Here's What Jesus Really Meant by 'Turn the Other Cheek'

Today, we're looking at four of the statements Jesus makes right in a row that maybe more than any others cause people to look at the Sermon on the Mount and say, this is not realistic. I don't know what to do with this. He says somebody hits you, let them hit you again. Somebody wants to sue you, give them even more than they asked for. Somebody wants you to force you to do something you don't want to do, do it, and then do more than that. Anybody wants you to give to them, go ahead and give. Now, is Jesus saying that you're supposed to do that stuff? No, and if that's what you think that he's saying, then you don't yet understand his teaching and that's why I'm so glad we got a few minutes to take a look at this passage. The most brilliant teacher who ever taught said that what is insurmountable or not, you are my problems. They are God and his kingdom, his presence, and his life, and his love, and so you can make this a golden rule day. And really, this passage is simply an application of the golden rule as we will see. This is Matthew chapter 5 starting with verse 38. You have heard that it was said, eye for an eye and tooth for tooth. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go on them two miles. Give to the one who asks you and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. So let's take it from the top. That phrase, eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, is in the Old Testament as it is in much of the ancient world, Code of Hammurabi and lots of other places. We look at it as quite a vengeful kind of saying, but actually in the ancient world is a great step forward for justice. What it was saying was merely because you're rich and powerful doesn't mean that you can hurt somebody else as much as you want to. There needs to be proportionality or equality of recompense. So somebody gouges out your eye, you can take their eye, but you can't cut off both their legs. Okay, so it was actually a great step forward in terms of justice. Now Jesus is not addressing this at all in terms of how do nations need to apply justice. What he's addressing is then people would look at that law of the Old Testament and say, ah, okay now, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, you hurt me, I'm gonna hurt you. And that became a general prevailing assumption. And of course, we're all guilty of living that way. That's just, that's human flesh and Jesus is saying, no, now all of this is dependent on the reality of the kingdom. Now because you live in the care and the presence of God, you no longer have to live your life in that same way. And so he goes on to say, but I tell you, do not resist an evil person. Now you may be able to think of several evil people immediately in your mind and think, well, they must be resisted. A better translation of this would be to say, don't retaliate against somebody. That doesn't mean that you should never stop an evil person from doing something evil. Of course, very often that needs to happen. Killers should not be allowed to kill. Abusers should not be allowed to abuse. What he's saying is, don't allow ill will in another person to overcome will for the good, love in you. Do not let evil outside you produce evil inside you, because that's a much greater, much greater problem, much greater evil. And then Jesus brilliantly just rips off four illustrations. If somebody's living in the kingdom, what creative alternative might be available to them? I have a friend, there's a quote from a movie I would never ever recommend, but the character in the movie says, my mind is a raging torrent of thought cascading over into a waterfall of creative alternatives. And now, if you want a waterfall of creative alternatives, about what is it like to live in the kingdom, then you come to Jesus. So, these now are not laws about what you have to do in any given situation. And when people mistake them for that, they don't understand the nature of Jesus's teaching and his absolute brilliance. And they think now, he's just given a new series of laws to replace an old series of laws, and we're stuck in, no, no, no. These are not laws. These are creative examples, in some ways, probably quite unlikely, but of what a person living in the kingdom might do to no longer be trapped in the spiral of general prevailing assumptions, greed, and revenge, and so. So, somebody strikes you. That's probably a form of an insult. They strike your right cheek. It's a blow, certainly, for your honor. What do you do? And the natural human response is, I for I, truth for truth. You hit me, I'm going to hit you back. But now in the kingdom, it's not necessarily so. You don't have to do that. You have creative possibilities. It does not mean, this is really important, there's a big difference between what Jesus talks here, turning the other cheek, versus being afraid of a bully and trying to placate them. Wonderful old book, How Green Was My Valley, and the youngest kid, Hugh Morgan, comes home from school one day, and he has been beaten up by a bully. His mom wants him never to go back. His dad actually gets out the little money chest in the house and says, okay, Hugh, from this day forward, every time you come home with a mark on your face, I'll give you one penny. If it's a bloody nose, I'll give you six pence. If it's a black eye, I'll give you one shilling. And a broken nose, I'll give you. And his mom's just horrified by this. You realize when you read through the account, to run away in fear, to try to placate a bully, is no way to live. And that's a real different thing than what Jesus is talking about. But of course, to allow a bully to cause you to become a bully, that's great evil also. And so you say, now, if you're in the kingdom, God's watching out for you. So here's a possibility. Somebody strikes you in one cheek, turn the other cheek. You didn't run. You're right there looking at them. You are standing your ground. And yet you are refusing in a very concrete way to seek to inflict pain, to allow willing the evil to triumph inside you. Or, he