So, what does the Bible say about loving difficult people? Love them anyway. Jesus told his followers to love their enemies, do good to the people who hate them, and pray for the people who treat them badly (Luke 6:27–28). That sounds impossible until you watch how he did it. He looked past the thing that made a person hard to love and saw someone worth dying for.
What would Jesus’s life look like in today’s world?
One of my favorite things to do after I read the Bible is to daydream about different ways the text might’ve played out if it happened in our current time.
- Jesus was born in a cave or a stable/barn and placed in a feeding trough known as a manger. What would that have been in today’s world? I don’t have a barn on my property, so I’m picturing more of a garage and a wheelbarrow situation.
- Jesus’s first miracle was turning water into wine at a wedding. This was incredibly thoughtful because it may have been very insulting for the wedding party hosts to run out of the “standard” food and drink for their guests. In today’s world, I suppose extra wine could always be helpful, but the more insulting thing would be if the food ran out before everyone was fed. Or maybe if the wedding were being held in a place with snow and the furnace broke during the reception.
- In some of his final days on the earth, Jesus showed his love for his friends by washing their feet. This was typically a job very few people would choose to do if they weren’t hired for that task because feet were the primary mode of transportation in that time and sandals were the primary foot covering. Lots of dirt, sweat, bugs, and more got stuck in sandals. What type of essential-yet-grimey job would Jesus have done for his friends in that moment if he were alive today?
That last one is my favorite. It gets me thinking about all the dirty, sweaty, buggy, unfun jobs that people in my friend group need help with. Because that’s what Jesus was showing his friends in his final days with this act, right? He was showing them what real love and compassionate leadership look like.
And I don’t think he’d say the contemporary version of this is helping our friends wash their cars.
Is love just about doing the right thing?
It might be more about the “how” than the “what” of the helpful act.
I’ll be honest; sometimes I get frustrated with doing the same helpful task more than once and, in those moments, I might do the helpful thing with an unhelpful attitude. I might let resentful thoughts linger in my head as I help around my job, house, or community. I might rage clean a bit more than whistling while I work.
The wrong “how”—the wrong attitude in my heart—can completely hijack an act of service, making it feel like a duty, project, or obligation.
There’s no dignity in that.
What is love in the Bible?
So, what is love in the Bible? It is less of a feeling and more of a decision: doing what is best for another person no matter who they are or how they have treated you. Pastor Mike unpacks what that looks like in real life in Confusing Things Christians Say: “Hate the Sin; Love the Sinner”.
I don’t imagine Jesus curling his lip and choking on the smell or sight of his friends’ feet. And just a few days after that, when he was dying on a cross, he didn’t sneer and scoff at the criminal next to him who said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42).
Jesus chose to see the heart, not the hurdle.
When he held his friends’ feet in his hands, I bet he thanked our heavenly Father for the thousands of miles those feet had been able to travel. I bet he asked God for protection for those feet, which still had thousands more miles to travel in their future full of telling people how much God loves them. I bet he asked God to forgive the owners of those feet for all the choices they had made that hurt themselves or others.
Jesus saw the most beautiful sight imaginable when he looked at those feet.
He sees the most beautiful sight imaginable when he looks at you too.
And he sees the most beautiful sight imaginable when he looks at the person experiencing homelessness on your street, the bully in your class, and your demanding boss who can’t seem to say anything nice. That is where loving difficult people actually starts. Not with gritted teeth but by seeing them through Jesus’s eyes.
How can we love like Jesus when someone is hard to love?
Another time, Jesus told his disciples, “But here is what I tell you who are listening. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who call down curses on you. And pray for those who treat you badly” (Luke 6:27–28 NIRV).
Clean feet don’t need washing. I won’t go as far as to say that kind people don’t need loving. They do. We all do. But Jesus challenged us to go one step further—to wash dirty feet joyfully and love the difficult personalities happily.
How do you love difficult people? Start with these four steps
That’s not the easy thing to do, though. Any time I read about a challenging new mindset or habit, I always hope someone will share a practical tip with me about where to start. In this case, I’m the “someone,” and I’ve got four steps for you:
- Pick the person whose feet you know God is asking you to wash. Write that name down in your phone or your planner today.
- In your head, name the quality that makes this person hard to love.
- Ask Google or your favorite AI bot to give you five examples of how that particularly difficult characteristic/behavior could be seen or used as a blessing.
- Now that you’ve reframed this hurdle into a beautiful heart, go out of your way to visit, call, or text that person and tell them how much you appreciate that quality about them. And then go one step further—ask that person how you can pray for them this week.
I think of these steps as putting on “Jesus Goggles.”
We’re only human. We’ll get annoyed and frustrated. We’ll focus on how we want to be loved, accepted, and seen as beautiful even when we are at our worst and forget to do the same for others. The cool thing is that no matter how many times we forget, Jesus still loves us. That’s why we can trust that he’ll help us try again each time we mess up.
Ask God to help you see others as Jesus does.
Ask God to help you see every person around you as someone Jesus died for.
Ask God to keep helping you live like the only questions that matter are these: When is Jesus coming back, and who can I pre-invite to that party?!
