love your enemies
Bless your adversaries
Love your enemies is a moral teaching, central to Christianity, that calls for benevolence toward those who harm or oppose you rather than hatred or retaliation.
The command appears in the Sermon on the Mount and represents a radical ethic: respond to hostility with goodwill.
The phrase extends beyond religious contexts to describe any philosophy of meeting antagonism with compassion: It's hard to love your enemies when they're actively trying to destroy you.
- forgiveCease to blame
- mercyCompassion toward offenders
- compassionConcern for others' distress
- turn the other cheekRefuse to retaliate
- blessConfer favor upon
pray · kindness · grace · golden rule · reconciliation · Jesus · radical · unconditional · difficult · forgiveness · peacemaker · nonviolence · Gandhi · Martin Luther King · goodwill · pardon · tolerance · blessed
- Christian virtuesvirtues, cardinal virtues, theological virtues, faithfulness, chastity
- Jesus' teachingsSermon on the Mount, beatitudes, Beatitudes, Lord's Prayer, turn the other cheek
- Scripture PhrasesJohn 3:16, Lord's Prayer, Our Father, Ten Commandments, Beatitudes
- sacred loveagape, caritas, divine grace, divine compassion
love your enemiesvengeance
Retaliation for injury
revenge · retaliation · an eye for an eye · retribution · reprisal
love your enemiesscorched earth
Destroy all useful resources
total war · preemptive strike · mutually assured destruction · zero tolerance · domination
love, loves, loved, loving, lovingly, lover, lovers, lovely, loveliness