Luke 6:28
What does Luke 6:28 mean?
bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you.
The short answer
In Luke 6:28, Jesus tells his followers to "bless those who curse you" and to "pray for those who mistreat you." A curse, in the ancient world, was not just an insult. It was a wish spoken aloud for someone's harm — for their life to unravel. Jesus takes that reality seriously and asks for its opposite: when someone wishes you ill, wish them well, and say so before God.
Notice what the verse does not say. It does not say the curse never happened, or that mistreatment doesn't hurt, or that you must pretend to feel warmly toward the person who wounded you. Blessing is not the same as approving. Praying for someone is not the same as excusing them. Jesus is naming a response, not an emotion — a deliberate choice to renounce the wish for an enemy's destruction, even while the injury is still fresh.
That distinction matters because Scripture itself makes room for raw honesty about pain. The Bible contains prayers of grief and even rage at the horrors people inflict on one another. A faith that skips over that honesty risks turning enemy-love into sentimentality — a pleasant slogan that has never actually been hurt. Luke 6:28 assumes real enemies, real curses, real mistreatment. It is spoken to people who have something genuine to forgive.
So the command works like a discipline more than a feeling. You name the harm truthfully, and then you refuse to answer it in kind. You ask God for the other person's good — sometimes through gritted teeth. Over time, that practice does something the curse never could: it breaks the cycle of hostility at the one point you actually control, which is your own response. The verse is short, but it may be one of the costliest sentences Jesus ever spoke.
What scholars say
These excerpts answer two questions the verse raises: whether blessing our enemies means silencing our anger, and what the command looks like in practice. Carolyn J. Sharp holds Jesus' call to enemy-love alongside Obadiah's honest naming of pain and rage, while L. Shannon Jung recounts a family who, recalling Luke 6:28, brought gifts to their neighbors — who received them with shock, gratitude, and tears.
“Christians must follow Jesus’ exhortation to love our enemies rather than seek their destruction (Matt. 5:43–48; Luke 6:27–28). But Obadiah creates a place in our sacred literature where pain and anger can be named, and that is valuable. Without honesty about our rage at the horrors enacted in human history, our faith is in danger of becoming sentimental and irrelevant. So even though our theology should not be determined in any simplistic way by Obadiah’s perspective, we must listen. For in listening, we can honor the pain of his people.”
“Morris said the incident reminded him of Luke 6:28, which reads, “Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you.” The neighbors reacted with shock when the Morrises, who attend Bayside Community Church, showed up with packages. “They were extremely grateful and in tears,” said Morris.”
What it means for you
Start small and concrete. Think of one person whose words or actions have genuinely stung you — a coworker, a relative, a neighbor. This week, pray for their good by name, even if the prayer feels stiff. You don't have to manufacture warm feelings, and you don't have to pretend the hurt isn't real. Naming the pain honestly is part of the practice, not a failure of it.
Then look for one tangible act of blessing: a kind word, a favor, a gift where a grudge would be easier. Ordinary gestures like these are what the verse looks like on an actual street — not a sentiment, but a decision repeated until it changes something.
Luke 6 in context
Luke 6 gathers some of Jesus' most demanding teaching. After disputes about the Sabbath and the calling of the twelve apostles, Jesus comes down to a level place and preaches what is often called the Sermon on the Plain. He blesses the poor and hungry, warns the rich and comfortable, and then turns to enemy-love: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and — in verse 28 — bless and pray for those who curse and mistreat you. The chapter continues with the golden rule, a warning against judging, and the parable of the two foundations.