Be Merciful as Your Father Is Merciful (Luke 6:31–36)
Gerald Largent
Be Merciful, Just as Your Father Is Merciful
A Reflection on Luke 6:31–36
The Gospel for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost brings us face to face with one of the most demanding teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ. We readily understand the words, “Just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise.” Yet Christ does not stop with the Golden Rule. He carries us much further: “Love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return.” Finally, He gives us the measure of Christian life itself: “Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.”
Christ is not asking us merely to become nicer people. Even those who do not know God can love friends, return favors, and show kindness to those who treat them well. The Lord asks something greater of His disciples. Christian love begins to reveal its true character precisely when love is not returned.
This is difficult because our natural instinct is to measure what others deserve. When someone treats us kindly, we respond kindly. When someone wounds us, we want justice, repayment, or at least acknowledgment of the wrong. But the Gospel asks us to live according to another measure—the mercy of God.
God “is kind to the unthankful and evil.” His goodness does not depend upon our deserving it. The whole story of salvation bears witness to this truth. Christ came not because mankind had become worthy of Him, but because mankind needed Him. On the Cross, He did not answer hatred with hatred. The One Who taught us to love our enemies Himself fulfilled that commandment perfectly.
Love of enemies is not primarily a feeling of affection. It is a way of acting. We may not be able to make ourselves feel warmly toward a person who has injured us, but by the grace of God we can refuse revenge, pray for that person, speak without malice, and seek his or her salvation rather than destruction. In this sense, loving an enemy breaks the cycle by which injury produces injury and hatred multiplies hatred.
This does not mean calling evil good or pretending that injustice does not matter. Mercy is not indifference to truth. Christ Himself confronted sin and hypocrisy. But He never permitted the sins of others to make Him sinful. That is the challenge placed before us: another person’s anger does not give us permission to hate; another person’s cruelty does not excuse cruelty in return.
For most of us, this commandment is learned in small, ordinary encounters. We practice it when we resist speaking harshly about someone who irritates us; when we pray for the person who has offended us; when we forgive without demanding repayment; when we do good without calculating what we will receive in return.
Such mercy cannot be manufactured by willpower alone. It grows from communion with the merciful God. The more deeply we know how much we ourselves have been forgiven, the less eager we become to condemn another.
Christ therefore gives us more than a rule of conduct. He gives us a calling: to become like our heavenly Father. “Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.” This week, let us ask God to place one person before our hearts whom we find difficult to love. Then let us begin simply—with prayer, with restraint, with an act of kindness. In doing so, we take one small but real step toward the likeness of God.
From the St. Panteleimon Orthodox Christian Outreach bulletin for October 4, 2026.