adopting your enemy

"Christ has adopted the enemy. He has adopted us. His call to us in Scripture is to do the same, to adopt the enemy. Those we think we could never love become the ones God uses. He shows us our deep need and failure as well as the depths of his love for us. My perceived enemy has now become the way of salvation."

(From Scott Roley, God’s Neighborhood: A Hopeful Journey in Racial Reconciliation & Community Renewal (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2004), 129.)