Responding to Mistreatment with Christlike Love

We come this morning to the final verses of Matthew 5. In the latter half of Matthew 5, the Lord gives this teaching of His kingdom and identifies six antitheses. We are now coming to the final two of those antitheses, verses 38 through 48. Please follow along as I read Matthew 5 beginning in verse 38:

"You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

Let's go to God in prayer together.

Our Father in Heaven, we believe that your son, the Lord Jesus, has come into the world as the way, the truth, and the life. We acknowledge Him to be the way, the path upon which our feet may trod safely, a path of righteousness, the one who shows us how to live according to the will of God. We pray, Father, that we would love that path this morning, that we would delight in the way in which our Lord would lead us. We pray that what He has given us is His instructions for how we're to live before those who mistreat us and those who we might regard as enemies. We pray that it would appear lovely to us that we would obey it. We pray that we would hate every wayward and false way. We pray that you would shut off to us crooked paths. We pray that we would walk according to your will, the will of our Savior. Help us in this we pray. Come now in preaching, minister to us by your Word. We pray together in Jesus' name, Amen.

Two points this morning drawn very plainly right out of the passage:

Point number one, Christ's will regarding how we respond to those who mistreat us (verses 38-42).

Point number two, Christ's will regarding how we respond to those who we might regard as enemies (verses 43-48).

Jesus speaks of how His disciples should respond to wrongdoing done against them. He references the principle of Lex talionis, or "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," which was a principle given to the Hebrews and was common in Babylonian and Roman culture. This principle was used to inform civil and judicial case law in the nation of Israel and was designed to curtail blood feuds between various tribes and families, and to avoid the pursuit of vigilante justice and ever escalating violence against others.

Before considering the individual commandments that Jesus gives us with regard to how His disciples are to respond to wrongdoing, we must understand the context in which Jesus is speaking and giving His kingdom teaching. Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' but I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you."

Therefore, Christ's will regarding how we respond to those who mistreat us is to not resist the one who is evil, turn the other cheek, give to the one who begs, and do not refuse the one who would borrow.

We must appreciate what our Lord's words in Matthew 5 mean if we are to understand the principle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This principle was never meant to be applied in our everyday lives. We should not insult or hit someone back if they insult or hit us. This principle was meant to be used by the state or government to develop civil and judicial order. Apparently, the scribes and Pharisees were taking this principle and applying it to individual relationships. Jesus is not giving instructions on how the government or the state or the criminal courts are to operate. He is speaking to how we should treat one another in our individual relationships. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is an acceptable ethic for us to live by in our individual life. Jesus is not speaking to how this principle should be applied in the courts. He is speaking rather to our interpersonal relationships.

We should not go overboard with this principle. Jesus is not talking about warfare, nor is he taking issue with the fact that this principle might have been applied in that arena. He is not speaking about the enforcement of the law in the civil life or the judicial sphere. He is not talking about whether or not crime should be prosecuted. He is rather speaking to how some were applying this principle to ordinary interpersonal relationships.

Personal relationships and Jesus' teaching is that we, as God's people, as His disciples and citizens of His kingdom, are not to view the law of an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth as the regulating ethic in how we deal with the customary offenses, slight insults, abuses, and mistreatments we may bear from others in our everyday lives.

I just remind you again, as I have many times in this series, as we hear these commands from our Lord, don't run to the corners, don't immediately find some corner case that you think disproves what Jesus is saying or means. We've got to kind of overqualify what Jesus is saying, stick with the main point, the main thrust, listen to the context, what is He saying, what is He really speaking to? Don't fly to the corners and ask questions that Jesus' teaching was not given in this instance, at least, to answer.

Jesus is not overturning the rule of law, He's not speaking out against the use of good government. He's talking about you and your Monday morning, He's talking about you and maybe your unbelieving family, you or your boss, you and your employees, you at the Christian University, or the secular University, are you at the school, you out there in the world. How should you handle customary, everyday, garden variety mistreatment, misuse, insult defenses that come your way in this world?

Jesus is speaking to the everyday slights and offenses and injustices we endure as a matter of living as Christ followers in a sin-cursed world, and I should add a world whose animating principle is opposition to the way of Jesus and opposition to those who follow in that way.

So this is Jesus' burden first of all to communicate that if you think an eye for an eye is an acceptable ethic by which you're to live, you're wrong. Do not listen to the scribes and the Pharisees. Jesus is telling us who would teach you that, my disciples. Jesus is saying, and the citizens of my kingdom, those who have been born again, those who have come under my rule, they are not to live in that way.

