Who is the Hardest for you to Love Right Now?

Who Is Hardest For You To Love Right Now?
(A Pastor’s Reflections on Loving Our Enemies)

When I stepped up to preach this past Sunday, I knew we were heading straight into the deep end.

Before we opened our Bibles, I asked a question that had already been messing with me all week:

Who is the hardest person for you to love right now?

Not in theory. In real life.

The person whose name makes your jaw tighten.
The one who betrayed your trust.
The neighbor, coworker, family member, or former friend you replay arguments with in your head.
The person you feel absolutely justified in resenting.
I asked you that question because I’ve had to ask it of myself. There are a couple of people in my own life right now—outside our congregation—who, when I think of them, all I feel is anger. I can list the things they’ve done. I can point to the hurt and confusion they’ve caused. And if I’m honest, my default response isn’t compassion. It’s, “How do I get back at them?” Not “How do I love them?”

I don’t say that proudly. I say it because I want you to know that when Jesus calls us to love our enemies, he isn’t just pressing on your heart. He’s pressing on mine too.

The Comfortable Circle We All Draw

In Matthew 5:43–48, Jesus ends this section of the Sermon on the Mount with what may be the hardest command he ever gave:

“You have heard that it was said, You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who harass you, so that you will be acting as children of your Father who is in heaven.” (Matt. 5:43–45 CEB)

In Jesus’ day, religious teachers had quietly shrunk the definition of “neighbor” down to “people like us.”

Fellow Jews? Neighbor.
Romans? Enemy.
Samaritans? Enemy.
Gentiles? Enemy.
The logic went like this: if “neighbor” means “our people,” then everyone else is optional. At best, you can ignore them. At worst, you can hate them and feel justified.

We might not divide the world into Jews and Samaritans, but we play the same game with different labels:

People who vote like me / people who don’t
People who share my values / people who reject them
People who treated me fairly / people who hurt me
People whose lives look “put together” / people whose brokenness is on display
People with my citizenship status / people without it
We build a circle. We decide who’s in and who’s out. Those on the inside get our patience, our generosity, our forgiveness. Those on the outside get suspicion, distance, or outright hostility.

And into that, Jesus simply says:
“Love your enemies. Pray for those who harass you.”

Not tolerate them.
Not politely ignore them.
Not just “stop talking about them so much.”

Love them.
Pray for them.

That command is impossible if love is based on how “deserving” someone is. Which is exactly why Jesus roots it somewhere else.

Our Love Isn’t About Their Worthiness

Jesus doesn’t tell us to love our enemies because:

they finally apologized,
they suddenly became safe people,
or they’ve “earned back” our good will.
He says:

“He [the Father] makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matt. 5:45)

God gives basic, life-sustaining gifts—sun, rain, harvest, breath—to:

the one who worships Him, and
the one who curses His name.
That’s what theologians often call common grace (or, in our Wesleyan language, prevenient grace). Before any of us ever sought God, He was already seeking us. Before we ever loved Him, He was already pouring out love, provision, protection.

Even more than that, Scripture says this:

“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
“While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son.”
(Romans 5:8, 10)

Every Christian is living proof that God loves His enemies.

So when Jesus commands, “Love your enemies,” He is not saying, “Pretend they didn’t hurt you,” or “Call evil good.” He is inviting us to love in a way that reflects our Father’s character, not our enemy’s worthiness.

Our love for difficult people is not primarily about who they are.
It’s about who our Father is.

Family Resemblance

As a dad, I see this all the time. People will look at one of my boys and say, “That expression is exactly you,” or, occasionally (and less flatteringly), “That dramatic reaction? Yep. That’s you too.”

Whether we like it or not, family resemblance shows up.

Jesus uses that reality to talk about spiritual maturity:

“So that you will be acting as children of your Father who is in heaven…” (Matt. 5:45)
“Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.” (Matt. 5:48 CEB)

Many translations say, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The English word perfect throws most of us off. We hear “flawless, never sin, never fail,” and we feel defeated before we even start.

