The Sermon on the Mount VIII

Subtitle:  Fulfilling the Torah and the Prophets of God VI

Matthew 5:38-42.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on January 28, 2024.

Today, we continue our look at how Jesus expects his followers to approach the law.  Those blessed people who are following him will act and respond to life quite differently than others. 

These examples that Jesus gives are more snapshots of the kinds of things that the followers of Jesus will do.  They will do these strange things because they love Messiah and have followed him into the Kingdom.

They will be a people who are not internally surrendered to vice, but rather, they will be people from whom the difficulties of life seem to bring forth goodness.  How can it be that a sinful world could bring out of the righteous something good?  Yes, it seems impossible, but this is what Jesus is talking about.

Let’s look at the fifth area of the Law that Jesus deals with in our passage.  It is often called the Law of Retribution.  It deals with matters of personal injury, and how courts should rectify certain offenses, or how they are to make the offense right.  The general rule is to equate the harm done to another, unless there are circumstances that mitigate that.

In each of these 6 case studies in the Law, Jesus points us to the internal as more important than the external.  He points us to battle against the vice that seeks to overwhelm us and to choose the virtue, or righteousness of Christ, that we need to embrace.

This area will very naturally lead into the last case study on how we should treat our enemies.  This case study goes back one step and deals with how we become enemies with people in the first place.  There is always some infraction at the heart of it.

Let’s look at our passage.

The Law of Retribution (v. 38-42)

Again, Jesus does not spend a lot of time on what they are being taught by their teachers.  He simply gives a quote from the law, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”  We will deal with this more in a second, but I will say up front that this phrase is used three times in the Law of Moses.

Before we go there, I want to remind us of Genesis 4 and the murders that happened there.  Cain kills his brother purposefully and out of spite.  Cain receives a gracious punishment from God. Later in that chapter, Lamech, from the line of Cain, kills a young man just for injuring him.  His speech basically presumes that the grace given to Cain should be even greater to himself.  He had killed a young man for injuring him.  Of course, we don’t know all the details.  Did the young man injure him purposefully?  Did Lamech purposefully kill the young man in rage, or was it a spur of the moment response in which he flew off the handle?

This is an important understanding of the “Old Testament.”  God actually starts with grace, not law.  The law came much later.  Without restraint, whether upon ourselves in a personal fashion or externally from laws of society, humans are capable of great evil in this area of getting justice.  A culture that is fixated on “social justice” does not realize just how much evil they themselves do.  I am not saying that justice is unimportant.  I am actually saying something about each of us when we are consumed with getting justice.  We tend to see every injury to ourselves by another in the worst light, and we tend to see every injury to another in the best light.  Our tendency towards selfishness and sin pits us against one another in a no-win game.  We will never see eye to eye following this path.

People can laugh about a society of one-eyed, toothless people, but this law actually served as a brake, or restraint, on overkill.  Lamech was injured, but he killed the man in return.  This is man in his natural sense of justice.  “If you harm me, then I will kill you.”  God wants justice, but He also knows that we need restraint when we are seeking it.  Yet, even this brake on our desire for justice falls short of what God desires from each of us.  The teachers are focused only on satisfying the requirement of equating punishment and infraction, rather than hearing the spirit of what God is saying.

Jesus gives us his teaching, and it starts with the main point, “Do not  resist an evil person (vs. 39).”  He then goes on to give four examples from the kinds of situations where this is an issue.  In short, the four examples flesh out what he means by not resisting an evil person.

So, what is meant by not resisting an evil person?  We should first recognize that the area of the law Jesus is talking about, i.e., eye for an eye, has to do with a context of personal injury from another.  The three places where this is quoted are Exodus 21, Leviticus 24, and Deuteronomy 19.

In Exodus 21, it pictures two men who are fighting.  Of course, they will probably give each other black eyes, and knock out teeth.  But, the Law is actually speaking about their tussle injuring a pregnant woman, causing her to go into labor and either having the baby prematurely, or it dying.  The point is not so much killing a child of the man who causes a miscarriage.  The point is about upping the gravity of your actions.  If I know that I will be held accountable to the consequences of a fight, I will exercise more caution in fighting.  At the least, we will clear the room of any pregnant women.

Leviticus 24 speaks of a man disfiguring a neighbor.  It doesn’t explain how that would happen, but we could see two men working together, and an axe head flies off of the handle.  Let’s say that it hits the other guy and gashes his face, or breaks his jaw and now it is crooked.  This is where this maxim is quoted.

In Deuteronomy 19, the context is the case of a person lying in court, bearing false testimony.  If such a person is caught, they are to receive the punishment that they were expecting the person that they were lying against to receive.