Jesus says, verse 39, "Do not resist the evil person." In other words, do not shut yourself against him, do not become entrenched in a feud with him, do not fight back against him, do not set yourself against him. We are rather, according to Jesus in this passage, to allow ourselves to be insulted, to allow ourselves to be hurt, even oppressed or taken advantage of, as servants of Christ.

We, as the Lord's servants, we, as the Lord's disciples, citizens of His kingdom, do not demand justice and vindication for ourselves, we do not seek vengeance, we do not give in to the impulse toward retaliation. We, as Jesus' disciples, rather, in meekness and forbearance and self-control and compassion and spirit-wrought inner power, forego our own rights, accept reproach, endure slights and insults and injustices, because we, as the Lord's people, live by a higher law and are governed by a greater Lord.

Again, Jesus is speaking to the heart here, as we've seen Him do throughout this sermon. He's speaking to those who would follow Him. Jesus is speaking to those who go around looking for vindication and perfect fairness in all of their relationships. Those who think they have license to retaliate and to seek vengeance for wrongs and offenses committed against them. Jesus says it may not be so with His disciples.

Like a good teacher, He illustrates this point with practical examples of how this might work itself out. He says if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. A slap on the right cheek would have been with the back of the hand, and it was in those days, much as it is today, one of the most egregious types of insults you could give a person. The goal of slapping someone on the cheek is not primarily to knock them out or to hurt them, it's to shame them, it's to humiliate them, it's to assault their dignity. Jesus says His followers must not retaliate. They must not return evil for evil, they must bear it graciously and endure the humiliation.

Of course, Jesus is not here imagining a vicious assault in which self-defense would be in every way appropriate. His law is that we, as the Lord's people, must not repay evil for evil, and never seek vengeance. If we are going to live in this way, we must be ready to swim upstream culturally, and the impulse to vengeance.

Our culture today positively encourages retaliation and hitting back when you've been hit. If you removed all the shows and movies that celebrate revenge from wherever you stream your movies and shows (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc.), you'd cut out probably half the material. For example, The Princess Bride says, "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die" several times throughout the film, and then at the end, the bad guy gets what was coming to him. Similarly, in Gladiator, Russell Crowe's character Maximus says, "My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my revenge." Something rises within us when the good guy hits back.

Listening to a lot of Taylor Swift lately, it's not hard to see that our culture magnifies and celebrates typical, garden-variety revenge. Half of her songs are about getting the boyfriend back or getting the mean girl back. We can't be swept along in that. The ethic that our Lord has given to us is that if someone slaps you on the right cheek, you turn the other to him also. We don't respond in kind.

Dads, I know it's common to encourage you to give this kind of instruction to your kids, but if you teach your kids if someone hits you, you hit them back, I don't know how you square that away with this passage. The proper thing is to say, "I'm not going to hit you" and to tell on the kid who did that.

It's easy to be swept away in the political arena, where the ethic is dog-eat-dog, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. We may think that if we don't act in that way, we won't win the victories we want to win, or our guy or girl won't get into office or will lose this cultural battle. But we need to remember that the Lord does not depend on human means to accomplish His purposes. We need to be ready for the subtle ways our culture encourages us to act in revenge, and live according to the ethic that our Lord has given us.

Believers in Christ are to have an attitude of not clinging to their rights when faced with persecution, mistreatment, or injustice. Jesus gives three examples to illustrate this point. The first example is found in verse 40, which states that if someone sues you and takes your tunic, you should let them have your cloak as well. Jesus is envisioning a scenario in which there is the threat of a lawsuit and is saying that rather than going to court, you should settle the outcome by giving up your rights and even be willing to be defrauded. Paul will later say in First Corinthians 6 that Believers should not cling to their rights and militate against those who would misuse them.

The second example Jesus gives is found in verse 41, which states that if someone forces you to go one mile, you should go with them two miles. This example is helpful in understanding the ancient context in which many Jews found themselves under Roman occupation. Roman soldiers had the right to enlist the service of a civilian for forced labor at any time. Jesus is saying that those who are the Lord's people should bear it and even volunteer to do more.

The main point Jesus is getting across is that Christians should not have velcro attached to their hands and be ruled by their possessions. They should be willing to let their stuff go, even when and if it is unjustly taken. If all of their earthly possessions are taken away, they should not resist because their treasure is in heaven and no one can touch it. Therefore, they are enabled and freed to endure injustices and be misused.

Jesus says we are to obey the government, even if it is oppressive. Mark Lloyd Jones, a great London preacher, says that there are thousands of Christians in occupied countries who do not know what may be coming to them. We must get into a spiritual state and condition in which we are invulnerable to these attacks. Lloyd Jones is not advocating for weaklings, but rather for us to be kind, not retaliate, and honor our masters. Paul calls for slaves to pursue this same ethic with reference to their masters.

