Precept of Christianity

Love your enemies.

The Sermon on the Mount's impossible standard — forgiveness as command, not counsel.

What it asksLove your enemies, bless those who curse you, turn the other cheek, go the second mile

Who it bindsEveryone who claims the name — no exemption is offered in the text

Where it bitesTwo millennia of just-war theory exist because the church has never comfortably squared this with the state

Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

This is the hardest sentence in the Christian corpus, and the tradition's honesty about that is part of its history. The pacifist reading — Anabaptists, Quakers, the early church before Constantine — takes it as literal and binding. The just-war tradition from Augustine reads it as governing personal enmity rather than public authority. Neither side claims the other is ignoring the text; both are trying to live inside a command that offers no exemptions.

From the sources — the passages this rests on; concise renderings, cited

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Matthew 5:44
The command with no stated exemption — the origin of the tradition's hardest argument.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas

Ahimsa — do no harm. Hinduism Go deeper →

Compassion extends to all sentient beings. Buddhism · core tenet Go deeper →

Micchami dukkadam. Jainism · rite Go deeper →

Guard the tongue. Judaism Go deeper →

Your parents have a claim on you. Islam Go deeper →

Bhai Kanhaiya's water. Sikhism · story Read it in full →

The conversation

argument stays attached to the claim it is about All discussion →

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Where next

← The Golden Rule.the previous passage in Christianity Whatever you did to the least of these. →the next passage in Christianity Christianity's How to Live roomback up one layer Propose a change to this passageone button — it routes to the review pool