Following the Political Jesus Today

Today's Scripture

Matthew 5:43-45 — "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."

Luke 6:27-28 — "But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you."

Romans 12:21 — "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

The Big Idea

Jesus's most political command contains no policy at all: love your enemies. It is the one instruction no party platform can absorb, because it is not a strategy for winning — it is the family resemblance of God, who loved his enemies all the way to a cross. That includes us.

Reflection

The command no faction could survive

For nine days we have watched Jesus walk through a minefield of political options. He refused the Zealots' sword, the Sadducees' bargain, and the Pharisees' purity lines. He rode a donkey instead of a war horse, stood silent before Pilate, conquered by dying, and rose as the world's true king. Now comes the question we cannot dodge: what does following this King look like on an ordinary Tuesday, in our own loud and angry political world?

Jesus's answer is the most demanding sentence he ever spoke. "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:44). In first-century Palestine, "enemy" was not an abstraction. For the Zealot, it was the Roman soldier. For the Pharisee, the compromiser. For everyone, the tax collector down the street. Jesus looked at all of them and gave a command that detonated every faction's program at once — because no movement built on defeating an enemy can survive the order to love him.

Be honest about how strange this still sounds. Every other political community on earth runs partly on shared dislike; nothing bonds a group faster than a common opponent. Jesus builds his community on the one fuel that cannot run that engine.

And why love them? Not because the enemies are secretly nice. Because of what God is like: "so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good" (Matthew 5:45). God's sunrise is scandalously indiscriminate. Enemy love is simply the family resemblance.

The astonishing thing is that the early church actually did it. Justin Martyr, writing an open letter to the Roman emperor around AD 155, described what conversion did to ordinary people:

"We who hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different manners would not live with men of a different tribe, now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies." — Justin Martyr, First Apology

People who used to hate across tribal lines were now eating at one table and praying for their persecutors. No empire knew what to do with that. It was, and remains, the most disruptive political force on earth.

Love is not surrender

Be clear about what Jesus is not saying. Look at the verbs in Luke 6:27-28: "do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you." Love here is not a warm feeling about awful things, and it is not pretending disagreements don't matter. It is a set of actions aimed at the other person's good. Jesus loved his enemies and still called their corruption what it was; he wept over Jerusalem and never once flattered it. Truth and love are not rivals. In him they arrive together.

Luke pushes it further than we like: "But love your enemies, and do good... and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful" (Luke 6:35-36). Kind to the ungrateful and the evil. That is a description of how God has treated the world — and a job description for his children.

Corrie ten Boom learned how this works mechanically. She survived a Nazi concentration camp where her sister died; years later, a former guard from that camp approached her after a church service, hand extended, asking forgiveness. She testified that no feeling of warmth appeared — only a choice:

"Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart." — Corrie ten Boom, Tramp for the Lord

You do not have to feel loving to obey this command. You have to act — and she found that when she willed her hand into the guard's, God supplied what her heart could not. Martin Luther King Jr. built an entire movement on the same obedience, and explained its logic:

"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." — Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love

This is Romans 12 in action: "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them... Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:14-21). Notice that Paul still assumes evil must be overcome. Enemy love is not passivity with better manners. It is a different weapon — the only one that doesn't reload the cycle it is fighting.

Now bring it home. Your enemy probably does not carry a sword. Your enemy posts things. He is in your group chat, your comment section, your extended family, with takes that make your pulse spike and your thumbs itch to roast him. Jesus's command has not changed: bless, do good, pray. The person behind the infuriating opinion bears the image of God — which, as we saw on Day 6, means he belongs to God, not to your contempt.

He loved his enemies first

Where would anyone find the power for this? Watch Jesus practice his own sermon. As the nails went in — the empire's soldiers on one side, the religious establishment jeering on the other — he prayed for the people killing him: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). Peter, who watched it happen, wrote: "When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly" (1 Peter 2:23). He could absorb hatred without returning it because he had somewhere to put it — into the hands of the Judge.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who prayed for his enemies inside their prison, said prayer is exactly where enemy love becomes possible:

"Through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

It is very hard to demonize someone while you are kneeling next to them before God. Try it tonight with the name you flinched at earlier.

But the deepest fuel is this: enemy love is not first a command. It is the gospel's plot. Romans 5:10 — "For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life." While we were enemies. The command to love enemies comes from the God who did it first, at infinite cost, to us and for us. C.S. Lewis closed the loop:

"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you." — C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

And Tim Keller compressed the whole gospel into the sentence that makes such forgiveness breathable:

"We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope." — Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage

A person who knows both halves of that sentence becomes politically unrecognizable: too aware of their own sin to sneer, too secure in their acceptance to be threatened. They can lose an argument, an election, even a country, without losing their soul — and they can love the winners.

This is the freedom the old factions never found. The Zealot needed Rome to fall before he could be at peace; the Sadducee needed Rome to keep smiling on him. The Christian's peace was settled outside the whole contest, at a cross — which is why no election result can grant it and none can take it away.

Ambassadors of a better kingdom

So we end where the plan began: everyone wanted a king, and Jesus disappointed them all — to give them something better. His kingdom still does not advance by sword, bargain, or purity test. It advances the way it always has: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God" (Matthew 5:9). And it advances through people with a strange new job title: "Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God" (2 Corinthians 5:20).

An ambassador is a political word, and a perfect one. Ambassadors live in a country not their own, represent their king's interests, speak with his accent, and never confuse the host nation's flag with their homeland's. That is the politics of Jesus for today: not the Jesus of the left or the right, but the crucified and risen King — represented in the world by people who tell the truth, do justice, love their enemies, and announce the terms of peace. His politics are not comfortable. They are also the only politics that will still be in power ten thousand years from now.

So end this plan with a sober kind of joy. The kingdoms we worry over — every party, every platform, every superpower — are weather. His kingdom is climate. Live in it now: tell the truth, do justice, love your enemy, and let your neighbors wonder where your calm comes from.

Going Deeper

Write down the name of one real "enemy" — the person or public figure whose opinions most reliably make you angry. Then do Bonhoeffer's exercise: in prayer, go stand at their side. Pray for their good in three specific ways, and end with Romans 5:10 — "while we were enemies we were reconciled to God." You may feel nothing. Corrie ten Boom would say that's fine; the will can act without the heart's permission, and God honors the act. Do it again tomorrow.