“But love your enemies, do what is good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is gracious to the ungrateful and evil.” — Luke 6:35 (HCSB)
Jesus is still on the same thread he started in verse 27. He’s been laying out this radical alternative way of living, and now he’s even expanding on what he said previously. If you only love people who love you back, he says, what’s the big deal? Even people with no interest in God do that. There’s nothing distinctly different about that. Jesus is after something much harder than basic reciprocity.
The lending piece is worth slowing down on because the cultural background matters here. Predatory lending (particularly toward the poor) was a significant problem in that time and place, despite the Old Testament’s repeated prohibitions against it. People found creative workarounds. They charged interest anyway. They took farms, homes, and even children as collateral. Sometimes they simply refused to lend at all if they doubted the person’s ability to repay. It was a system designed to protect the lender at the expense of the borrower. And Jesus addresses it head on. He says to lend anyway, even when you’re not sure you’ll see it back.
This one hits me personally. When someone asks to borrow money and uses the word “borrow” in a very loose sense of the word, I feel it. There’s a frustration that builds when generosity gets taken for granted, when someone seems more interested in what they can get than in any genuine relationship. It feels like being used. And honestly, sometimes it is. But Jesus doesn’t seem to carve out an exception for those situations. He addresses them directly and says to give anyway.
The thing that helps me with this is remembering where the money came from in the first place, or the coat, or even the love and patience I’m being asked to extend. None of it originated with me. It all came from God. So when I give it back out, even to someone ungrateful, even to someone who won’t repay it, even to someone who doesn’t deserve it, I’m really just returning to God what was his to begin with and letting him use it how he sees fit. That reframes the whole thing.
And then there’s the character issue. Jesus ends this passage by pointing to the character of God himself. He’s gracious to the ungrateful and evil. Sometimes, I’m ungrateful and evil. If I’m trying to pattern my life after him, that’s the standard I’m working toward. Not gracious only when it’s easy or when it’s appreciated. Gracious because that’s who he is, and who I’m supposed to be becoming. That’s harder to do than it is to say. But nobody promised that following Jesus was going to be easy.