Notice that none of these situations picture a self-defense situation where someone breaks into your house and is threatening to kill your family.  It doesn’t picture a situation where the Philistines are attacking and mean to subjugate you as their slaves.  Neither is it picturing a situation in which authorities are exercising punishment upon someone who has broken the law, i.e., law enforcement.  It is a personal injury that happens in the course of normal life.  Someone has harmed another.

Now, let’s look at what is meant by “resist.”  To resist here pictures a person taking their stand in hostility in order to go to war against the other person who has injured them.  You are taking your stand against them as an enemy.

The word “evil person” means everything from “the person who caused the bad thing to happen (though on acccident)” all the way to a person who is a bad person themselves and love to do bad things to others.  However, Jesus may actually intend to bring up the worst case scenario, i.e., even when a person intends to do it maliciously.

The point is that it is our natural tendency to rise up to fight when someone has injured us.  Don’t make those who intend you evil your target.  Don’t rise up in the anger, rage, and vengeance that are so natural at that moment.  There is a deeper issue going on here and it has to do with what injury does to us spiritually.

We are called to be imagers of God.  When someone injures us, especially when they are maliciously evil, we are too quit to take them out.  In so doing, we rarely image God well.  James 1:20, “for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”  If I am not imaging God, then just who am I imaging?  Who was Cain imaging?  1 John 3:11-12a says, “For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother.  This is not talking about Adam, but about the Serpent, the Devil, who was the first murderer.  In trying to get justice, we easily fall into imaging Satan, rather than God.  You become a vessel that is breathing out death and statements of vindictive overkill, rather than a vessel that is filled with life.

Jesus is telling us that, if we want to follow him, we need to go to war against that inner impulse to hate others and to seek vengeance upon them.  We need to stop targeting others, and start targeting the vices that too quickly rise up within us.

Of course, that does go for those who are on both side of the injury.  Jesus wants the other person to go to war against the things in their heart too!  Yet, I have to focus upon me.  We will both stand before God one day and give an account for whether we lived a life of targeting others (producing death), or we lived a life of targeting our own heart (producing life).

If you think this sounds like God doesn’t care about justice, then I have not been clear enough.  Of course, God cares deeply about justice, far more than we do.  He also cares about making it right.  Jesus hung on a cross for you and for them precisely because He cares about it.  Jesus is not playing games with this area of justice.  He is going for true justice, and none of us can survive true justice without the grace of God being provided for us.

The Law of Moses was sent to shut the mouths of those who think they are doing a good job being righteous.  We all fall short of perfect righteousness, and therefore, we are disqualified to “fix it” or get justice.  Our flesh is hostile to a true justice that bring forth true righteousness.  We are all in the same boat, and we are in need of God’s grace and mercy.

Let’s look at the first example that Jesus brings up in verse 39.  This is an insulting slap on the side of the face by another person.  In public or not, most people would be ready to go to war against another person for such a thing.  Jesus pictures his followers turning the other cheek.  Now, we know that his intention is not for us to literally present our other cheek, as if asking for another blow.  We know this because this very situation was done to Jesus during his kangaroo trial, the morning of his execution.

John 18:22-23 shows us Jesus being struck by an officer.  Does Jesus literally turn his face so that the guy can hit him on the other cheek?  What I mean is this.  Is that the thing that Jesus is really hoping to accomplish in us?  There is no mention of Jesus literally turning the other cheek.  In fact, his statement to the officer has a subtle rebuke to it.  “If what I said is wrong, bear witness about the wrong; but if what I said is right, why do you strike me?”  Now, remember exactly who Jesus is.  He is the Word of God through whom all things that were made were made.  He could unmake this man with a single word.  Jesus may not physically turn his cheek, but Jesus doesn’t target this man as an enemy either.  Jesus remains in the vulnerable place, where potentially he could be struck again.  Jesus keeps focused on imaging God and helping the other person to image God better.

This brings up the greater subject of the incarnation.  In Jesus, God takes on a face that we can slap, and hands (feet) that we can nail to a tree.  He takes on a back that we can whip to the point of shredding the flesh.  He becomes a vulnerable human who can be killed.  How great is the love of God that we are called to image to the world?

The point is that the world is full of enemies because of such incidents.  It is no accident that the last case study in the law will talk about loving our enemies.  God does not want us to be enemies to one another.  We are all His creation, and He loves each of us.  We are to do everything we can to neutralize this tendency to be enemies with others.  If I respond in kind to every infraction against me, the enemy of humanity will win, and God’s Kingdom will be thwarted.  Of course, this cannot happen because God always makes sure that He has a remnant in every generation.  However, where will I be?

