When Jesus tells us to “love our enemies,” He is in no way in contradiction to the inspired Psalmist who says
21Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD, and detest those who rise against You? 22I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them as my enemies.
Clearly, the Psalmist counts those he hates with a perfect hatred as his enemies.
However, there is no contradiction here.
First, to love our enemies simply means that we treat them consistent with God’s Ten Words. When I act consistent w/ the 10 Words towards the enemy I hate, at that time I am loving my enemy.
Second, part of the problem here is that “love” today is interpreted as “giving in or yielding to the depredations of the wicked.” Such is not the definition of love. In point of fact loving my enemies necessitates resisting their intention to do harm to others. I do not love my enemy when I allow them to do evil to others and I do love my enemy when I take measures to make sure they don’t sow their wickedness. I also demonstrate love at such a time towards the judicially innocent and most importantly I demonstrate love to God is giving the wicked a love they will call “hate,” but is actually genuinely love to them.
We so associate love today with “surrender” or “passively witnessing wickedness” because we view love in sentimental categories. However, when I protect the judicially innocent against the unrighteous intent of the wicked I am at that point loving not only the judicially innocent but I am also loving the wicked since I am treating them within the bounds of God’s Decalogue.
Visiting justice upon the wicked is no more a lack of love than visiting my children with a spanking when they act in a wicked manner against God’s standards.
Now, some will ask if this explanation is harmonious with Jesus command to “turn the other cheek,” and “to go twain mile when asked to go one,” and “to give cloak also when tunic is asked for.” I believe in these situations our Savior was giving practical advice on how to behave when confronted with superior wicked force that can do us great harm if we were to respond with an “eye for an eye” at such a time. In all of those examples from the Sermon on the Mt. the premise is that the person who is being told to go the extra distance is faced with a superior force that can’t be resisted. In such a time the way to calm the waters so that one isn’t completely destroyed is to offer up a extra compliance that calms the superior force from doing extremity.
The idea that these examples require us at all time to let wickedness and evil multiply and prosper flies in the face of passages like “hate that which is evil, cling to that which is good.” We also find examples in the NT where such policy was not followed such when Paul demanded the magistrates to come and release he and Silas from unjust imprisonment and when Paul worked to escape custody while in Jerusalem. Of course there is the classic example of what hating our enemies might look like when we view Jesus whipping the Bankers out of the Temple.
Humility helps in dealing with enemies properly – constantly reminding yourself that “but for the grace of God, there go I.”
For example, “the fallen angel” Engels was raised in a devout Calvinist household:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels#Early_life
“The wealthy Engels family owned large cotton-textile mills in Barmen and Salford, England, both expanding industrial cities. Friedrich’s parents were devout Calvinists and raised their children accordingly—he was baptised in the Calvinist Reformed Evangelical Parish of Elberfeld.[7][8]”