". . . love your enemies . . .".

Almost everyone is familiar with that command. But we need to ask ourselves: If someone is mean and hateful and spiteful, self-centered and angry - in short, our enemy - do we want that person to go into eternal damnation? We can't want that. Jesus gives Himself for that person, just as much as He does for me. Jesus counts on us to help that person accept the love God offers. How can that person know of God's forgiveness if he doesn't experience it in me?

But love our enemies? Once again, we bump up against the inadequacies of translations. "Love" here is not a matter of warm fuzzy feelings or the affection of friendship. The verb used by Matthew might be better translated as "to care about", or "to be concerned about", "to care enough to want to help." It's with that kind of care and concern that Jesus and Stephen, the First Martyr, prayed for those who were killing them. Saving such individuals is precisely why Jesus came and why we're Christians.

What about the present persecutors, the terrorist bombers, the child rapists, the sexual abusers and others. But the simple fact is that all of us are in need of God's saving love, which God freely gives, as this passage from Matthew clearly attests. Our heavenly Father causes His sun and rain to fall upon the good and the bad, the just and the unjust.