Matthew 5:43
““You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’”
What does Matthew 5:43 mean?
Jesus opens this teaching by referencing the command to love your neighbor, which comes straight from the Hebrew scriptures and was well-known to his Jewish audience. What wasn't written in scripture was the second part, "hate your enemy"—that was an interpretation people had added on their own, perhaps thinking that loving your neighbor naturally meant disliking outsiders. Jesus is about to challenge this assumption by calling his followers to something much harder: extending love even to those who oppose them.