The Truth of a Love Supreme (Justin Giboney, Feb. 25th, 2025, Christianity Today)
Civil Rights was a movement that lived out the truth of the Negro spirituals that activists sang, an unabashedly Christian endeavor in philosophy and practice alike. The love that Christians in the Civil Rights Movement sought to embody was not self-interested or limited to affirmation. It was a love they hadn’t received from this nation but one they knew to be necessary and real. They knew a love truly supreme was possible in Christ because the Bible said so.
The Bible told them to love their enemies (Matt. 5:43–48), and they obeyed. That is the Christian love imperative. It’s possibly the most counterintuitive, otherworldly, and pride-shattering component of the gospel.
In a sense, it’s not complicated, but it’s hard. What I mean is the concept isn’t astrophysics, but in practice we find it extraordinarily difficult. It runs counter to our broken psychological and emotional reflexes: Why in the world would I love my enemy? By definition, this is someone who is worthy of my contempt. This is someone who doesn’t have my best interest in mind.
But what Jesus did in the Sermon on the Mount was establish a deliberately indiscriminate love that is not conditioned upon shared identity, shared interests, or even peaceful cohabitation. This love extends to those who’ve done nothing to deserve it—in fact, to those who’ve done everything to make themselves ineligible for it.