemies and not judge others can we see real change and make a real difference in the world.
