How Jesus Demonstrates Powerful Love for Enemies
Introduction
Another series of senseless shootings have filled our American airwaves this week as another school was shot up and a prominent religious figure was assassinated. Instead of coming together in a moment of compassion and support, our two-party system is pointing fingers and blaming each other. While we think this all new to us, or even worse, that it cannot happen to us, we simply forget where we have been. I am beginning to write this post on 9/11. I was 24 years old when this terrible event happened, a brand-new seminary student. We continue to fail to learn from our lessons and lean into the One who taught us with compassion how to handle our “enemies”. I’ll be honest, I struggled to go to sleep and put my phone down last night. This morning, as I was praying and making my coffee and breakfast, the story of how Jesus handled his exchange with the centurion, and his sick servant immediately came to mind. Sitting down, I began some lectio on this and everything pointed to the centurion’s faith, which is the common focus of this text. However, what if the real beauty of this text is how Jesus compassionately and empathetically handled this meeting? Instead of focusing the centurion’s faith, in this post, I want to show how this encounter is a radical demonstration of loving one’s enemies and how we can embrace this love despite our differences. We all are children of God; each person we encounter each day is our sister and brother in Christ.
Context and Historical Background
According to War History Online, a Centurion was the highest rank usually held by men who were not from Rome’s elite senatorial or equestrian social classes. After Marius had reformed the army during the Republic era, they played a vital role and continued to be important throughout the Empire. At its height, that Empire employed around 1,800 legionary Centurions and at least as many commanding auxiliary troops.
Centurions were essential to the Roman military’s effectiveness and played a significant role in the governance of provinces like Palestine during the first century. Each centurion led a centuria, which was part of a larger cohort. A legion typically contained 60 centurions, each responsible for their respective units. Centurions were ranked hierarchically. The highest-ranking centurion was the Primus Pilus, who commanded the first centuria of the first cohort and served as an advisor to the legion commander.
Centurions were responsible for training soldiers, leading them in battle, and ensuring discipline within their ranks. As enforcers of the law, in first-century Palestine when Jesus lived, centurions also acted as local law enforcement, maintaining order in the provinces and interacting with civilian populations. They often handled administrative tasks, such as logistics and supply management for their units.
This encounter between Jesus and the centurion is a peculiar one. Jesus being a member of an occupied and oppressed people should not have been approached in the way he was by a man of such power. Who was the servant? One of Jesus’ countrymen? Or a slave captured in battle?
In this exchange we observe an unfolding of a complex web of history, identity, and power. With Roman authority looming over daily life in Palestine, any interaction between a Jewish teacher and an imperial officer would have been charged with tension and suspicion. Yet, in this moment where humanity meets each other, the centurion approaches Jesus—not as a conqueror, but as a petitioner seeking help for someone under his care—Jesus responds not with guardedness or indignation, but with quiet, transformative empathy. The boundaries that might have kept them apart—cultural, political, even religious—begin to dissolve as Jesus sees the person before him rather than the symbol of oppression. His gentle movement toward the centurion’s pain reveals a radical openness unavailable through social convention, setting the stage for a response that will soon break through prevailing norms and expectations.
Radical Love: Loving the Enemy
I was listening to the teacher and philosopher Cornell West the other day talking about his enemies. He made a statement that resonated with me that I think we all need to lean into. He said that he loves a lot of people because they are his siblings in Christ, that we are all God’s beloved. This love though does not restrict us from seeing some as enemies as some of their words and actions are hurtful to the ones we love. I think this is the posture we must adopt in light of the ongoing tensions and hate filled rhetoric that we are witnessing currently.
Jesus engages in a radical moment of hospitality and love in engaging with the centurion. The compassion he freely offers is a lesson to us. Even when those who wield power over others both in word and deed, we must instead of responding with suspicion and resentment, we must embrace and model a love that refuses to be limited by social hierarchies or past grievances. Here, I am reminded of Martin Luther King.
Jesus’ actions invite us to question our own instincts about who is deserving of kindness and mercy. When Jesus reaches across lines of authority and oppression, he exposes the poverty of a compassion that is selective or conditional and challenges us to imagine what it might look like if we opened our hearts in the same way. In doing so, he offers not only healing for the centurion’s servant but a profound invitation to all who witness the exchange: to reorient our understanding of love so that it becomes a force capable of healing divisions, breaking cycles of enmity, and transforming those whom we are taught to fear or resent into fellow travelers on the path of grace.
Lessons for Today
Luke 7:1-10 challenges us to respond with love. This has been a crappy week. People died whom we loved and saw as our enemies. Many are pointing fingers or deflecting blame or minimizing. We suffer because we cling to our ideologies, our fears and our anxieties. We must put this away like Jesus, demonstrate a radically inclusive love, crossing boundaries of culture, power, and social expectation. Jesus recognizes the centurion’s humility and need, seeing the individual rather than the emblem of oppression, and offers empathy and healing without condition.
This act of compassion not only restores the servant but also extends an invitation to all: to reimagine love as a force that breaks cycles of enmity, heals division, and extends mercy even to those we might consider adversaries. In doing so, Jesus’ example challenges us today to practice hospitality, empathy, and grace—especially towards those we view as outsiders or enemies—transforming fear and resentment into opportunities for healing and reconciliation.
During the time after 9/11, the churches I attended sang There is a Balm in Gilead for many weeks after that tragic day. “In the Old Testament, Gilead was the name of the mountainous region east of the Jordan River. This region was known for having skillful physicians and an ointment made from the gum of a tree particular to that area. Many believed that this balm had miraculous powers to heal the body. In the book of Jeremiah, God tells the people of Israel that though many believe in the mysterious healing power of this balm, they can’t trust in those powers for spiritual healing or as a relief of their oppression. He reminds them that He is ultimately in control, and only He can relieve their suffering. In the New Testament, God answers the suffering of His people by sending His own son to take our place. Jesus becomes our “balm in Gilead.” It is Him we are called to turn to in our times of trial for healing and comfort. We sing this song with that assurance: no matter our hardships or supposed shortcomings, Jesus loves us enough to take our suffering upon Himself.”
Reflect on these words and may they be a prayer for us:
There is a balm in Gilead
to make the wounded whole,
there is a balm in Gilead
to heal the sin-sick soul.
Sometimes I feel discouraged
and think my work’s in vain,
but then the Holy Spirit
revives my soul again. Refrain
2 If you cannot preach like Peter,
if you cannot pray like Paul,
you can tell the love of Jesus
and say, “He died for all.” Refrain
Psalter Hymnal, (Gray), 1987
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