Jesus is calling us to follow him in this radical response to evil.  We are to fight that inner battle and resist being made into an enemy by those who act like enemies to us.  We are to love that person and stay open to God changing their heart so that they can be our brother.

We do not want to play into the devil’s hand, but instead, we want to do the work of Jesus.  If you think this makes you a weakling, then think again.  Jesus was no weakling.   You had better believe that Jesus is a warrior.  However, he has a different target than we do.  He is calling us to become a warrior in this battle against the sin in our own hearts.  We are to go to war against very different things than what humans normally do.

Love risks injury, and that injury not being “fixed” in this life.  When Jesus was on the cross, he knew that the injuries, which he suffered, were making it possible for these sinners who deserved death to be saved.  It didn’t guarantee it, but if he didn’t love, it would guarantee that they could not be saved. 

Can  you believe that the injuries that God allows in your life, may have a purpose, especially when they are never “rectified” in this life?  Trusting Jesus is never easy.  No weakling can do it.  However, when we choose the path of His love, we become part of a war for the soul of the other person.  Suddenly, you are fighting those spirits and powers of darkness that hold the person captive.  That’s what Jesus wants.  Don’t target the person, target the devil that has trapped them in anger, rage, bitterness, vindictiveness, et. al.

The second example has to do with lawsuits.  “If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also.”

People do not typically sue unless there is something that has happened.  You may not see it the same way as they, but there is an event nonetheless.  Jesus shows a response to lawsuits that is not about getting justice, or making sure everything is equated.  Rather, it is more important for the follower of Christ to be reconciled to the other person.  “You think I have done you wrong?  Here, let me make it right, and even throw something else on top of it, so that you will know that you are more important to me than things!”  Yes, the other person may be making a mountain out of a molehill.  Or, they may be unreasonable in their claim against you.  However, we are called to be more concerned about the relationship than the things we stand to lose.  We should never lose sight that God loves this person, and He wants me to love them too.

Notice that none of this is passive.  It is a person aggressively restraining their inner tendency to anger and vengeance.  This is the bait that Satan uses to fracture us.  He doesn’t just divide and conquer us.  He divides, steps back, and let’s us conquer each other (perhaps with an extra whisper in the ear from time to time).

Paul brings this up in 1 Corinthians 6:6-8.  Notice that Paul does not expect believers to let another believer cheat them.  He challenges them to have other Christians decide such squabbles between to Christians.  Yet, some of them were taking each other to the secular (pagan) courts.  Paul challenges them in verse seven, “Why do you not rather accept wrong? Why do you not rather let yourselves be cheated?”  By going to the secular courts, they were testifying to the world that the people of Christ can’t get along and need the world to settle their disputes.  Paul is challenging them to love the reputation of Christ above their own loss.  Contrary to that, they were actually leading each other into becoming bigger cheats and wronging each other.

This all needs to be approached out of love for one another and for God.  How much is Jesus worth to you? 

All of this begs the question.  How can Jesus expect us to do this?  As I said earlier, none of this is easy, and we have to work hard not to see these as superficial laws that we have to keep.  It does beg this question, and the sermon on the mount doesn’t answer that question.  However, Jesus does answer it in the end.  He would die on the cross and show us that the Father intends to use resurrection to “fix” all things, both spiritually and physically.  On top of this, Jesus would now send the Holy Spirit to take up residence within us in order to empower us to battle against sin in our hearts.  No, you can’t do this, but you cooperating with the Holy Spirit can!

The third example has to do with being pressed into service by an official (particularly a Roman soldier).  This would have  been something that the people of Israel had become used to, and that irked them greatly.  “And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two.”

This is a classic environment where our underlying resentment, that God has given us unto the power of another, can cause us to hate them.  Roman law allowed soldiers and officials to press the people under their dominion into service.  Such service had limitations.  In this case, a soldier could require someone to carry his stuff up to a mile.  Now, Jesus is not setting up a new law where we simply carry it 2, and no more.  Just like turning the other cheek does not mean I can knock you out after you have slapped me twice, so I don’t carry the load two miles, but then throw it down and walk away.  It is about being different and responding out of love rather than contempt, anger, and frustration about their authority over us.

Yeah, the law obligated them to help a soldier for a certain distance, but Jesus wants us to be the kind of person that is not resentful, and willing to do more.  Love always goes beyond mere legal obligations.  Could there be a situation where a Christian could resist a soldier pressing them into service?  Sure.  Perhaps you are a surgeon who is on the way to do a surgery that is critical.  You can explain the situation and beg them not to force you out of love for the other person.  It is not the superficial details that Jesus is after, but the heart of why we do what we do.  The emphasis is on me choosing to carry an offensive thing, rather than some one else being hurt. 

