Matthew 5:38-42 "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 an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and 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 do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you." (NASB)

So, last week, I mentioned that Jesus' reason for giving the sermon on the mount was mainly to give a higher standard than the Old Testament Law. Does He ever with this one!

I have problems with this one. Like most of us, I've been hurt more than I feel I want in life, and I don't feel like encouraging someone who is hurting me to hurt me more. Instead, I want to make them stop and maybe get my "eye for eye, tooth for tooth,"- or maybe more- we often forget that the reason the Mosaic Law mandated exact retribution was to prevent the very human tendency to escalate conflict. If the consequences for hurting me, we think, are worse than what they did to me, they won't find it worth continuing to hurt me, or, at least I will be "even" with my offender.

But that's just it, isn't it? Our human desire to get even isn't what morality is about, nor is our self-preservation instinct. Kindness and goodness are the centers of morality, and our model is Jesus. Honestly, if anyone else tried to command this passage to me, I'd have a strong urge to test their cheek-turning rhetoric, but isn't Jesus the One Who actually did let us, all of us, test His teaching about turning the cheek, by turning His? My defensiveness and anger begins to fall away as I begin to realize that Jesus in fact has put His teaching to the test, but it was me who was testing Him. I am the enemy that did far more that strike His cheek or take His outer garments. I am the enemy that marched Him to Golgotha and I am the enemy that now asks, without truly understanding the magnitude of what I am asking, for my sins to be forgiven me. And I am the enemy that He died for, while I was His enemy, to whom He has not lent, but freely given me forgiveness and reconciliation. If He can do this for me, surely I can forgive what's happened to me, and even voluntarily take some abuse. Surely I can't argue with Jesus' example; you can't tell a general who charges at the head of a battle that what he's doing is too dangerous, so you aren't following him. He's taken the hardest blows, can we really find it within ourselves to refuse to do what He asks?

And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain—
For me, who Him to death pursued?

Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

-Christopher