says, if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. Court systems are kind of made up to produce adversarial spirits, and we all know what that's kind of like. This is not a real likely solution. In the ancient world, if you didn't have pants like we do, you basically had these two garments. So if you literally did this, you'd end up being naked, which would probably not be a really good idea. But it's just a way of saying, you know what, if there's another person you think they're trying to take advantage of you, you don't have to give in to resentment and try to take advantage of them back. Remember years ago at a church where we were in a real difficult situation that could have become very easily a real legal one, and realizing, you know what, this idea of giving your cloak as well, you don't always have to do that, but probably sometimes you should. And in this church situation, to think we would be free. God has a cattle on a thousand hills. We don't have to get every ounce out of the other person, take him to court, threaten to court. There's another way that is available to us now that could enable us to be our absolute best selves. It's not a law. It's just a creative alternative. We live in a world that says it's a zero-sum game. So if you get something out of me, then I've lost it. Jesus is saying you don't have to approach the other person that way now because you live in the kingdom. And then he goes on. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Jesus is speaking in Israel when they're occupied by Rome. One of the least popular laws of Rome was a Roman soldier could force you to walk with them for one mile and carry their burden. And of course people hated that. The zealots in particular hated that. That's why they wanted to violently overthrow those soldiers. Jesus says, you know, if that happens to you when you get to the end of the mile, just look at that soldier right now and say, you know, it's a long day and you have difficult tasks, I know. Most of the soldiers in the Roman army in Israel were just boys largely from Syria. And Jesus is saying, you know what? You could treat them like a human being. Look them in the eye. Could I help you a little more? Could I go with you another mile? I could do that. He's not giving a law. He's not saying when you get to the end of the one mile, okay, I have to carry your burden a second mile. And the soldier says, well, no, really this is as far as I went. No, no, no. Jesus said I got to go too. We're going too. It's not a law. Okay, it's a creative alternative because your mind is now a raging torrent full of them. And then the fourth one. Give to the one who asks and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. Now, if the zealots wouldn't have liked that third law, go with them a little farther, the Romans and the Sadducees who kind of colluded with them in order to get everything they could, they would not like this idea. And often people will think, well, this one's not very realistic because what about codependency? What if I start giving to somebody and then they just enter into a life of passivity and it damages their character? Do you think Jesus had not thought this out? I think about a friend where they have a relative and if you give to that relative it's just going to put them into a spiral of all kinds of wrong behaviors. Okay, it's not like Jesus would have said, wow, never thought about that as a possibility. Shoot, I better amend that one. He's not giving laws. He's saying, you know, naturally we tend to avoid wanting to give. We just want a clutch. That's the general prevailing assumption of the world in which we live. But now if you're living in the kingdom, freely you have received, freely you have given, freely give. A good friend of mine was saying the other day to me, did you hear that statement from Paul where Paul says, for the love of money is the root of all evil. It just gets us and gets us and gets us. But then a greater love comes to us now. Says now you're living, there is a kingdom that is greater than the kingdom of money and you can live in it if you want to. And now the the great offer of that kingdom is freely received from God this moment right now and then freely give. So you look right at that person. I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal recently that talked about how there is a paucity of eye contact in our day and partly because it's just so easy for our eyes to go to this. Less and less and less are we doing this. And I get that. I'm Swedish. You all know where you tell a Swedish extrovert is they look at your feet when they're talking to you. So I know what that one's like. But instead of avoiding eye contact, when we don't want to give, we do this. You ever in the car and you want to get into the lane, you got to make a turn or something and there's somebody right there and you're trying to ask them, can I please get into this lane here? What do they do? They don't want to look you in the eye. We just we don't want to feel guilty. We don't want to feel the burden of that. And so here's the takeaway for today. Now, this is all golden rule stuff, see. Do unto others. I gotta quit. Do unto others. Which others? Others I like? Others that look like me? No. Do unto all others including the cheap slapping, shirt suing, mile walking, money begging. Do unto others as you would have them. So today look everybody in the eye. Take the time to look them right in the eye and see that's a person. Maybe they're not even quite as evil as I thought they were. And I can respond to them from the resources and strength of the kingdom. Make it a golden rule day. If you like hearing John talk about the Sermon on the Mount, we've got a whole series on that. So go ahead and subscribe to make sure you don't miss any future episodes in that series. You can also go back and catch up on any episodes that you may have missed. Now if you're interested in the email or the text alert that goes along with each episode, you can let us know at becomenew.com subscribe and we'll make sure that you get those. 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