Why is it that we love others? Why is it that we love anything? It certainly makes sense that we would love those who love us. In fact, this is probably how we learn to love. Children learn to love because they are loved by parents and family. And we learn to love in the way Jesus speaks because we are loved this way. As it says in 1 John 4:19, "We love because he first loved us."
Very often, loving our enemies is seen as one of those idealistic, impractical, even impossible demands of faith. But what if we viewed it more like the process of a child learning to love? A child who never learns to love is maladjusted and faces real difficulties in developing adult relationships. Might the inability to love those who do not love us work in similar fashion? Might it be a kind of maladjustment that severely hampers us in being the fully human creatures God desires us to be?
One popular understanding of Christianity says that believing in Jesus is the critical thing. Other stuff, such as loving you enemy, is in the extra credit category, a good thing, but not essential. Yet Jesus certainly doesn't talk this way. He commissions his followers to make disciples of all nations by "teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you." And if Jesus is what it means to be fully human, then perhaps his telling us to love our enemies is like a parent telling a two year old to share a toy with a sibling. He is trying to teach us what is absolutely necessary if we are to live with others as we are meant to live.
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