Love Your Enemies

Love Your Enemies

Immaculée Ilibagiza survived the Rwandan genocide in 1994 by hiding in a small bathroom with seven other women for 91 days. The men who killed her parents and brothers were people she had known her whole life. In the aftermath, she requested to meet the man who had led the group that killed her family. Brought to her in chains, the man could not look at her. She held out her hand and said, 'I forgive you.' The prison guard was enraged: 'You shouldn't forgive him.' She said: 'I have to. Forgiveness is not about him. It is about what God has done in me.' She wrote a book called Left to Tell. The title referred to her alone — and to the story she was left to tell.

Jesus' command to love enemies is the most radical ethical demand in human history. Every other moral system privileges the in-group. Jesus commands love for the out-group — specifically the hostile out-group. The word He uses is agapao — the self-giving, other-focused love of God — not philia (friendship-love) or eros (passionate love). We are not required to feel fondly toward those who harm us. We are required to will their good, to act toward their flourishing, to pray for them. The proof of this love's supernatural character is that it cannot be produced by human nature — it must be received from the God who loved His enemies first (Romans 5:10). When you pray for someone who has wronged you, you are doing something that transcends human capacity. You are loving with God's love.