Jesus tells his followers to do many hard things. But the hardest one of all might be when he commands us to “love our enemies” (Matthew 5:44). This is a counterintuitive instruction, and an ideal that seems nearly impossible. Yet this is not some pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking from Jesus. In fact, when Christians take the small, but important, steps to treat our enemies differently—we don’t just win the battles, but we actually lose the enemies!
