On Enemy-Love and "Ordo Amoris"
Now, more than ever, American Christians need to take Jesus' commands seriously
I still remember the moment a simple teaching from Jesus rattled everything I thought I knew about politics. I was sitting in a musty college dorm late on a Thursday night. The smell of burnt popcorn wafted down the hall; a shirtless student walked past to the communal showers, towel wrapped around his waist. This unassuming lounge was where a Bible study met every week, and I always enjoyed our discussions.
But one week, we read the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:38-48. These verses leapt off the page: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”
Having grown up as a Protestant evangelical, I arrived at my secular liberal arts college with a high value for the Bible. I wanted to take Jesus’ words seriously. Yet as a conservative who had supported the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, I had a hard time fathoming why Christians should love our enemies. I felt frustration rise within me as my friends and I discussed the passage. Weren’t some evildoers worthy of our hate, and deserving of extreme violence? Didn’t our moral commitments to family, community, and country supersede Jesus’ words here? Didn’t the risks of “loving” an enemy like Saddam Hussein (or a rude commenter on my Facebook post) outweigh any potential benefit?
It would have been a simple matter to brush Jesus’ words aside and allow my pre-existing ideology to stand firm; Christians do that with Sermon on the Mount all the time. Our rationalizations are myriad: “These verses were only applicable for Jesus’ original disciples, or maybe a few super saints.” “These commands were given merely to illustrate the gap between humans and God, but God doesn’t want us to actually try to obey them.” “Our modern cultural context doesn’t allow for us to take these words seriously.” And so on.
But instead of deflecting, on that fateful Thursday night I began to reconsider my views. What if Jesus really meant what he said? That one Bible study discussion initiated a years-long wrestling with Jesus’ teachings, affecting the way I live, work, and worship. I am now convinced that more than any other command in the Bible, American Christians need to similarly wrestle–both individually and corporately–with the simplest, but perhaps most controversial words Jesus ever said: “love your enemies.”
Most Christians flat-out refuse to even consider obeying this command, let alone the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. Like the pagans and tax collectors that Jesus describes, we mostly love those who love us, or who may be able to one day reward us. But it’s not just a lack of love. I routinely see Christians who actively curse, demean, and harass their political and cultural opponents. Worse yet, a friend today can be treated as an enemy tomorrow: Christians on both the left and the right are quick to attack any ally who begins to show even a tinge of sympathy to the opposing side. For American Christians enmeshed in the culture wars, enemy-love feels idealistic at best, and self-sabotaging at worst.
Emblematic of this view would be Vice President J.D. Vance, who recently stated, “There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world.” In a post on X, Vance called this ranking as ordo amoris (Latin for “order of loves”). Ordo amoris was a concept first developed by Thomas Aquinas, which states there is a proper “order of loves” that Christians should abide by: love God first, oneself second, family third, close community neighbors next, and so on, with outsiders and foreigners at the very bottom.
Aquinas has real insights, but Vance’s over-simplification of it stands in tension with Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels. After all, Jesus often upset the normal order of loves. At various points in his ministry, he tells his followers to deny themselves, to hate their mothers and fathers, and to love their enemies. These are hard teachings, so I understand why Vance and others would prefer to stick to a more simplistic ordo amoris that doesn’t leave much room for enemy-love.
But let’s not dismiss the word of God quite so easily. After all, the Sermon on the Mount isn’t the only occasion when God’s people are commanded to show love towards their enemies. Whether in a position of power or of weakness, whether at an interpersonal level or a communal one, God’s people are frequently called to acts of radical love for their enemy.
For example, the Torah required Israelites to rescue an enemy’s lost animal (Exodus 23:4). In 2 Kings 6, Elisha commanded the king of Israel to prepare a feast for captured enemy soldiers instead of killing them. Exiled captives like Nehemiah, Esther, and Daniel faithfully and honorably served pagan kings. God sent Jonah as a prophet to enemies so despised, Jonah didn’t even want them to repent and be saved.
This pattern of enemy-love continues in the Epistles. In Romans 12, Paul tells Christians living under the rule of Emperor Nero to not seek revenge, but instead “bless those who persecute you.” 1 Peter 3:9 similarly explains: “Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse, but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing.”
I believe there’s a simple reason that this theme keeps recurring: enemy-love is at the core of who God is. Paul writes in Romans 5: “For God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us […] while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son.” If enemy-love is part of God’s character, then it makes sense he would call his children to the same.
Indeed, in Matthew 5:48, Jesus explains the rational for calling his disciples to enemy-love: “Be perfect [teleios], therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect [teleios].” The Greek word teleios can also mean “complete,” “fulfilled,” or “mature.” Christians are called to be those who, like our Father in heaven, share love not just within our circle of friends and allies, but beyond. Enemy-love is thus a marker of spiritual maturity, and indeed, one of the things that sets Christianity apart from all other religions. When Christians love our enemies, we are bearing witness to the God who draws near to sinful humans, even when we were his enemies.
Thus we shouldn’t be surprised that when Jesus commands his followers to love their enemies, he the Greek word agape for love, instead of philia (friendship) or storge (affection). As C.S. Lewis explains in The Four Loves, agape love is the divine love, above and beyond our normal earthly loves. To love our enemies is to love as God loves.
To circle back to the concept of ordo amoris, rather than being a final, optional practice for those few saints who have fulfilled all other earthly loves—an impossible standard—I believe enemy-love may actually be the single most important signifier of a mature Christian. Enemy-love is not some tertiary concern, but should instead be embedded in every layer of ordo amoris: at home, at work, in the community, and in the world. (How that enemy-love gets applied in complex conversations about immigration, foreign aid, or human sexuality will of course require depth and nuance, but that’s a question of how to love, not if.)
