The Christian and Retaliation – Matthew 5:38-42
There are so many ways to misread
a passage like the one we are considering this morning. Passivism and its variants have often found
refuge in passages like this one. An
extreme example was that of the Russian author Leo Tolstoy who believed that
these verses forbade any opposition to evil in the most absolute sense. He therefore didn’t believe in government, in
particular the police, because the job of police is to oppose evildoers. From this passage he reasoned, “It is
impossible at one and the same time to confess Christ as God, the basis of
whose teachings is non-resistance to him that is evil, and consciously and
calmly to work for the establishment of property, law courts, government and
military forces. . . .”[1]
On the other hand, some people
have looked at this passage, thought it taught what Tolstoy thought it taught,
but who found such teaching to be so unreasonable that they have written Christ
off altogether. Clearly, government is
not bad (in and of itself – although bad
government is bad or too much
government may be bad). We all recognize
the need for police. I for one don’t
want to live in Mogadishu. As Christians
we believe what the apostle Paul wrote to the Roman Christians, “Let every
person be subject to the governing authorities.
For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have
been instituted by God” (Rom. 13:1).
Paul even goes on to assert the power of the government to exercise
capital punishment for wrongdoers (ver. 4).
So it is clear that the apostles of our Lord themselves did not
interpret this passage in terms of anarchy and passivism.
What’s ironical about this is
that our Lord’s words which today are subject to so much misinterpretation and
misapplication were themselves an attempt to correct a misapplication of God’s
word. It’s not that they misunderstood
what God’s word said; it’s that they misapplied it. “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for
an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’” This
is a clear and direct quotation from the Law of Moses (see Exod. 21:24; Lev.
24:20; Deut. 19:21). Of course our
Lord’s following words in verse 39, “But I say to you . . .” imply that he is
correcting something here. What was he
correcting?
It seems that the Pharisees of
Jesus’ day took these words which were clearly meant for the judges and the
authorities and had made them the rule for personal conduct. The Law of Moses was in this law simply
prescribing that the punishment must fit the crime. You couldn’t knock out someone’s tooth out of
malice and then be forced to have all your teeth knocked out as
recompense! That seems reasonable as far
as it goes. However, this law was not
meant to be enforced by the private individual.
It was meant or the judges. This
is especially clear in the Deut. 19 passage.
If someone harmed you, the Law of Moses did not allow you to administer
the punishment to the crime on your own.
This had to be done by the authorities.
Vigilante justice was not advocated in OT law.
So when Jesus says, “Do not
resist the one who is evil,” he is not saying that government is bad or that
police are bad or that the military is bad.
He is not saying that we should not work for justice in this world. He is saying that the Pharisaic application
of the Law of Moses that allowed for the personal administration of justice is
wrong.
Now some might agree that
government is okay and that we should submit to it and so on, but would look at
this passage and say that no Christian should participate in government. No Christian should run for office, should
serve as a law-enforcement office, or should serve in the military. What should we say to that?
Well, I think of what John the
Baptist told the soldiers who came to him at the river Jordan. They came to John the Baptist who was
preaching repentance and asked him how they should make their repentance
concrete. What John doesn’t tell them is
almost as important as what John does tell them: “And he said to them, ‘Do not
extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with
your wages’” (Luke 3:14). Notice that he
didn’t tell them to leave their occupation as soldiers. Later, when Peter was sent to preach to a
Roman centurion, Cornelius, Peter accepts him as a fellow-believer and member
of the church without requiring him to leave the ranks of the Roman army (cf.
Acts 10-11). Jesus himself dealt with
government officials and centurions, never once hinting that their occupation
was immoral or dishonoring to God or false to his teaching.
What then was our Lord teaching
in these verses?
This paragraph is just a
practical outworking of what it means to be meek. Remember that our Lord had just said,
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Mt. 5:5). When we looked at that passage several weeks
ago, we argued that a meek person is someone whose God-centeredness leads them
to deny themselves for the sake of others.
They are not always looking out for themselves, they are free of that,
and this freedom allows them to serve others.
Now that, I think, is the key to correctly applying this passage. Far from looking out for our own selves, as
the Pharisees wanted to do, Jesus tells us to deny ourselves, to stop looking
out for ourselves. I think the reason he
wants us to be this way is clear, and is made clearer in the next paragraph:
you won’t be able to love others the way God calls you to love them –
especially those who are hardest to love, your enemies – until you die to your
own self.
This is the principle governing
our Lord’s words: “Do not resist the one who is evil.” The principle is that of self-denial for the
sake of serving others and being a witness to them. Our Lord himself is the supreme example of
this. The apostle Peter writes of him,
“When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not
threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (1 Pet.
