The Asymmetrical Warfare of Grace
Introduction: The Christian Counter-Offensive
We live in an age that has completely misunderstood the nature of Christian strength. To the modern mind, both inside and outside the church, the commands Jesus gives in this passage are seen as a manual for pious doormats. They are interpreted as a call for a weak, effeminate, and perpetual retreat. Love your enemies? Turn the other cheek? This is taken to mean that the Christian is to be a punching bag for the world, absorbing every blow with a simpering and pathetic smile. This is the sentimentalist heresy, and it is a lie.
The ethic Jesus lays out here is not a strategy for surrender. It is a declaration of war. It is the battle plan for a counter-intuitive, asymmetrical spiritual warfare that the world cannot comprehend and therefore cannot defeat. The world operates on the principle of reciprocity. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. You hit me, I hit you back, harder. This is the law of the jungle, the code of the playground, and the operating system of every pagan society from Babylon to Washington D.C. It is a closed loop of action and reaction, vengeance and self-interest.
Into this predictable, dreary, and satanic system, Jesus introduces a divine disruption. He commands us to launch a counter-offensive of grace. This is not weakness; it is the deployment of a superior power. It is not passivity; it is a calculated, strategic assault on the kingdom of darkness. To love an enemy, to bless a curser, to give to a thief, is to introduce a foreign element into their world, an element that their system has no category for. It is to hit them with a love so alien, so un-earthly, that it can only have come from another world. This is not how to be a doormat. This is how to conquer the world.
But we must be careful. This is not a command for the civil magistrate to lay down the sword. It is not a prohibition on a father defending his family from a violent intruder. This passage is about personal insult and personal relationships. It is about how individual Christians are to conduct themselves in a hostile world in order to adorn and advance the gospel. It is about demonstrating that we belong to a different kingdom, with a different King, and a different law. The law of grace.
The Text
"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 disparage you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your garment, do not withhold your tunic from him either. Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back. And treat others the same way you want them to treat you. And if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to the ungrateful and evil. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful."
(Luke 6:27-36 LSB)
The Four-Pronged Attack (vv. 27-28)
Jesus begins with four commands that form the core of this new strategy.
"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 disparage you." (Luke 6:27-28)
First, "love your enemies." The love commanded here is agape. This is not a slushy, sentimental feeling. It is not about "liking" your enemy. It is a rugged, covenantal commitment to their ultimate good. And what is their ultimate good? That they would repent of their enmity, be reconciled to God, and become your brother in Christ. To love your enemy is to desire their conversion, not their destruction. This is a love of the will, a principled decision to act for their benefit, regardless of how you feel.
Second, "do good to those who hate you." This love is not an abstract sentiment; it is concrete and practical. It is active. It seeks out opportunities to perform acts of kindness. When your neighbor's car is stuck in a ditch, you do not first check his voting record or the bumper stickers on his car. You get a rope. This is love with its sleeves rolled up, demonstrating the goodness of God in tangible ways.
Third, "bless those who curse you." When they attack you with words, you are to counter-attack with words of blessing. This is verbal jujitsu. They are trying to drag you down into a gutter-fight of insult and slander, and you refuse to go. You respond from a higher plane. A blessing is a request for God to show favor to someone. To bless the one cursing you is to short-circuit their entire program of hatred. It is to heap coals of fire on their head, as Paul says, not for petty revenge, but in the hope that this burning conviction will lead them to repentance.
Fourth, "pray for those who disparage you." This is the air support for the ground assault. You take the conflict to the throne room of God. You intercede for the very soul of the person who is trying to harm you. This is the ultimate act of love, because it acknowledges that their greatest need is spiritual and that only God can change their heart. This does not contradict the imprecatory psalms. In the psalms, David prays as the anointed king against the intractable, public enemies of God and His kingdom. We are to pray for the conversion of our personal enemies, but we can and should still pray for God to bring justice and to throw down His enemies who have hardened themselves against His grace.
The Economics of Outrageous Grace (vv. 29-30)
Jesus then provides two radical illustrations of what this looks like in practice.
"Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your garment, do not withhold your tunic from him either." (Luke 6:29 LSB)
The slap on the cheek here is not a brutal, life-threatening assault. In that culture, a back-handed slap on the right cheek was a calculated act of public insult, designed to humiliate and shame. The natural response is to retaliate, to defend one's honor. Jesus says to refuse the bait. By offering the other cheek, you are not being weak. You are communicating, "Your pathetic attempt to define me by your standards of honor and shame does not work. My identity is in Christ, and you cannot touch it. Your insult has no power here." It is a move of profound spiritual strength that seizes control of the situation.