The New Testament speaks to how we should respond to oppressive governments in three passages: Romans 13, 1 Peter 2, and Titus 3. Each one emphasizes the same thing: be subject to the ruling authorities and submit to them. Even if there is an unjust law on the books, we must submit to it. We should not call for revolution, but rather submit and endure the mistreatment. Jesus is telling us that we must honor the laws of the Kingdom, even if they are unjust.

If we want to show forth the power of the Kingdom and promote the cause of the Kingdom, Jesus says we are to be willing to renounce our rights and submit ourselves to mistreatment and to be willing to be spitefully used by others. This is the Lord's Royal Law. Why give up our rights in the face of mistreatment? Precisely because Jesus is Lord. Why be willing to endure mistreatment and not fight back? Because Jesus Christ is King of Kings. Why should we be willing to be mistreated by the wicked or by oppressive governments? For righteousness' sake, precisely because the Kingdom has come and that's how citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven are called to live.

The fourth and final example we're given in this passage is in verse 42: "Give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you." Very straightforward and simple, don't run to the corner cases. Now the main thrust: stick with it. Jesus isn't saying you need to give money to feed someone's drug habit. A larger point is God's people should be generous. They shouldn't be tight-fisted, they shouldn't have super glue stuck to their hands. They're willing to let go of their stuff, they give their money, they don't shut their fists. Others, rather, Christ's people, His disciples, are benevolent, generous, kind, and compassionate. And this isn't just in theory; it becomes practical for them. They're willing to give of their money even to people who seem undeserving. They're generous with what they have.

In all these things, what is Jesus doing? He's portraying a picture of a disciple who is not governed or dictated by his rights, his interests, his preferences, his possessions, his sense of his own deserts, but one rather who is freed from these things to lay them down in the face of insults, opposition, abuse, mistreatment, and persecution.

And friends, I'll just remind you, as hopefully you well know, if you've been a Christian for any length of time, this is not some obscure teaching in the Bible. It's not like, well, Jesus sometimes says really hard and weird things in the gospels and then the apostles kind of help us straighten all that out. No, this is taught again and again and again throughout the New Testament.

Listen to how the Apostle Paul works this out in Romans 12:14: "Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends upon 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. For by doing so, you will keep burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but rather overcome evil with good.

At first, Peter calls Christians to submit to Nero, even though he was mistreating them. He says in First Peter 2:21, "For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps." Christ did not repay evil for evil, but instead entrusted himself to God who judges justly. This is the blueprint for faithful disciples.

We may think that this is "loser theology" or "doctrine for weaklings" and that the only way to make gains in the culture is to fight a culture war. But this is not the way of the Kingdom. The Kingdom advances when people bow to Jesus, repent of their sins, and join local churches to live in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount.

We may be encouraged by rulings from the Supreme Court, but the Kingdom of God does not advance an inch further as a result of these rulings. The Kingdom of God is growing most brightly in places like Communist China, where it is illegal to fight a culture war.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that God's kingdom and God's power depend on social and cultural conditions that are favorable and auspicious. The power of God does not depend on us getting our hands on the mechanisms of government or getting the right people in office. The Kingdom will come when people bow to Jesus and live in accordance with God's laws.

A humble man, Christ will build His church and bring His kingdom in the face of all this world's opposition. All the things that will militate against this Kingdom cannot be stopped and will not be stopped as long as men and women bow the knee to Jesus and follow Him and live according to these precepts and ethics of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Let's consider verses 43-48 of Matthew 5. Christ's will regarding our disposition toward our enemies is that we are to love them and pray for those who persecute us so that we may be sons of our Father who is in Heaven. He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. If we love those who love us, what reward do we have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? But if we love only our brothers, what more are we doing than others? We are not even the Gentiles do the same. We therefore must be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.

Jesus is escalating and enlarging the requirement beyond what He said in verses 38-42. The command is not merely don't hit back, but now the command is to positively love our enemies. The statement of verse 43 that Jesus quotes is not actually found in the Old Testament. The first part, of course, is that we're to love our neighbors as ourselves, which is not a New Testament teaching, but the second part of that quote was a faulty extrapolation or deduction made by the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus says we are to love our enemies, not just avoid them or tolerate them. We are to positively love them.

