Pray For Those Who Persecute You

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”(Matthew 5:43-44 NIV)

Unfairness is part of the human condition, we can’t live on this earth for long without feeling like someone has treated us unfairly, or maybe it’s a parent who put us through a miserable childhood, or maybe it’s an employer who treats you differently than your co-workers, or maybe you feel like that you were treated unfairly by the legal process. You can choose to respond to the people who hurt you by hurting them back, and that’s the easiest decision to make, and no doubt about it. But God gives us another option in Matthew 5:43-44: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”. When people hurt you and treats you unfairly, they expect you to retaliate, and to seek revenge, but God wants you to do the exact opposite, He wants you to respond with love, whether you get bitter in the process, as an control of our response to injustice. Just because you respond to an offender lovingly doesn’t mean you continue to allow injustice, on the contrary, we must lovingly seek justice. We must work for justice in the world without retaliating. The Bible commands us to “be fair-minded and just. Do what is right!” [Jeremiah 22:3a].  That’s our calling as followers of Jesus. Unfairness and injustice may be part of the human condition, but we must not feed into it. Instead, God calls us to respond with love. Hallelujah, God bless.