Luke 6:35
What does Luke 6:35 mean?
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing back; and your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind toward the unthankful and evil.
The short answer
Luke 6:35 sits at the heart of Jesus' most demanding teaching. The verse gives three commands in a row: "love your enemies," do good, and lend "expecting nothing back." Notice that none of these is a feeling. Jesus is not asking his hearers to work up warm emotions toward people who have wronged them. He is describing behavior—concrete, costly, visible action taken on behalf of people who will likely never repay it and may never even say thank you.
The reason Jesus gives is just as striking as the command itself. Those who live this way, he says, will be "children of the Most High," because God himself is "kind toward the unthankful and evil." In other words, enemy-love is family resemblance. God does not ration his kindness to the deserving; sun and rain, breath and life go to the grateful and the ungrateful alike. When we do good without keeping score, we are simply acting like our Father.
It helps to be honest about how hard this is. An enemy at a distance can be loved in the abstract; the difficult person across the dinner table, the coworker who undermines us, the fellow church member who wounded us—these test the command daily. Luke 6:35 refuses to let love stay theoretical. Lending without expecting return means real money, real time, real risk of loss. The verse assumes we will sometimes be taken advantage of, and tells us to do good anyway.
The promised "reward" is not a transaction, as if kindness were an investment strategy. It is the deep gift of belonging: living this way marks us as God's children, people whose character has begun to mirror the God who is generous even to those who oppose him.
What scholars say
These two excerpts answer a practical question: what does enemy-love actually ask of us? Gench, citing Gail O'Day, observes that loving one's enemies can sometimes be easier than loving the people we live, work, and worship alongside every day, while Calian recalls how his Armenian mother, despite her own suffering, held to compassionate respect and human dignity for all people—enemies included—pointing directly to Luke 6:35.
“The third peculiarity appears by way of contrast when we recall that the other Gospels exhort disciples to love their neighbors (Mark 12:28–34; Matt. 22:34–40; Luke 10:25–28) and even their enemies (Matt. 5:43–48; Luke 6:27–36). John’s Gospel focuses the love commandment on the community of disciples itself. It speaks of in-house love, calling Christians to “love one another.” We ought not to assume, however, that this makes John’s love commandment easier to follow. Indeed, Gail O’Day wisely cautions against dismissing the ethical seriousness of this commandment: “The history of the church and of individual communities of faith suggests that to love one another may be the most difficult thing Jesus could have asked. There are many circumstances in which it is easier to love one’s enemies than it is to love those with whom one lives, works, and worships day after day.”
“I share this story because my parents not only loved us but taught us the lesson of the Golden Rule—namely, to practice compassionate respect toward others as the common ground for keeping human life human before God, in whose image we are all created. My mother suffered as a young woman, like so many Armenians of her generation, yet she did not lose her perspective on the importance of human dignity and respect for all people, including one’s enemies (Luke 6:35).”
What it means for you
Start small and specific. Think of one person who is genuinely difficult for you—not a distant villain, but someone you actually deal with—and choose one concrete act of good toward them this week, with no strings attached. Lend, help, or speak kindly without tracking whether it comes back to you. That is the shape of Luke 6:35 in ordinary life.
When it feels unfair, remember the verse's own logic: you are not doing this because the person deserves it, but because God is kind to people who don't deserve it—including, on our worst days, us.
Luke 6 in context
Luke 6 contains what is often called the Sermon on the Plain, Luke's counterpart to Matthew's Sermon on the Mount. After choosing the twelve apostles, Jesus pronounces blessings on the poor and hungry and woes on the rich and comfortable (6:20–26). Then comes the section on loving enemies (6:27–36), which includes the Golden Rule (6:31) and builds to verse 35's triple command. The passage closes by calling hearers to be merciful as their Father is merciful (6:36), before Jesus turns to teaching about judging others and bearing good fruit.