Luke 6:28

Vers. 27, 28. “ But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you. 28. Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. ”

There is a break in the connection between Luke 6:26 and Luke 6:27. De Wette and Meyer think that the link is to be found in this thought understood: “Notwithstanding these curses which I pronounce upon the rich, your persecutors, I command you not to hate, but to love them.” But in the verses that follow, it is not the rich particularly that are represented as the enemies whom His disciples should love. The precept of love to enemies is given in the most general manner. Rather is it the new law which Jesus announces here, as in Matthew. The link of connection with what goes before is this: In the midst of this hatred of which you will be the objects (Luke 6:22), it will be your duty to realize in the world the perfect law which I to-day proclaim to you. Tholuck, in his Explanation of the Sermon on the Mount (p. 498), takes exception to Luke for giving these precepts a place here, where they have no connection; but he thus shows that he has failed to understand the structure of this discourse in our Gospel, as we have exhibited it. In this form of expression: But I say unto you which hear, there is an echo as it were of the antithesis of Matthew: “Ye have heard... But I say unto you. ” By this expression, you which hear, Jesus opposes the actual hearers surrounding Him to those imaginary hearers to whom the preceding woes were addressed.

We must conceive of the words, Luke 6:27 and Luke 6:28, as having been pronounced with some kind of enthusiasm. These precepts overflow with love. You have only to meet every manifestation of hatred with a fresh manifestation of love. Love! Love! You can never love too much! The term love denotes the essence of the new principle. Then come its manifestations: first, in acts (do good); then in words (bless); lastly, the highest manifestation, which is at once act and word (pray for). These manifestations of love correspond with the exhibitions of hatred by which they are called forth: ἔχθρα, hatred, the inward feeling; μισεῖν, to hold in abhorrence, the acts; καταρασθαι, to curse, the words. ᾿Επηρεάζειν (probably from ἐπί and αἴρεσθαι, to rise against, to thwart) corresponds with intercession. Jesus therefore here requires more than that which to natural selfishness appears the highest virtue: not to render evil for evil. He demands from His disciples, according to the expression of St. Paul (Romans 12:21), that they shall overcome evil with good; Jesus could not yet reveal the source whence His disciples were to derive this entirely new passion, this divine charity which displays its riches of forgiveness and salvation towards a rebellious world at enmity with God (Romans 5:8-10).

In the parallel passage in Matthew, the two intervening propositions have probably been transferred from Luke.