Matthew 5:44: loving enemies, and the reason Jesus gives next
44But I say to you: Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. And pray for those who persecute and slander you.
The verse this page is about.
Short answer
Matthew 5:44 is the last of the Sermon on the Mount’s antitheses and the most extreme: love enemies, do good toward those who hate, pray for persecutors and slanderers. Three commands in this edition. The reason comes next, and it is filial: acting this way is acting like the one who raises the sun on good and bad alike.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 2 min read
Before applying it, check how many commands your edition prints. The manuscript traditions differ here, and some Bibles list four where others list two or three. This page publishes three: love, do good, pray.
That does not weaken the command — the reach is the same. But it heads off the pointless argument about why the list in your Bible does not match the one the preacher quoted.
Where this verse appears
The verse closes a series in which Jesus quotes a familiar instruction and pushes past it. The quotation opening this block pairs the command to love your neighbour with a second half about hating your enemy, which appears nowhere in the Old Testament as text.
After today’s verse come the argument and two uncomfortable examples: tax collectors also love those who love them, and pagans also greet their own. Ordinary standards are ruled out as a benchmark.
What it says
The three verbs ask for different things. Love here is not a feeling — the word is one of decision, of acting in someone’s favour. Doing good is behaviour. Praying is the most concrete of the three: you can do it today, without the other person knowing.
Notice too how this edition names them: not only persecutors but slanderers. Slander is included alongside violence, which lowers the bar considerably. Most of us have no persecutors and plenty of people who have spoken against us.
The reason given is not that enemies deserve it. It is that God acts this way, and the next verse says exactly how: sun on the bad and the good, rain on the just and the unjust. The argument is about family likeness, not merit. Nothing here abolishes justice or requires anyone to remain in a violent situation.
What to do with it today
Start with the cheapest and hardest verb: pray. Pick one name, a real person you have a real problem with, and pray for them for a week. Almost nobody comes out of that experiment unchanged.
And a word of candour: this is not a reconciliation technique. You can obey this verse and the relationship can stay broken, because the other person holds part of the decision. What the text asks for is your side, not the outcome.
What the passages say
45In this way, you shall be sons of your Father, who is in heaven. He causes his sun to rise upon the good and the bad, and he causes it to rain upon the just and the unjust.
The reason behind the command, and it concerns family likeness: sun on the bad and the good, rain on the just and the unjust. The behaviour asked for imitates something that already happens daily.
14Bless those who are persecuting you: bless, and do not curse.
The same instruction as a short order, with the alternative named and refused: bless, and do not curse. Evidence that the teaching circulated outside the gospels.
A prayer to carry with you
Lord, there is a person whose name hurts to say. I bring them to you today. Do not ask me to feel it yet, but help me want their good. Amen.