But the word Jesus uses carries the idea of being complete, mature, brought to full purpose. The CEB captures that sense: your Father is complete in showing love to everyone—you, too, grow into that kind of completeness.

Think of:

A child is complete as a child.
An adult is complete as an adult.
A rosebud is complete as a bud.
A blooming rose is complete as a full flower.
Jesus is saying:
“As you grow up in my kingdom, grow into the mature, full expression of love you were created for—the kind of love your Father shows.”

Then He gets really practical:

“If you love only those who love you, what reward do you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same?” (Matt. 5:46–47)

Anyone can love people who:

love them back,
agree with them,
benefit them.
You don’t need the Holy Spirit to do that. You just need basic human instincts.

Kingdom love is measured in the opposite direction:

The true measure of Christian maturity is not how well we love the people who are easy to love,
but how we treat the people who are hardest to love.

That’s where family resemblance really shows.

Looking at the Cross

If anyone ever had a right to withhold love, it was Jesus on the cross.

Betrayed by a close friend.
Abandoned by His disciples.
Falsely accused.
Beaten, mocked, tortured.
Nails driven through His hands and feet.
Struggling to breathe.
And in the middle of that—not after the resurrection, not once everything turned out okay—He prayed:

“Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” (Luke 23:34)

He didn’t wait:

for them to apologize,
for them to “learn their lesson,”
for the pain to go away.
In the very moment of being sinned against, He chose intercession over retaliation. That’s what love of enemy looks like in its fullest, most cruciform form.

When Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, He isn’t standing at a distance giving hard commands. He is inviting us to walk a road He has personally walked—further and more perfectly than we ever will.

Where Do We Even Start?

Most of us, when we hear “love your enemies,” think of huge dramatic acts: reconciliation meetings, tearful apologies, restored relationships. And sometimes, by God’s grace, those things do happen.

But often, especially at the beginning, it’s much smaller and quieter.

For many of us (myself included), the first step is simply honest prayer.

Not polished prayer. Not pretending-you’re-over-it prayer. Just this:

“Lord, I don’t know how to love this person.
I don’t even want to right now.
All I feel is anger, hurt, or disgust.
But I know this is what you’ve called me to.
I know this is how you have loved me.

So I’m asking you:
Change my heart.
Teach me how to pray for them.
Help me see them the way you see them.
Make me more like you.”

It might be that all you can honestly pray for a while is, “God, I’m willing for you to make me willing.” That’s still a beginning.

From there, the Holy Spirit can slowly:

soften your heart,
loosen bitterness’s grip,
give you compassion you didn’t think was possible,
and, in some cases, open a road toward reconciliation or at least peace.
But even if reconciliation never happens (because sometimes the person is unrepentant, unsafe, or unavailable), your heart doesn’t have to stay chained to hatred. Christ really can free you to love in a new way—not sentimental, not naïve, but Christlike.

Building on the Foundation of Love

We ended our service singing:

“I will build my life upon Your love,
It is a firm foundation…”

That line captures exactly what Jesus is calling us to.

We don’t build our lives on:

our feelings toward others,
our enemies’ behavior,
or our culture’s tribal lines.
We build on God’s love:

His love given to us when we were His enemies.
His love poured out through Christ on the cross.
His love that sends sun and rain on the righteous and the unrighteous alike.
From that foundation, we can begin to extend love in places our flesh would never go on its own.

So let me return to where we started:

Who is the hardest person for you to love right now?

Hold their name before God.
Don’t justify the hurt or minimize it—He already knows.
Ask Him, even if through gritted teeth, “Lord, make me more like You.”
My prayer for you (and for myself) is this:

That we would increasingly look like our Father in heaven.
That people would see, in how we treat even our enemies, a family resemblance to Jesus.
And that our community would know we belong to Him not just because of what we believe, but because of how we love.

Grace and peace to you as you follow Jesus into this hard, beautiful, cruciform way.