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2 Corinthians 8:1-9 ;

 Psalm 146:2, 5-9;

Jesus said to his disciples:
"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,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect."

 love  Your Enemies  and Pray for Them

 This is perhaps the hardest but most known teaching of Jesus, ‘to love our enemies and pray for them’.

But can anyone love one’s enemy? To understand this we should know the word used for love in the original version of the Bible. There are four words to denote the concept of love in Greek:

a.   Storge: it is the kind of love that exist between parents and children.

b.   Eros: Eros denotes passionate love or sexual love, the kind of loved that exists between husbands and wives.

c.    Filia: it is the love between closest friends.

d.   Agape: It is the word that the Bible uses for love when it asks us to love our enemies. Agape can be defined as a love that does not hate anyone and wills the good of everyone. When Jesus asks us to love our enemies he was using the equivalent of agape. So Jesus is not asking us to love our enemies as we love our parents or children or our close friends, but that we should not hate anyone,  we should wish everyone good and pray for everyone. Agape is a universal kind of love extended to everyone without affixing any conditions. When we understand the teaching of Jesus in this way, we feel consoled and we are encouraged to think that love of enemies is possible.

Jesus adds one more injunction: to pray for the enemies. It is to double make sure that we do not hate them, for we cannot simultaneously pray for a person and hate him/her. The surest way for killing the bitterness and enmity is to pray for that person in the presence of God.

Dr. Jacob Marangattu CMI