What My Enemy Taught Me About God

I came across a line the other day that stopped me in my tracks. It said this,

“We only love God as much as we love our enemy.”

I’ll be honest, I wanted to push back against it.

Surely it can’t be that exact.

Surely my devotion, my prayers, my scripture study, my temple worship...surely those things stand as evidence of my love for God. And they do. But still, that sentence lingered. It asked me to take a second look at the places where my love runs thin.

A story came to mind. Years ago, there was someone in my life who felt almost impossible to love. I would try, then give up, then try again. It was exhausting. They had hurt me deeply, and every time I thought I’d healed, something new would surface. I remember sitting in the car one day after a particularly hard interaction, hands gripping the steering wheel, and I whispered out loud, “God, I can’t love them. Not today. Maybe not ever.”

And in that quiet moment, I felt a soft impression: “You don’t have to do this alone. Let Me teach you how to love them.”

It wasn’t instant. I didn’t walk away changed all at once. But slowly, as I prayed for this person, my heart softened. Little glimpses of compassion came in. The burden started to feel lighter. I learned that love doesn’t always look like closeness. Sometimes love looks like forgiveness. Sometimes it looks like giving space. Sometimes it looks like refusing to keep score.

And maybe that’s what this quote is really pointing to.

Love for God and love for people are so intertwined we can’t separate them.

My willingness to learn to love someone who feels unlovable says something about how much I trust Him, how much I believe His grace is enough for me and for them.

I think about Jesus’ words: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.” It sounds impossible, and maybe it is if we’re trying to do it on our own. But with Him, love becomes possible in the hardest places.

So maybe today the question isn’t just “Do I love God?” Maybe it’s “Am I letting Him expand my love, even toward those who have hurt me?”

It’s not easy. It may take years. But each small step toward love is also a step closer to Him.

As John reminds us, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 John 4:20).