We all have them in our lives. The people who rub us the wrong way, the people who break all our ideas of social decorum. The people who seem bent on offending, hurting, or betraying us.

The people who are difficult to love.

Some of them we interact with daily: a stubborn spouse, rebellious toddler, or overbearing co-worker. Others we only see occasionally: on a Sunday morning, at Thanksgiving, when we get our groceries. Sometimes someone usually loveable becomes difficult: the typically sweet teenager after a late night, a wife under unusual stress, the boss when he is sick.

Regardless of the variants, the fact remains: we cannot escape people who are difficult to love. If you are like me, your gut response is to mistreat, malign, or avoid them altogether. Or, in keeping with our culture, you label them as “toxic” and cut off ties with them as a means of achieving personal peace. These are both unbiblical responses.

Character and Command

Jesus summarized the law thus: “‘Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29–30). In His other teachings, Jesus expounds on these commands, defining neighbor broadly (Luke 10:25–27), expanding love to enemies (Matt. 5:44), and praying for His disciples (and all believers) to love one another, regardless of the lovability of the object (John 15:17).

The Christian’s call to love others—not just the most loveable—is a clear command. We are not given the luxury of choosing whom to love. Nor is this an arbitrary command, but one rooted in the very character of God. In Exodus, the Lord proclaimed to Moses, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands” (Ex. 34:6). This refrain is echoed time and again throughout the Old Testament (Deut. 5:10, 2 Chron. 5:13, Ps. 103:8, to list a few). In the New Testament, the apostle John states simply and poignantly: “God is love” (1 John 4:8b). In short, God commands us to love others because that is what He does and who He is (see John 13:34). As His image-bearers, we are designed to share in and reflect certain aspects of God’s character—one of those being love. Therefore, God commands we live according to our design. We misrepresent God and mar His image when we fail or refuse to love our difficult neighbor.

Some of you may be saying, “I understand, and I agree, but I’m not even sure what love is.” Let me start by explaining what love is not.

What Love Is Not

Susan spent the weekend moving her mom into an assisted living facility. She grumbled and griped the entire time, but if you asked, she would say she did it out of love for her mom.

Jim wanted to buy a new truck but knew his wife would never agree. So, he spent several months doting on her. He bought her flowers, massaged her feet, cooked supper, even finished that landscaping project. He was sure that, after all his effort, she couldn’t refuse him the truck.

Dan prays every day, volunteers for every church event, and regularly visits the elderly shut-ins. He says he does so out of his love for God. Yet, he lives in constant fear that he will fall from grace if he fails to faithfully serve.

Barb is flying to California to help with disaster relief. She is using the last of her vacation time to spend the week with a team of people who drive her crazy in a state she hates. She does not fail to tell everyone she knows how much she is sacrificing to serve in this way.

In the above examples, every person is motivated not by love but by self-interest. Susan is disgruntled because she cares more about her “wasted” Saturday than her mom. Jim’s kind attentions toward his wife are motivated by his own desire for a new truck. Dan serves to ensure his own salvation, while Barb serves to feed her ego.

Jesus makes it plain in the Sermon on the Mount, and elsewhere, that He is looking not at outward acts but the inward motivations of the heart (see Luke 6:43–45). It is not enough to do something kind for another. The motivation of the heart, not simply the act itself, determines whether it is an act of love.

That said, loving someone genuinely from the heart is never divorced from acting on that love. We know that a friend who professes to love us but inexplicitly disappears during trials does not really love us. Time and again, Jesus challenges the Pharisees’ on these kinds of professions of love for neighbor that are backed up by nothing (Matt. 23:1–4, 15, Mark 7:5–13, and Luke 13:10–16). The apostle John echoes this teaching when he calls us to love in word and deed (1 John 3:18).

It is clear, then, that love is neither simply action nor simply motivation; it is a wedding between them.

What Love Is

To give an imperfect definition: love is an inward disposition of the heart that leads to action—action that seeks the welfare of the other at any cost. This inward disposition is a fruit of the Spirit, characterized by patience, kindness, humility, contentment, courtesy, selflessness, and a peaceable spirit that is eager to forgive and rejoice with the truth. It “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:4–7).

While this explanation of love may seem abstract, Christ made it concrete in His life and death. During His life and ministry, Jesus embodied the characteristics of love. His very coming into the world was an act of humility, not to mention the humility required to reside with His sinful and broken creatures. Furthermore, He was patient with them and gave up His time, comfort, treasure, reputation, to serve them. He endured the scoffing and shame of the cross, and, in His greatest display of love, laid down His very life to save a rebellious rabble. Of this act, the apostle John writes, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” He did all of this not for personal gain or out of self-interest but for the joy set before Him—the joy of saving lost sinners, not the most loveable ones (Heb. 12:2).

In short, when God commands us to love our neighbor—pleasant or otherwise—He calls us to lay down our life for that neighbor out of love. The question remains: how?

How Do We Love the Unlovable?

Before we can love the difficult person (or anyone), we must have a heart made new by the Holy Spirit’s application of Christ’s work. Love is a fruit of the Spirit; we cannot hope to love others in a biblical and selfless way unless our hearts are transformed. We only love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). If your heart has not been made new by the cleansing blood of Christ, cry out to Him in repentance, confessing your lovelessness and asking for His mercy. He is loving and merciful and eager to forgive (1 John 1:9).

If you have been given a new heart, able to love rightly, remember from whence it came. After the sinful woman anointed Jesus’ feet with costly oil, Jesus explains that the woman loved Him with an extravagant, selfless way because she understood two things: the magnitude of her sin and the magnitude of Christ’s forgiveness (Luke 7:47–50). The same is true of us. The more we grasp our own sinfulness and the extent of Christ’s forgiveness, the more we will find our heart spilling over with love for even the most unlovable. So, if you want to love others, meditate on the gospel daily and pray for eyes to understand it more fully. Then pray for a heart that responds in love toward God and neighbor.

As I have stated repeatedly, loving others is an act of God. We are dependent on Him to create in us a heart of love. To that end, we must not only meditate on the gospel but pray that God would fill us with a love for Him and others. We must confess our lack of love and pray for eyes to see how we can love those we otherwise despise. Then we must pray for God’s grace to help us do it.

What does this look like daily? Setting aside your own interests for that of others. As Elisabeth Elliot wrote, it is “to aim at loving instead of at being loved requires sacrifice. Love reaches out, willing to be turned down or inconvenience, expecting no personal reward, wanting only to give.” We do this in ordinary and mundane ways. We pray for others. Rather than avoid the cranky co-worker, we try to engage her in conversation. We willingly give up our “me time” to talk with our troubled (and troublesome) teen. We invite the awkward church member over for lunch. We make a meal for the rude neighbor after his surgery. In short, we set aside our interests and comforts to serve the other, even when we don’t feel very loving.

We do this because that is what Christ did for us. When we were the most unlovable and unlovely, He laid down His very life out of love for us (Ezek. 16:1–6, Rom. 5:6–8). While loving the difficult friend, neighbor, spouse, or co-worker is not always easy or natural, we can take joy in knowing that, in doing so, we obey God’s command and are reflecting Christ’s love for us. And as we move toward others in love, we can rest assured that God will supply us with the love we need and lack. Let us, then, love boldly and extravagantly, looking for nothing in return.

  Mrs. Elisabeth Bloechl is a pastor’s wife and homeschooling mom living in Minnesota.