2:23). He was doing the Father’s will;
it was the cup given to him. He
willingly drank it because of all men who have ever lived, Jesus knew what it
meant to deny oneself. For us to deny
ourselves is to follow him – to take up a cross after his example. He did not come to be served but to serve and
to give his life a ransom for many. And
so to that end, he willingly endured abuse for the sake of serving those he
came to save.
It is the easiest thing in the
world to serve those who are your friends.
It is much harder to serve those who want to abuse you. But you cannot serve them if you are trying
to get back at them. You can’t serve
them and be a witness to them for good if you are trying to get revenge. Think about what Paul wrote: “Repay no one
evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of
all. If possible, so far as it depends
on you, live peaceably with all.
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for
it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ To the contrary, ‘If your enemy is hungry,
feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink’” - now note the
motivation Paul gives for this: “’for by so doing you will heap burning coals
on his head.’ Do not be overcome by
evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:17-21). There has been a lot of debate over what Paul
means by “burning coals” – whether it is a metaphor for God’s judgment or
whether it is a metaphor for a stricken conscience. I think it probably means the latter,
especially given what verse 21 says. The
purpose of doing good to those who do evil to you is so that evil will be
overcome with good. It seems to me that
overcoming evil with good happens most clearly when those who are evil are made
to repent through the goodness of those whom they have abused.
A Christian has more than one
reason to live this way. One, our Lord
has told us to; but just as important, the gospel demands it. A Christian is someone who believes that the
Son of God laid down his life for him or her when they were enemies to God
(Rom. 5:9). Christ paid the ultimate
sacrifice so that we could live. But the
sacrifice he had to make was made necessary because we had wronged him. Christ did not die for his own sins, he died
for our sins; more than that, he died for our sins against him. Your eternal life depends on the fact that
Jesus Christ will not repay evil for your evil.
Now he calls us to imitate him, and it would be the greatest hypocrisy
if we did not do so.
That then is the general
principle: we are to return good for evil for the sake of our witness, so that
we can overcome evil with good. Jesus
then works it out in four different applications in verses 39-42. We will consider each one in turn.
First, he says, “But if anyone
slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” First of all, we must always keep this
general principle in mind. Some,
forgetting this, apply these words in an over-literalistic way and end up with
ridiculous scenarios that our Lord never intended. It’s important again to
point out the fact that our Lord is not opposing justice or law and order. He is opposing the personal vendetta, the
private campaign to avenge ourselves of our adversary.
Thus, he is not saying that if
someone breaks into your home and puts your family in jeopardy that you
shouldn’t defend your loved ones, even with physical violence if
necessary. I can’t think of any other
reason why Jesus would tell his disciples to carry swords if not to defend
themselves (Luke 22:38).
Rather, what he is saying is that
you should be willing to endure the personal insult for the sake of the
gospel. In Jesus’ day, to slap someone
across the cheek was the worst sort of personal insult; probably our Lord
wasn’t even thinking of slapping in terms of someone trying to physically harm
another. This is not a jaw-breaking
punch, this is the slap of an insult. So
again I don’t think that Jesus is saying that we should not defend ourselves if
we think our life is in danger; that is not what Jesus is teaching here. This is more about your reputation than it is
your physical safety. The point is that
we shouldn’t meet hate with hate. As
Christians we want others to know the love of God in Christ, and to that end we
should be willing to endure the worst insults to our name if that is what means
to show love to our enemies – so that ultimately they might be saved.
However, I want to make clear
that there are times when a Christian is called to lay down their lives for the
sake of the gospel, to endure physical abuse, and that sometimes this is just
the thing that God uses to advance his cause and his kingdom. The kingdom of God is never advanced by
violence on our part, and surely our Lord’s words here underline that
fact. One of the first men ever to
become a Christian in what is now Afghanistan was beheaded for his faith – but
it was not until he was killed that people all around him wondered what kind of
religion it was that caused this man to courageously accept his death, and it
led them to begin to investigate the faith of Christ and almost immediately to
the conversion of at least one other person.
Next, our Lord says, “And if
anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as
well.” Under Jewish law (cf. Exod. 22:25-27),
it was illegal to sue for one’s outer garment [cloak] but you could sue for
their inner garment [tunic].[2] But Jesus tells us that if someone comes
along and sues us for the tunic we should not stop there but should go ahead
and give them even that which is protected by law.
Now what are we to say to
this? Is he saying that every charlatan
that comes along and tries through some legal (or illegal) means to take our
property that we should just stand back and let him? Clearly not.
After all, how would this comport with the command to provide for our
families (cf. 1 Tim. 5:8)? Again, we
must keep the overarching principle in mind: we are called to deny ourselves
for the sake of others. As Stott put it,
what Jesus is teaching here is “not the irresponsibility which encourages evil
but the forbearance which renounces revenge.”[3]
In this instance as in the
previous instance, something is being taken from us. In verse 39, it is your reputation that is
being taken away, probably unjustly.
