For years I enjoyed a friendship a neighbor I’ll call Joe. Joe and I would talk about our lives, our neighborhood, the world, and God. But one day everything changed, and not just because he moved. I texted him some Bible verses and then he got defensive and exploded. He then flooded my phone with mean and vaguely threatening text messages. When he wouldn’t stop, I blocked his number. How did my friend become an enemy? And why? Joe’s behavior weighed on me for days.
This situation with Joe made me wonder how I could love someone who is now my enemy. The Scriptures offer a clear answer: through prayer. Jesus taught, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). In our hate-filled world, these words are as challenging as they are countercultural. But we need them.
Think about the people who are hostile to you. It could be a boss or a peer, a teacher or a close family member. Our enemies go beyond our personal relationships and include terrorists, evil political leaders, and progressive activists who hate Christians. As God’s people, we must pray for them.
The Why and How of Praying for Our Enemies
We pray for our enemies because God’s heart is merciful and because, in Christ, we have been reconciled to Him (Romans 5:10). Let us not forget that we were once enemies of God, separated from Christ and without hope (Ephesians 2:12-13). We should desire this same mercy for others, even our enemies.
The commandment to love our enemies implies the glorious truth that God can use our prayers for them to accomplish His purposes even if our enemies cause us problems. So how do we pray for our enemies? Let me offer four ways.
1. Pray for their Salvation.
God not only desires that all be saved, He has the power to save (1 Timothy 2:1–4; Romans 1:16). Let that give you confidence to pray for people you consider impossible to reach.
Jesus left an example in praying for our enemies. As He was dying on the cross, He prayed for His executioners: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Did God answer this prayer? The Bible testifies that He did. After Jesus’ death, a Roman soldier who witnessed the final moments of Jesus exclaimed, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15:39).
When you think of your enemies, remember that God can save even the worst of them. Just as God transformed the apostle Paul from a violent persecutor to a great missionary,[1] God saves atheist journalists, hip hop stars, lesbian professors, and Muslim scholars. Your enemy today could become your friend in Christ tomorrow. Pray accordingly.
2. Pray for Blessing.
Jesus also commanded that we bless those who curse us (Luke 6:28).[2] Loving our enemies means desiring good for them, and taking that desire to God in prayer. It doesn’t mean that we affirm their negative qualities through prayer, but rather we hope for them to see God’s kindness and repent (Romans 2:4).
Like John Piper, we can pray the Lord’s Prayer for our enemies: that they would glorify God and that God’s kingdom would come into their lives (similar to praying for their salvation), that God’s will would be done in them and through them. We can pray for God to provide them with what they need, grant them forgiveness and forgiving hearts, and that God would keep them from temptation and evil.
3. Pray for God to Restrain Evil.
When our enemies do not repent and trust in Christ, pray that their evil may be restrained. This shows love both to our enemies, as sin always harms the sinner, and to the others their sin affects.
The Psalms offer language we can use. For example, we can pray that the Lord would frustrate the purposes of our enemies, shame them for their actions, cause them to fall into the pits they dig, or make them stumble and fall before Him (Psalms 33:10; 35:4; 7:15; 27:2).
4. Pray for God’s Justice.
Although some reject the idea of praying for judgment on our enemies because of the command to love them, the idea here is to simply ask God to fulfill what He has already promised (e.g., Psalm 37:38; Proverbs 14:11; Hosea 7:13).
To truly love God means to hate evil. Truly loving justice means longing to hold the wicked accountable and crying out like the martyrs of Revelation: “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6:10). British scholar Gordon Wenham comments on the usefulness of praying for justice: “It is surely better to pray to God to punish the wicked than to do it yourself… [Doing so] breaks the circle of violence instead of perpetuating it.”
If you choose to pray for God to judge your enemies, watch your heart. Hatred fills us with bitterness and causes us to disobey the command to love our enemies. If you pray for God’s judgment on your enemies, pray for their salvation as well.
Asaph is a good model for us. Asaph prayed to God to make his enemies “like whirling dust, like chaff before the wind” and asked God to “fill their faces with shame” (Ps 83:13, 16a). But he did so that they may seek the Lord (v. 16b) and that they might know that God alone is “the Most High over all the earth” (v. 18). Asaph prayed what I call “evangelistic imprecations”: pleas for earthly judgment that cause our enemies to seek God’s face.
The Answer Is in God’s Hands
God uses our prayers for our enemies in at least two ways. The first is that God fills our hearts with love. We find it hard to love our enemies, but when we consider their spiritual need and the hope Christ offers them, we love more easily.
The second way is that sometimes God answers our prayers in surprising ways. He will execute deserved judgment on some for His glory. He will restrain the evil and destruction of others. And He will transform some of His enemies into beloved children by His matchless grace.
Let me close the article by sharing an imagination-stirring story about how God can use our prayers for our enemies.
Prayers that Echo for Eternity
Stephen Lungu grew up on the streets of Zimbabwe. At an early age he became involved in a street gang and planned a terrorist attack on an evangelistic event.[3] As he stood outside the meeting tent with bombs in his hands waiting to strike, he felt a desire to go inside and listen.
Instead of shedding innocent blood that night, Lungu heard the gospel and believed in Christ. He experienced a radical transformation and became an evangelist (garnering the nickname “The Billy Graham of Africa”) who traveled the world sharing the incredible story of how God had saved him.
Thirty years after his conversion, he preached in a church near his hometown. As he spoke of his conversion, to his surprise, two little old ladies interrupted the service shouting, “Come here, you have to see this!” Lungu approached and one of them who pointed to a page at the back of her Bible that had the date “May 14, 1962” written on it—the night of Lungu’s conversion. Next to the date was a prayer: “Lord Jesus, will you save one gang leader tonight?”
Surprised, Lungu replied. “But I never saw them that night!” The ladies replied, “We weren’t there. We knew about that evangelistic meetings and were praying.” It took those women thirty years to learn how God had answered their prayer. The fruit of their prayer continues today, as thousands of people around the world came to know Jesus through the ministry of Stephen Lungu.
The simple prayer of these elderly women had the opposite effect of a nuclear bomb. Instead of causing widespread death and destruction, God used their prayer to save countless lives, in a literal and spiritual sense, as a terrorist put down his bombs and picked up a Bible.
No, we are not guaranteed these results every time we pray for an enemy. But let’s not forget that God is the one who decides the results of our prayers. He is able to do far more than we can ask or think, even when we pray for our enemies (Ephesians 3:20). Why not ask and think big?
1. The first martyr, Stephen, followed Christ’s example in his last breath, as he prayed for those who stoned him: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60). Although we don’t know how God answered this prayer, the following verse makes me curious: “And Saul approved of his execution” (Acts 8:1). This is the same Saul who persecuted the church that would be miraculously converted in Acts 9.
2. God calls us to bless those who revile us (see 1 Peter 3:9; Romans 12:14, 20). I also love the related, practical commandment of Exodus 23:4: “If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him.”
3. This story comes from the epilogue of Out of the Black Shadows: The Amazing Transformation of Stephen Lungu (Monarch Books, 2001), by Stephen Lungu and Anne Coomes. I also share this story in the course Pray the Bible.
A version of this article ran first in Spanish at Coalición por el Evangelio.