The business with the garment and tunic is similar. This likely refers to a lawsuit. A creditor takes you to court to seize your outer garment as a pledge. Jesus says to give him your undergarment as well, an act which would leave you nearly naked. This is shocking. It is a prophetic act of protest against the grasping, greedy spirit of the age. It is a way of saying, "You love stuff so much that you would strip a man bare for it? Here, take it all. I serve a God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and my treasure is in heaven. Your stuff has no hold on me." This is not the action of a victim; it is the action of a free man.
Verse 30 generalizes the principle: "Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back." This does not mean we are to be gullible marks for every con artist. The Bible has plenty to say about prudence and stewardship. But it does mean our default posture should be one of open-handed generosity, not a clenched-fist scarcity mindset. We are to be conduits of God's blessing, not stagnant reservoirs. We can be free with our possessions because we know our Father owns everything and has promised to provide for all our needs.
The Pagan Baseline (vv. 31-34)
Jesus then contrasts this radical kingdom ethic with the common, garden-variety ethics of the fallen world.
"And if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them... Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount." (Luke 6:32, 34 LSB)
The world runs on reciprocity. "You do something for me, I'll do something for you." This is the basis of business contracts, international treaties, and neighborhood friendships. Jesus says there is nothing distinctively Christian about this. The mafia operates this way. Wolves in a pack operate this way. It is simple, enlightened self-interest. If your love and goodness extend only to those who love and are good to you, you are not operating by the Spirit of God. You are just being a normal, respectable pagan.
The "credit" Jesus speaks of is not about earning salvation. It is about demonstrating the reality of your salvation. It is about providing evidence of the new birth. If your behavior is indistinguishable from that of the lost, what reason does anyone have to believe that you have been found? The Christian life is meant to be supernatural, and that supernatural quality is displayed most clearly when we love when it is unnatural to love.
The Family Resemblance (v. 35-36)
Here we come to the central reason, the theological foundation for this entire ethic.
"But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to the ungrateful and evil. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." (Luke 6:35-36 LSB)
Why do we do this? First, because "your reward will be great." God is not a cosmic killjoy; He is a rewarder. This kind of faith-filled, sacrificial living is noticed and honored by Him. But the greater reason is that it demonstrates our identity. We will be "sons of the Most High." This is about family resemblance. We act like this because our Father acts like this.
How does He act? "He Himself is kind to the ungrateful and evil." This is the doctrine of common grace. Every day, God the Father sends sunshine and rain on the farms of atheists, communists, and blasphemers. He gives breath, and health, and food to people who hate His guts. He shows kindness to His enemies constantly. When we show grace to our enemies, we are simply acting like our Dad. We are proving our parentage. We are demonstrating that we have His DNA, that we have been born again by His Spirit.
The final command sums it all up: "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." Our mercy is not the source of our salvation; it is the evidence of it. We are not merciful in order to get God to be merciful to us. We are merciful because God, our Father, has been extravagantly, outrageously, and infinitely merciful to us. This entire ethic is impossible apart from the gospel.
The Gospel Engine
How can a man love his enemies? How can he turn the other cheek? By his own grit and willpower, he cannot. He will fail every time. The only way to live this out is to be overwhelmed by the reality that this is exactly how God has treated you in Jesus Christ.
You were the enemy of God. You hated Him. You cursed Him with your sin. You disparaged Him with your rebellion. And while you were in that state, He did not retaliate. He did not strike you down. Instead, He loved you. He did good to you. He sent His only Son to absorb the ultimate blow of insult and violence on the cross. On that cross, Jesus was struck, and He did not strike back. He was stripped of His garments, and He did not protest. He was cursed, and in return, He blessed: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
God showed kindness to you when you were ungrateful and evil. He was merciful to you when you deserved His wrath. The grace you are commanded to show to others is just a thimbleful of the ocean of grace you have already received. You do not love your enemies to become a son of God. You love your enemies because you are a son of God, and you can't help but start looking like your Father.
This is the power that topples empires. This is the love that melts hearts of stone. This is the asymmetrical warfare of grace, and it is the only strategy that will win the world.