Here, in verse 40, it is your property that is being taken away from
you. In both instances, our natural and
immediate reaction is to get back, to get revenge. What Jesus is doing in both cases is to call
us away from a spirit of retaliation and to a spirit forgiveness and
goodness. When others are spiteful, we
are called to be patient; where others are selfish we are called to be
generous.
Here again, we are called to deny
ourselves. We are called to respond to
evil with good. We are not to insist
upon our rights, but we are to look out for the good of others. Most importantly, we are to live in such a
way that others will see Christ in us and be led to him through us. Hate and revenge never saved anyone. On the other hand, love and forbearance and
patience and generosity have paved many gospel roads into peoples’ hearts.
Probably few people have
demonstrated this so clearly in our time as Dr. Martin Luther King. At his funeral, Dr. Benjamin Mays listed the
injustices he had to endure but then noted how he responded to them: “If any
man knew the meaning of suffering, King knew.
House bombed; living day by day for thirteen years under constant
threats of death; maliciously accused of being a Communist; falsely accused of
being insincere . . . ; stabbed by a member of his own race; slugged in a hotel
lobby; jailed over twenty times; occasionally deeply hurt because friends had
betrayed him – and yet this man had no bitterness in his heart, no rancor in
his soul, no revenge in his mind; and he went up and down the length and
breadth of this world preaching non-violence and the redemptive power of love.”[4] This is exactly the kind of life that Jesus
lived and exemplified and which he calls us to imitate.
The next illustration our Lord
gives is in verse 41: “And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two
miles.” What our Lord has in mind here
was “the compulsory transportation of military baggage”[5]
by Jews, imposed on them by Roman soldiers.
Again, something was being taken away.
Their time, their effort, and their freedom are all being taken away
from them. What was even more odious to
the Jew who had to undergo this type of servitude is that it was being done for
the personnel of a foreign and occupation army.
How does this apply to us? How does this connect to the general
principle of self-denial for the sake of the gospel? I think the apostle Peter helps us out here. He was writing to Christians who were living
under an empire that did not provide protections for being a Christian. Some of them were being persecuted. Some of them were enduring evil. And their first instinct would have been to
rebel against the government, or at least to cooperate with it as little as
possible. And yet Peter tells his
readers to submit to the government.
Why? Peter tells us, “Be subject
for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as
supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to
praise those who do good. For this is
the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of
foolish people” (1 Pet. 2:13-15). Peter
is clearly concerned with their witness to the gospel.
In the same way, we ought to live
as citizens of our government in such a way that we do not bring dishonor to
the gospel. We may not agree with
everything it does; we may feel that we have been wronged by this or that
law. But, according to our Lord and his
apostles, we must obey our leaders. We
must give them no reason to reject the gospel because we are lawless.
That doesn’t mean that there
aren’t times when Christians can legitimately work to reform a bad and corrupt
government. But, like Dr. King, we must
do so in a way that is consistent with gospel of Jesus Christ. We must always do so through lawful
means. And we must do so with the glory
of our Lord paramount in our minds – even more paramount than our own
rights.
Finally, Jesus extends this
teaching with the words: “Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse
the one who would borrow from you.” As
we’ve been pointing out, our Lord’s teaching is that when something is taken
from us – our dignity, property, freedom – we are not to respond with evil in
our hearts but are called to meet evil with good, hate with love. But here, nothing is being taken from
us. Someone is asking us to give them
something. Jesus says that we are not to
shut our hearts to them but are to give.
But again, this is just another
application of the overall principle of denying ourselves for the sake of
others. And again, we are not meant to
apply this verse with a forced literalism that leads to stupid scenarios. Jesus is not asking us to give money to a person
who is obviously going to go spend it on drink.
He is not commanding us to support professional beggars. Rather, he is telling us to be generous and
to create gospel roads into people’s lives by giving to them in their time of
need. After all, is this not how God
relates to us? Is this not what prayer
is all about? We beg of God in prayer,
and he gives to us –freely, and over and over again, thank God!
Will you be like Christ? This is what this passage is asking of
you. You claim to be the recipient of
grace freely and lavishly given. Well
then, will you not show it to others? As
the apostle John points out, how can you claim to love God whom you have not
seen and then not love your brother whom you have seen? And how can we not want to show grace to the
lost when God has shown it to us?
There is no better way to pave a
gospel road into someone’s heart than by showing good in the face of evil. People may argue with you about the gospel,
but no one can argue with this kind of love.
May God work such a love into the hearts of each of us!
[1]
From What I Believe, by Tolstoy. Qtd. in John Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, p. 108.
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