So if enemy-love is a biblical value, core to the Gospel message, and a signpost of Christian maturity, then an absence of enemy-love among Christians would reveal unbiblical, anti-Gospel, and immature believers who don’t truly follow Jesus as both Savior and Lord. And indeed, I think that’s what we see in many American Christians today.
How can we begin to fix this, and start to live out the value of enemy-love?
For me personally, enemy-love needed to start with my neighbors. When I first got married and moved from Baltimore to rural central Pennsylvania, I hated it. The small town of Carlisle felt too parochial for my cosmopolitan tastes. In private, I mocked the accents and views of my new neighbors.
But one day, my wife and I were studying Jeremiah 29:4-14 with some college students. In this passage, God tells the exiled Israelites living in Babylon to pray for that city and seek its shalom––a Hebrew word that can be translated as peace, wholeness, prosperity, or flourishing. As we analyzed the ways in which God commanded his people to treat their enemies in Jeremiah 29, I felt convicted. Instead of criticizing and despising my new town, I should be praying for it and seeking its prosperity.
In response to that passage of Scripture, my wife and I decided to purchase a house in Carlisle, and for nearly a decade have engaged in the slow and steady work of making this town our home. In the process, we grew to love Carlisle, our neighbors, and even the things that used to frustrate us. We currently attend a church filled with homeless people, recovering addicts, formerly incarcerated people, and friends from across the political spectrum. Every day I am forced to rearrange my categories: “I thought this type of person was my enemy, but here they are in front of me. How does Jesus want me to love them?”
Similarly, I believe American Christians need to re-imagine what it means to love our enemies. Too many Christians think enemy-love implies actively helping someone to keep sinning, or for victims to accept ongoing abuse. Neither of those things is true: it’s not loving to help someone to sin! Enemy-love does not mean being a passive doormat nor an active accessory to our enemies’ evil actions. As theologian Walter Wink explains, the examples Jesus gives in the Sermon on the Mount of “turning the other cheek,” “offering your coat as well,” and “going the second mile” are all templates for a third way: neither violence nor passivity, but true peace-making that honors the imago Dei in both ourselves and our enemies.
Before his assassination, I began a practice of praying for Osama bin Laden, but I didn’t pray for his success in terrorism. Instead, I prayed for him to receive conviction leading to repentance. When I worked as a middle school teacher and a fight broke out between my students, I didn’t allow the violence to continue – l used a loud voice and my physical presence to stop it. I was able to forcefully, yet lovingly and non-violently, break up twenty-two fights in just two years, with the bloodstains on my khakis to prove it.
American Christians will need to wrestle with what enemy-love should look like in each of our contexts. For many of us, it should start with prayer. I recently co-led a Zoom call to pray for President Trump’s inauguration and the start of his new administration. A majority of those on this Zoom call were strongly opposed to Trump and his policies, yet as the prayer time went on, all participants could feel a sense of love, peace, and calm settle over us. As 1 John 4:8 says, “perfect love [Greek: teleios agape] drives out all fear.” Our communal practice of enemy-love, that marker of Christian maturity, had pushed away our fear. I have a hard time believing that anyone who spends meaningful time in prayer for their political enemies will soon thereafter fall into fear-mongering, conspiracy theories, or extremism.
Enemy-love is especially needed in American public discourse. There are real disagreements about right and wrong that must not be ignored. But it is possible to show love even to the worst of our adversaries. When Paul arrives in Athens in Acts 17, he is deeply distressed by the outright idolatry and paganism he sees throughout the city. Yet when he has the chance to address a large audience, he compliments the Athenians’ religiosity and favorably quotes one of their poets. Imagine how our discourse would change if every Christian chose to do the same before launching into yet another culture war tirade against their opponents.
Lastly, we should remember that enemy-love is not something that we only do solo. Like most elements of the Christian faith, this aspect of our discipleship will necessarily have both individualistic and communal implications. As an individual, I of course have numerous opportunities to love or pray for my enemies. But the Scriptural passages about enemy-love were given to communities, and most of the verbs in Matthew 5 are written to a plural “you”. How can we as the Church collectively and communally respond to our enemies? What opportunities are there to proactively love enemies even before a hostile situation arises? At both the micro and macro scales, there is still much work to be done to promote a comprehensive framework of enemy-love.
One final note: in this essay I have not touched on what enemy-love might look like in an international context. That requires a length and nuance that I don’t have space here to address. But let’s start at home first. To paraphrase 1 John 4, if we cannot even love our domestic enemies who we do see, how could we ever love our enemies abroad that we do not see? By integrating this focus on enemy-love within every layer of ordo amoris, I am making things more complex than most American Christians would prefer. But that complexity is just part of what Christian maturity looks like.
The command to love our enemies may be the most challenging thing Jesus ever said—but perhaps also the most transformational. Let us choose to listen to him, and obey.
Such an important message Andrew. Thanks for sharing it!!
Thanks for this. I don't disagree although I think the rubber hits the road when you distinguish between interpersonal acts of love and engagement (even of enemies - but also just of people outside your immediate community) and what subsume under 'communal' -- I think failure to distinguish the domain of abstract, collective, institutional and political domains from the interpersonal has often led to far greater crimes in the name of love or equity. This is my take https://oswald67.substack.com/p/love-thy-neighbour-and-immigration?r=2r3au