Now blessing isn't an option. This is the command of Christ, so why do we respond in kind? Have we done that in recent weeks with an enemy, or with a doubtful tradesman, or with somebody we are dealing with? Have we reacted if they have been unreasonable, rude, hostile, or anything of the kind? Have we broken the rules of the Lord? As one old writer says, it's far better to be injured than it is to sin. It's far better to absorb the slander and the injury than it is to retaliate in kind and offend the Lord. That is far better than to separate yourself from the Saviour, discredit Christian character, ruin your witness, and have no testimony with no possibility of overcoming evil with good. ‘Bless them that curse you.’ Speak well to them. Wish them well. Show no hostile response, but show mercy and sympathy and pity, and this attitude will perhaps may convict them and certainly it will preserve you.
Responding in this way is a matter for prayer. This is a challenge. This person is to be your quarry for witness and your target for witness and you pray for the person and pray for the situation. Bless them that curse you and pray for them that ill-treat you. But in this word ‘despitefully use you’ there is the notion of taking advantage of you and they do it because they have got it in for you. They are your enemies, so they especially take advantage of you. Pray for them. That's the command of the Lord. King David prayed for Saul in the most terrible circumstances. The first Christian martyr prayed for those who executed him. The Apostle Paul, the famous passage, the first few verses of Romans 9, prays for his persecutors, and longs that they can be saved, even if it is possible going to be possible by his own forfeiture of salvation. Those Jews were his persecutors, and yet you see the apostle’s attitude. He has sympathy for them; he wishes for their salvation, and he prays for them, and there's nothing like praying for somebody to condition and shape your attitude towards them. If you are finding hostility is welling up and retaliation and desire to get back at them, and you begin to pray for a person, then those emotions are shamed away. Prayer is therapeutic as well as important and vital because it brings down the blessing of God.
Is there a word in the NT that says we should pray for the lost? Yes here: we are to pray for our enemies. The passage is about those who hate us ‘for the Son of man’s sake (verse 22), so these are unbelievers. What should we pray for them? Obviously we pray for their salvation, because all else they may receive is nothing without that, and this is to be a prayer that brings them real good. We pray as those who understand what it is to be hostile to God, to be slaves to sin and unable to free themselves, to be unwilling to hear the gospel, and opposed to all who preach it and stand for it. We were once in the same position, so we pray sympathetically, knowing that they will not pray for themselves. The gospel first starts to work in our lives when we are far from God and have no inclination to come to him. We would never even begin to seek him if he did not draw us, and the prayers of others who know him may play a big part in that.