Loving Enemies and Our Stance Toward the Devil
Question: Jesus said to love your enemy. Does that mean we should love the devil too?
This answer argues from the text, not from tradition. If the passage will not carry a doctrine, the doctrine is set aside.
When Jesus commands us to love our enemies, He is speaking in the realm of human relationships. The commands to love, forgive, and show kindness are addressed to how humans treat other humans. They concern interpersonal ethics among people made in God's image---our "fellow man," to use the older term.
The devil, by contrast, is consistently presented as our adversary, not as someone toward whom we are enjoined to exercise reconciliatory love. Consider several passages:
- James 4:7: "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."
- 1 Peter 5:8--9: "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist stedfast in the faith..."
- 1 John 3:8: "... For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil."
Access note: public and archive access are still being finalized. Use the passages, test the reasoning, and question the assumptions.
In these texts, the posture commanded toward the devil is resistance, vigilance, and opposition, not love. He is "adversary," "accuser," and destined for judgment, with no offered hope of repentance or redemption.
When Jesus says to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, the context is clearly human persecution and mistreatment: those who revile, harm, and oppose you among your fellow humans. Likewise, when the New Testament speaks of being "kind one to another," it is human-to-human. It is not addressing our stance toward fallen angels or Satan.
To try to press "love your enemies" into meaning "love the devil" breaks the context and ignores the distinct category Satan occupies in Scripture. He is not merely a wicked neighbor; he is the enemy of God's purposes, headed for irreversible judgment.
At the same time, we must not allow hatred of evil to morph into a fleshly, vengeful attitude toward people. Romans 12:9 gives a helpful balance:
"Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good."
We are to abhor evil while loving people. When it comes to the devil, the scriptural emphasis is not love but opposition:
- Resist him.
- Do not yield to his schemes.
- Put on the whole armor of God that you may stand against his wiles.
So the mandate to love our enemies applies to human adversaries, not to Satan. With respect to the devil, the biblical commands are to resist, oppose, and refuse his works, while recognizing that he is beyond the scope of reconciliation and headed for certain judgment.