His wasn't the first voice for freedom. His wasn't always the loudest call for civil rights. But his was the voice that changed our world.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a champion for civil rights. He cared little for his own personal safety: he was often scorned, thrown in paddy wagons, and jailed. Once he was stabbed. Yet he continued tirelessly to protest.

Two things separated him from others in the American Civil Rights movement. First, his protests were strictly nonviolent. He said in his last speech on April 3, 1968, "Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence."

A man of deeply held convictions, King's faith in God kept him going tirelessly. A preacher first and protestor second, he continually encouraged his flocks to follow God. One of his sermons, titled "Loving Your Enemies," came straight out of Jesus' words from the Sermon on the Mount: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

"Far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer," King said, "this command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes, it is love that will save our world and our civilization, love even for our enemies."

He went on, in words just as vital today as they were in 1957: "[Jesus] realized that it's hard to love your enemies. He realized that it's difficult to love those persons who seek to defeat you. . . He realized that it was painfully hard, pressingly hard. . . We have the Christian and moral responsibility to seek to discover the meaning of these words, and to discover how we can live out this command, and why we should live by this command."

He believed that as a pastor he was called to help his people. They needed their chains broken, they needed to vote without fear, to sit on a bus with whites, to earn the same living as whites, to be educated in the same institutions as whitesto be respected. He saw that when his people protested violently, they lost whatever advantage they had gained, feeding into the stereotype of that day, that black people were violent and unruly.

So King initiated nonviolent protests: sit-ins, strikes, boycotts, and marches. He garnered support from his fellow black ministers in the South. He told them that day in April, "You know what's beautiful to me, is to see all of these ministers of the Gospel. It's a marvelous picture. Who is it that is supposed to articulate the longings and aspirations of the people more than the preacher? Somehow the preacher must be an Amos, and say, 'Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.'"

He chastised white pastors who did not follow Scripture in supporting the cause of the black man. His "Letter from Birmingham Jail" is an incredibly articulate, classic piece of persuasive writing in which he answers an editorial written by some white pastors. In their editorial these pastors condemned King's actions because, though nonviolent, they would "precipitate violence." His eloquent reply, first scribbled on the edges of the newspaper while he sat in jail, was a masterful defense and a chastisement of pastors who refused to take part in the Civil Rights movement. "Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and fear of being nonconformists... The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo."

It's easy to say that in the past four decades society has gotten more sophisticated. And, despite what some might say, we have come far from the days when African-Americans had so few civil rights.

But have we come any closer to discovering the meaning of those words, "love your enemies," which Dr. King said were so vital? Has the church continued to sit idly by while truth is eroded and the difference between right and wrong is indistinguishable?

As we teach our children who he was, and what he stood for, let us also not forget the words of the one whom Dr. King worshipped as his Lord. Let us remind our children that King was a civil rights leaderand pastorwho preached love and forgiveness and urged the church to stand up for truth.