Loving Your Enemies & Costly Love

One of the costliest requirements of Christlike love is Jesus’s call to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5: 44). What does this look like for Christians in today’s world? Perhaps it looks like Nadine Collier, whose mother, Ethel, was one of nine victims in the 2015 church massacre at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Given the chance to address her mother’s killer, Collier choked back tears as she forgave him: “You took something very precious away from me. I will never get to talk to her ever again — but I forgive you, and have…