Love your enemies

Every great moral teacher in history taught some version of love your neighbor. Jesus went where none of them dared:

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.

Matthew 5:44-45

Then he adds the sentence that removes every excuse: if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Anybody can do that.

Loving your tribe is the human default. Every culture manages it. What marks the children of God, Jesus says, is loving the people who have given you every reason not to.

Look at the ground he stands this on. God sends sun and rain on everyone, the grateful and the ungrateful, the kind and the cruel. He does not meter out the sunrise based on merit. To love your enemy is simply to join the family business.

Be clear about what this does not mean. It does not mean pretending the harm was fine. It does not mean trusting someone who has proven untrustworthy, or staying in reach of abuse. Love here is not a warm feeling you manufacture. It is a decision about what you want for someone: refusing to let hatred rent space in your heart, and genuinely wanting their good, even from a distance.

He closes the passage with, be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. The word means complete, whole, mature. Love that includes enemies is love grown all the way up.

In an age that runs on outrage, where contempt for the other side is the easiest habit in the world, this may be his single most countercultural command.

Tomorrow: the good you do when no one is watching.