What Does Luke 6:27 Mean?
But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,THE KEY
The enemy’s hostility does not place them beyond the reach of good; the verse names them as love’s direct object.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks into your present relationships: the person who hates you remains within the reach of love and good. Love is paired with doing good, so it takes an outward form toward the one whose hostility is real.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that hostility makes someone undeserving of good.
THE ROOT
ἀγαπᾶτε
agapate
GROWS FROM
ἀγαπ-
Love; regard with love
This word family includes both love and the person who is beloved, and here its object is explicitly an enemy. The verse then pairs love with doing good, giving love an outward form toward the person who hates you.
ALSO GROWS
agapē: Love
ἀγάπη
The noun shares the same stem, placing the verse’s command within a wider word-family for love.
agapētos: Beloved; loved
ἀγαπητός
The same stem can describe a person who is loved, while this verse names even an enemy as love’s recipient.
ἐχθρούς
echthrous
GROWS FROM
ἐχθρ-
Hostility; being an enemy or hostile
“Enemies” in this verse is echthrous. The word names an actual hostile relation. The verse neither blurs that hostility nor waits for it to disappear before directing love and good toward the hostile person.
ALSO GROWS
echthros: Enemy; hostile person
ἐχθρός
This is the word used for the people toward whom love is directed.
echthra: Enmity; hostility
ἔχθρα
This related noun names the hostility in the relationship that the verse holds together with love.
THE PATTERN
The response to hostility is directed toward an enemy’s good without pretending the hostility is absent.
If you come upon your enemy's ox or his donkey wandering, you shall surely return it to him.If the one who hates you hungers, feed him bread; and if he thirsts, give him water to drink.Not giving back evil for evil, or insult for insult, but on the contrary, speaking good, knowing that you are called to this, so that you may inherit good speech.THE THREAD
So if your enemy hungers, feed him. If he thirsts, give him drink, for by doing this you will heap coals of fire upon his head.Romans uses the same Greek word for enemy, ἐχθρός (echthros), meaning an enemy or hostile person. Its image of feeding and giving drink shows what Luke’s “do good” looks like while hostility remains in view.
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