When Jesus says “love your enemies,” he’s not talking about feelings. His audience in first-century Galilee wasn’t obsessed with “inner emotional states” the way we are. They lived in a collectivist culture where relationships defined you.

Love wasn’t what you felt. Love was what you did. You could dislike someone’s guts and still love them, because love showed up in action: caring, blessing, praying, giving.

That’s what makes forgiveness possible. Because if forgiveness were about how I felt, forget it. Sometimes I’d rather (gently) kick someone down the stairs than love them.

But forgiveness, like love, is about action. It’s refusing to curse back. It’s offering blessing instead. It’s choosing not to let vengeance set the terms of my life.

This is where forgiveness gets hard: we’re so well-rehearsed in vengeance. Our culture feeds us endless stories where vengeance wins. Vengeance is the Domination System — the way power works when it protects itself through fear, violence, and revenge. But Jesus came to overturn that system. And forgiveness is the cornerstone of the alternative: a love that acts, a love that blesses, a love that frees.

“Forgiveness, like love, is about action.”