Most advice about difficult people is about managing them: what to say, when to leave the room, how to stop them getting to you. Scripture is interested in something else. It asks what you owe them, which is a less comfortable question and a more useful one.
Love here is something you do
Luke 6:27–28 gives the command in four verbs: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” None of the four is a feeling. You can do good to someone whose voice sets your teeth on edge. You can pray for someone you would cross the street to avoid.
Paul’s description works the same way. “Love is patient, love is kind” (1 Corinthians 13:4), and a verse later it “keeps no account of wrongs” (13:5). That is a list of behaviours. Neither passage tells you to enjoy the person’s company. Liking is temperament. Love, as these passages use the word, is conduct, and conduct can be practised.
The reason given is not that they deserve it
Jesus anticipates the objection. “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them” (Luke 6:32).
The ground He gives is God’s character, not the other person’s merit: “He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked” (Luke 6:35). Paul makes it personal. It was “when we were enemies of God” that “we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son” (Romans 5:10). In that relationship, you were the difficult one. John’s summary is seven words long: “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
Four practices
Pray for them by name. It is on the list in Luke 6:28, and it is the one you can do today without their cooperation. Ask for their good, not only for their improvement. It is hard to hold someone in contempt while asking God to be kind to them.
Do one ordinary good thing. Paul quotes Proverbs 25:21–22: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink” (Romans 12:20). Food and water. No speech and no reconciliation scene is asked for. Cover the shift, pass on the useful information, make the second cup of tea.
Stop keeping the account. Most of us carry a detailed record of what the difficult person has done. Love “keeps no account of wrongs” (1 Corinthians 13:5). Paul does not pretend the wrongs were imaginary. He says what to do with them: “Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but leave room for God’s wrath” (Romans 12:19). Justice is not cancelled. It is moved to someone else’s desk.
Talk to them, not about them. Where there is a real wrong, the instruction is direct: “If your brother sins against you, go and confront him privately” (Matthew 18:15). Privately, and to him, which rules out the usual alternative of telling six other people first. Be honest about the category, though. That verse concerns sin. Much of what makes people difficult is only irritating, and for that the instruction is shorter: “Bear with one another” (Colossians 3:13).
What it does not mean
It does not mean the relationship will mend. “If it is possible on your part, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18) carries two qualifiers, and Paul put them there. Peace takes two. Your half is the only half you answer for.
It does not mean calling bad behaviour good. The same chapter opens its section on love with “Love must be sincere. Detest what is evil; cling to what is good” (Romans 12:9). And Matthew 18 does not end at the private conversation; verses 16–17 bring in one or two others, then the church. If someone is harming you, involving other people is the procedure Jesus Himself describes. What Romans 12:17 forbids is repaying evil for evil.
Christians read one point differently. Some hold that forgiveness, like God’s, is granted when the offender repents, pointing to “if he repents, forgive him” (Luke 17:3), while a readiness to forgive is kept in the meantime. Others hold that forgiveness is given from your side regardless, pointing to “Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13), and that only reconciliation waits on repentance. Both agree that revenge is excluded and that the praying and the doing good start now.
Where this connects
One of the tests in What does it mean to be Christ-like? is what happens when you are wronged. The difficult person in your week is that test, scheduled. Loving the easy people, as Luke 6:32 points out, is no credit to anyone.
