You've heard:‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth’But I tell you:Don’t resist an evil person.Whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.If anyone wants to sue you & take your shirt, let him have your coat also.Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two.Give to him who asks of you,- and -Don’t turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.Matthew 5.38-42
Jesus now gives his disciples a
ridiculous task: allow yourself to be hurt, and just take it. This teaching has to be one of Jesus’ most
ignored. You and I and everyone we know
– even people who call themselves Christian – spend much of our lives trying to
find a way around this teaching. Shoot –
it’s even ignored within “Christian” friendships, families and marriages! How many husbands and wives refuse to allow
their spouse to take advantage of them?
We don’t mind giving, but this is
allowing yourself to be harmed!
Unambiguous
Try as we might, this teaching could
not be clearer. Jesus didn’t say don’t
resist a ‘good person,’ but he said not to resist an ‘evil person!’ We can’t ask who is our neighbor in this one
– it’s pretty clear that we have to give, even
to mean people. We are instructed to
allow violent people to strike us twice.
We are told to submit to bossy people who want us to do their
bidding. Disciples are commanded to
give the shirt off their backs, and even their coat. Followers of Jesus are supposed to
deliberately “loan” money to bad credit risks.
How can we have the nerve to suggest that Jesus didn’t really mean what
he said?
Everyone I know tries to water-down
this teaching just as badly as they want to insist that Jesus was clear in his
teaching on divorce, just a few sentences earlier. Why?
Because our culture and our selfishness trumps the word of God. We may “have” to stay married, but we don’t
“have” to let that person ever take advantage of us or walk on us, or boss us,
or manipulate us, or strike us. “Turn
the other cheek” is a nice idea, except when it’s your actual face being
smacked. Then we want to water this
down.
Now let me offer you a challenge. Actually try to do this – really. Before you get to your group to do your three
columns … do your own paraphrase of this teaching. But don’t do a regular one, but try to see if
you could write this any stronger than Jesus did. See if you can close any loopholes left in
Jesus’ original teaching. I bet you
can’t do it. Jesus closed all loopholes
in this teaching already. There is no
way to make our Lord’s teaching more clear: “Don’t
resist an evil person.” Don’t resist – rather, let him order you to
go an extra mile for him. Let her
mistreat you.
Personal
This teaching is also personal – it’s
for the ears of the person who can hear it.
This isn't a message to your church, your friends or your enemies – it’s
to you. Will you
listen and obey, or will you use this teaching to try to force others to be
giving? If you want to follow Jesus,
then take this teaching personally and don’t worry about what others do. I promise you, almost no one you know will ever
obey this. Obeying this teaching is a
personal burden that you will almost certainly bear alone.
Unfair
Remember the words “justice” and
“righteousness” mean the same thing in the Bible. The word we often use is “fair.” It’s unjust or unfair to let people hurt you
and you can’t sue them or hit them back or demand repayment. Nothing about it is fair. Remember back to our lessons on forgiveness,
grace and mercy? That’s what this
is. The person who is truly forgiving a
wrong is also absorbing the hurt. I have
to work to pay my bills. When you borrow
from me and then refuse to repay me … I just actually worked for you. It’s not fair.
Jesus
This teaching is Jesus. It was personal when they spit on Jesus and
beat him and called him names. It was
not fair when we nailed him to the cross to pay for our sins. And it is clear that Jesus allowed himself to
be crucified for our lazy, selfish, unforgiving selves.
Being a disciple of Jesus means taking
up your own personal cross. Sometimes a
cross doesn't look like a cross.
Sometimes your cross will be to turn the other cheek when someone’s mean
to you. Sometimes it means being lonely
because others ignore you. Sometimes it
means you’ll teach, even though no one is listening.
- We don’t help people because they ‘deserve’ it, we help them because they need it; just as God has helped us when we haven’t deserved it.
- We don’t love people because they’re lovable, we love people because they need it; just as God so loved the world that He gave His only son.
- We don’t sacrifice ourselves for others because they’re good, we do it because it can save them – because God gave us the ministry of reconciliation! We obey this because “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Please study this lesson, read these
passages, pray and then prepare yourself to accept this personal challenge and
ministry from God through Jesus.
If
you’re ready to accept the challenge, in the next lesson I’ll suggest ideas for
how
to do this. But don’t let the apparent
difficulty of the task move you to dilute this teaching! Instead, see if it’s true. Then we’ll learn how to actually do this
successfully. If you trust God – you
must trust that He knows what’s best for you, His child.
God demonstrates His love
toward us, in that: while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us.
Much more then, having
now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God
through him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of
His Son, much more, having been
reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus
Christ, through whom we have now
received the reconciliation! Romans
5:8-11
The love of Christ
controls us, having concluded that one died for all, therefore all died; and he
died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but
for him who died and rose again on their behalf. Therefore from now on we recognize no one
according to the flesh….
Therefore if anyone is in
Christ, he’s a new creature….
All these things are from
God, who reconciled us to Himself
through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God
was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses
against them, and He has committed to us
the word of reconciliation. 2
Corinthians 5:14-19
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