We, as the Lord's people, are to love our enemies and pray for those who despitefully use us. And friends, when we read that word love, maybe there are some here who have already gone to work on that word to evacuate it of all of its meaning. Love, like love for neighbor and love for enemy, typically involves three things: a commitment of the will, an affection of the heart, and a sacrifice of the life.

A commitment of the will means that we are to do good to this person and have their good as our object. An affection of the heart involves having compassion, pity, and a feeling of regard and love. If we don't feel it, we need to pray for it. A sacrifice of the life involves laying down our life for our enemy and standing between them and harm's way.

Jesus says we are to do good to our enemies and even to pray for our enemies. We need to think about who our enemies are. They might be the kind of people who mistreat us. We need to understand what is required to happen in us if we are to pray rightly for those who are our enemies. This is not a call for us to pray imprecations down on our enemies, but to pray that they would be saved.

When Jesus was asked what the greatest of the commandments were, He said to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. He then said that on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. We could hardly give greater priority to this call to love our enemies.

We must love our enemies and pray for those who mistreat us, as Jesus did. Jesus points to His Father's universal kindness towards the wicked as the thought that should condition our prayers. We should pray for our enemies that God would bless them, save them, forgive them, and bring them into heaven. Jesus reasons that if we only love those who love us, what reward do we have? Don't even the tax collectors do the same? We should show something supernatural by loving those who are unlovely, those who would naturally invite our ire.

The true test of our love is how we love our enemies, those who mistreat us and misuse us. Jesus says we must be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. He is not saying that all His followers must have a stainless record, but rather that we should strive to love as He loves.

The only way they'll ever be accepted into Heaven is if they never sin. That's not at all what Jesus is saying. Jesus is simply saying disciples should live by a higher standard. We talk this way all the time. One of my children uses a word they're not supposed to use. What do I say? Son/daughter, the primus don't use that word in this house. If you don't use that word, we use our speech to build one another up. What am I doing? That's the standard. Does that mean if one of my children uses their speech to tear their sibling down or at one point use the word they shouldn't use, they're no longer my children? No, I'm acquainting them with the standard. I'm telling them this is always what we aim for.

We don't want to make excuses, we don't apologize for ourselves, we want to live as we ought to live at all times. It's appropriate for us every day to wake up with the goal we want to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. If you think about it, the call to be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect, it's the same thing as saying we want to be like Christ. How do you say that we should be Christ-like without saying we should be perfect? He is perfect. How can you say be holy as God is Holy and not aspire and aim for perfection?

It doesn't mean that if we fail and stumble, we will be rejected. No, there's grace for all those who fail and stumble. But Jesus is saying, no, there's something higher and better than what the scribes and Pharisees are telling you to do. There's a pure love, a deeper love, a greater love, a love that even loves enemy. And there is a goodness that overcomes evil. Pursue that goodness, pursue that love. Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect, be like God Himself who shows His goodness to the wicked.

In other places, we will be told to be like Christ who loved His enemies to the point of coming into the world to die on the cross in their place that they might be saved. And maybe that's where I should close. As we transition to the table, where will we find the motivation, the strength, the power to love those who mistreat us and misuse us, to love our enemies with the mind, with the heart, with the life?

The only place where we will find that motivation and that inner power is in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ who did exactly that. Jesus is narrating in Matthew 5:38-48 the very thing He would do in going to the cross, where He would save those who mistreated Him, He would save those who misused Him, those who were once the enemies of God, He would reconcile them by His blood, not by taking up the sword, but by laying down His life, by bearing reproach, by forsaking His rights, by an act of humiliation, He would love His enemies and He would save His enemies, bringing them with Him into Heaven.

"Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." It is by that very act that you who were once an enemy of God have been saved. What greater motivation could we ask for to love our enemies than the love that's been shown to us in the Lord Jesus Christ?

We thank God for His love that was extended to us through Jesus Christ, who loved us so much that He gave His own life as a sacrifice for our salvation. As we partake of the Lord's Table, we should remember the lengths to which Jesus went to secure our forgiveness of sins. May this stir our hearts to love and serve those who mistreat us, even our enemies.

Father, we thank You for Your Word and pray that You would seal it to our hearts. Teach us what it means to be perfect as You are perfect. We pray that the same love that was in the heart of our Lord would be ours also, a love that extends to those who are unlovely and undeserving of our love. We were lost in sin, children of wrath, sons of disobedience, and dead in our sins. Yet, You sent Your Son to die in our place so that we, Your enemies, might be reconciled.

Please, Lord, may we all be possessed of such love even now for those who might be our bitterest enemies. May we see in our experience, both in our individual relationships and in our personal evangelism, the work of the Great Commission throughout the world, evil being overcome with good. We pray in Jesus' name.