You already know the verse everyone reaches for. Love your enemies. You’ve probably heard it quoted at you, maybe even used against you, in a moment when what you actually needed was someone to say the wrong done to you was real. So let’s start somewhere more honest: what does the Bible say about being kind to your enemies — and does it ever get to just be hard, without a bow on it?
Here’s the honest answer. Jesus’s clearest instruction on this — in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5 — is plain and demanding: love the people who’ve hurt you, pray for the ones who use you badly. I won’t quote it to you word for word here, because the six verses below are the ones I have permission to put in front of you exactly as they were written, and that command isn’t among them. But it’s the ground everything below stands on. The Bible doesn’t ask you to feel warm toward someone who’s wronged you. It asks you to choose kindness anyway — and then, almost as an aside, it tells you why that choice matters so much for you. Not just for them.
Because here’s what the six verses below actually address, when you read them next to each other: not how to perform forgiveness, but what happens in your own chest, your own mind, your own sleep, when you keep choosing to let bitterness run the show instead.
When you can’t stop replaying what they did
You know the physical version of this. Jaw tight. A conversation looping on repeat behind your eyes, usually around 11pm, usually with a better comeback than you had in the moment.
“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.” (Isaiah 26:3, KJV)
Notice what this verse doesn’t promise — it doesn’t say your mind will stop wandering toward the person who hurt you. It says peace is kept for the mind that’s stayed on God, on purpose, again and again, every time it drifts back to them. That’s not a one-time decision. It’s a redirect you’ll make fifty times before lunch. Each time you catch the loop and turn your attention back to God instead of the replay, you’re practicing exactly what this verse describes.
“Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.” (Psalm 46:10, KJV)
If your body has already clenched — fists, shoulders, jaw — before your mind has even caught up, try this: unclench one part of your body on purpose. Jaw first. Then hands. A slow exhale, longer than the inhale, gently engages the body’s own rest response — it won’t erase what happened, but it can take your nervous system out of fight mode long enough to think straight.
When their name in your mouth still tastes like a fight
You don’t have to feel peaceful about someone to be kind to them. That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should.
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (John 14:27, KJV)
The peace Jesus offers here isn’t the world’s version — the kind that depends on the conflict being resolved, the apology arriving, the other person finally getting it. It’s a peace that’s handed to you regardless of whether any of that ever happens. That’s the only kind of peace that could possibly survive an enemy. The other kind can’t.
When the anxiety about the conflict is the thing keeping you up
Sometimes it’s not the anger that’s loudest — it’s the dread. What will happen next time you’re in the same room. Whether you handled it right. Whether kindness even makes a dent.
“Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6–7, KJV)
Say the actual thing out loud, or write it down, even the petty parts — that’s what “requests be made known” means here. Not a polished prayer. The real one. This verse describes peace guarding your heart and mind, like a sentry — which tells you something: without it, your heart and mind are undefended, wide open to whatever this person, or your own anger, wants to do to them.
When you need strength you don’t currently have
Kindness toward someone who’s wronged you isn’t a feeling you’ll stumble into. It takes strength you may not have on your own tonight.
“The LORD will give strength unto his people; the LORD will bless his people with peace.” (Psalm 29:11, KJV)
Strength and peace, named together, given by the same hand. Worth noticing: the Bible doesn’t separate the strength to be kind from the peace that makes it sustainable. One without the other burns out.
When you have to actually decide
Eventually, every one of these ideas has to become a choice — how you’ll answer their text, what you’ll say if you see them, whether you bring it up again.
“And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful.” (Colossians 3:15, KJV)
“Rule” is the word to sit with. Not just feel peace — let it govern the decision. When you’re not sure whether to respond, to confront, to let it go, or to simply be civil and move on: which option does the peace of God actually rule in favor of? That question, asked honestly, tends to answer more than we expect it to.
None of this makes the person who hurt you less wrong. It doesn’t ask you to pretend the wound isn’t real. What it offers is something quieter and, in its way, more durable: a peace that doesn’t wait on their apology to arrive.
If tonight’s version of this is your mind circling the same person, the same conversation, the same unfair thing, at 2am — you might find a quiet companion in the Women’s Bible Study Workbook — When Tomorrow’s Worries Steal Tonight’s Peace, a 140-day reflective devotional journal built for exactly this kind of night. No pressure to feel resolved by morning — just a slow place to put it down.