This means that we should ask God that our enemy first and foremost come to hallow God’s name, that he value God above all and reverence him and admire him in proportion to God’s worth.So I assume this prayer is what we should pray for our enemies. It would be unwarranted to think that the loving prayer for our enemy should ask for less important things than we are told to pray for ourselves. Fourteen verses after this command in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells us what he expects us to pray. Not only that, the command to pray for our enemy tells us what that best is that we should want for our enemy. The heart must aim at the best we can hope for the enemy. Love really wants the enemy to experience God’s best. He is calling for real prayer, that is, real Godward desire for the good of our enemy. Jesus is not commending hypocritical prayer. I base this on the assumption that when we pray for our enemies, we ask for God’s blessing from our heart. To be sure, it is doing good for the enemy, but not merely that. Therefore, it is clear from this specific command that love is not merely behavior. In this repackaged edition of What Jesus Demands from the World, John Piper walks through Jesus’s commands, explaining their context and meaning to help readers understand Christ’s vision of the Christian life and what he still requires today. Your enemy needs the light of God’s countenance to shine on him and melt his heart. For example, Jesus knew the famous blessing from Numbers 6:24–26, “The Lord bless you and keep you the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” Do this, he says, for your enemy. To bless is to desire someone’s well-being and turn it into an expressed longing directed to God. This is confirmed by the supplementary command, “Bless those who curse you” (Luke 6:28). First, it tells us that love really wants the good of the enemy. This is enormously important in telling us how Jesus thinks about what love is. And “Pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:28). “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. The first mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount after the command to love is prayer. Jesus gives numerous examples of the kinds of behaviors involved in loving our enemies. This article is part of the How to Pray series.
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