He especially gave voice to the words of Jesus, whose…

““He especially gave voice to the words of Jesus, whose “advice and encouragement” in the Sermon on the Mount spoke to them in their desperate crisis. Drawing on these resources, he urged his people to respond to this time of danger and suffering by imitating God. “It [is] not at all remarkable if we cherish only our own brethren with a proper observance of love.” Instead, Christians should do “more than the publican or the pagan.” They should overcome evil with good and exercise “a divine-like clemency, loving even their enemies . . . and praying for the salvation of their persecutors.” For doesn’t God make the sun to rise and rain to fall upon all people, not merely on his own friends? And shouldn’t “one who professes to be a son of God imitate the example of his Father”? Cyprian’s flock were deeply schooled in Jesus’s teaching that they should love their enemies. And Cyprian extended this teaching by applying it to the provision of crisis nursing for our brothers but “not only our brothers.” Let us imagine the rhetorician Cyprian as he warmed to his point: You Christians, you are my people and flock, you know the mercy of God, and you demonstrate this by providing visits, bread, and water for other believers who are suffering. I praise God for your faithfulness. Now I am calling you to broaden your view, to exercise “a divine-like clemency” by loving your pagan neighbors. Visit them, too; encourage them; provide bread and water for them. I know that in recent months some pagans have been involved in persecuting you. Pray for them; “pray for their salvation,” and help them. You are God’s children: the descendants of a good Father should “prove the imitation of his goodness.””

— Alan Kreider