Are we required to tell the Nazis where all the Jews are hiding simply because Jesus told us to help the soldiers?  Of course, you aren’t.  It is love for others that is to motivate us, and some situations are far trickier than others. 

How much of your brother’s baggage are you willing to carry?  I know.  This stupid Roman soldier is no brother of yours.  Yet, God loves him, and wants him to become a spiritual brother to you.  Perhaps we can see a metaphor behind this maxim of carrying the baggage two miles instead of one.  There is a song from the seventies that says, “He ain’t heavy.  He’s my brother.”  Can I carry the baggage of others farther than anyone would expect because I’m praying that God will soften his heart and help him to see Jesus?  Yes, we can, but the real question is, will we.

The fourth example is in the area of people borrowing from us, or asking charity from us.  “Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.”  In Luke 6:35, Jesus even tells us to lend without expecting payment back.  The followers of Jesus, people of the Kingdom of Heaven, are not to be trapped in a world of possessions being more important to us than others.  Yes, it is not right for someone to borrow our stuff and not bring it back.  Kingdom people don’t do that.  But, targeting them as an enemy will not fix the situation and help them become more like Jesus.  It will only make it worse.

The phrase “do not turn away” reflects how we can be hardened towards those who need charity.  In each of these, Jesus is asking us to stay vulnerable in some way so that relationship can continue.  We are to choose a path of love towards the other person.

Let’s be clear.  Jesus does not intend us to never say ‘No.’  Can you imagine parents operating as if they can never say ‘No’ to their kids if they ask for something?  These are not laws.  They are examples to help us to see the kinds of things that those who are following Jesus will do.  We will not be trying to protect our stuff, and money, by hiding from those who might ask us for it.  Instead, we will let love for the person form our actions.  We will let the Holy Spirit inspire us.

Anyone who has worked with people who are financially in a tough spot knows that the answer isn’t always more money.  However, we can also pick up an attitude of despising people who need help.  We can become more interested in protecting our outflows, than the welfare of the person.  Yet, a person’s spiritual welfare is just as important as their physical. 

Love is not an easy path.  It will tear out your heart at times and leave you feeling like you aren’t doing any good.  I once knew a man whose son had just been released from prison.  He wanted to help his son, so he gave him a job working for him in his shop.  Long story short, he caught his son stealing from his till.  What a heart breaking situation.  The answer isn’t to “turn the other cheek,” and pretend it didn’t happen.  Yet, it doesn’t need to be, call the cops and send him back to prison.  Love wrestles with carrying offenses, not because that is the end goal.  No, we carry the offenses in order to win a brother, a son, back to the truth.  Only the Holy Spirit can help us to know what to do in such specific situations.

The goal is not to meticulously follow the letter of what Jesus is saying, but to hear the heart, the Spirit, of what he is saying.  I think that the best way to boil this down is Romans 12:17-21.

“17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it[i] to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Vengeance is God’s job, and it doesn’t matter if I see it happen or not.  It is between God and them.  If I try to step into God’s job, I will not survive it.  It is too big a job for me, and will destroy me.  Verse 21 is a perfect description of what Jesus is getting at.  Don’t let the evil done by another overwhelm your heart with a desire to be evil back.   Instead, overcome their evil action by good.  Peter says a similar thing in 1 Peter 3:9.  “Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.”  In a sense, we are called to love others too much to be their enemy, and we are called to love God too much to dishonor His Image by hating them.

In both cases, Paul and Peter talk about the fact that God will deal with evildoers.  He will take vengeance at the right time.  Why does God wait?  He waits because He is not too quick to send people to the lake of fire.  He leaves room for repentance, just as He did for you.  Aren’t you glad that He did?  Still, if they never repent, they will get their comeuppance.  God will take care of it.  You won’t need to worry or help Him out by  taking justice into your own hands.

In fact, we often are blind to the fact that love is the ultimate weapon to tear down the strongholds of hurt and injury.  If we will focus on winning a brother rather than never being injured by them, then we will see the enemy of our souls thwarted far more often.  No, it isn’t a guarantee, but it if you don’t operate out of love, it is guaranteed that it will spoil your heart and your relationship with Christ.

If you want to target those who hurt you, then target them with the love of Jesus.  Take it as a personal challenge to win them to the Lord.  Love them by laying down your life for them, and leave retribution where it belongs, in the hands of the LORD!

The Law of Retribution Audio