a deeper obedience (4) : vengeance & love

(matthew 5.38-48)

Jason Procopio

I don’t know if many of you have seen the John Wick films. I do not recommend them to everyone—they’re quite violent—but the premise of these films is appropriate for our text today. (I’m just going to spoil the first five minutes or so of the fist movie.) John Wick is a retired assassin whose wife dies of some rare disease. As a final goodbye to him, she gives him a puppy. A day or two after her funeral, John’s house in broken into by a gang. They beat him; they wreck his house; they steal his car; and they kill his dog.

So John Wick, fueled by his rage after the only thing he had left of his wife is taken from him, goes on a rampage to get revenge on this gang.

If that sounds ridiculous, it absolutely is. But when you watch the movie, you kind of understand why someone would do something it—you feel for John Wick, and so you take a kind of weird pleasure in watching him go on this violent rampage. 

Many films and many books have been written with almost this same storyline. I think people keep telling it (or variations of it) over and over again mainly because of how empowering righteous anger can be. The victim is made able to do something they wouldn’t normally do because, in that situation, it feels right. It feels like that’s what is deserved. And we feel good knowing that the bad guys got what they deserved.

We feel good, that is, until we remember that in our story, we are the bad guys.

In this last passage of chapter 5, Jesus gives us two final examples of the point he’s been making for almost thirty verses. He told his disciples they are to be salt and light in this world, preserving and presenting the message and the character of his kingdom to those who need it. And he said that the way we go about doing this is by not contenting ourselves with obedience to a standard of behavior, in which we could do the right things while being the wrong kind of people. He calls us to a deeper obedience, not merely to do, but to be as children of the kingdom.

He’s been using this verbal formula: “You have heard that it was said...”, and then he quotes a commandment they all knew; then he says, “But I say to you...” and interprets the commandment correctly. In every case, he takes something his disciples think they know, and turns it on its head, to show that if obeying the Law of Moses is all they do, they’ve missed the mark.

He’s going to do this two more times in our text today, but really it’s one more example he gives, for both sections are two halves of the same whole, and that whole is being like our Father, and loving as he loves.

Justice and Generosity (v. 38-42)

The first example we see here is that of retaliation against a wrongdoer, or to put it more properly, justice against a wrongdoer. V. 38:  

38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 

So let’s just stop for a second right there. This makes perfect sense, right? This is the way children think about justice. They get hit, they hit back. They get bit, they bite back. And they think this way because it feels right. This is the way we like to think the world works. Call it karma, call it justice—if someone hurts you, you want them to be hurt in equal measure. 

The Law of Moses had a provision for this as well—we find it in Exodus 21, Leviticus 24, and Deuteronomy 19. This is what Jesus is quoting here. The greater context in the law shows that this wasn’t meant to be taken literally every time; it was a principle based on the dignity of human life as made in the image of God. It existed to keep people in Israel from harming one another; it is meant as a warning for those people who might do wrong.

But what about the person to whom wrong is done? It would be easy to weaponize this concept of eye for an eye, to begin thinking like an executioner—this is right, this is fair, this is just, so this I will do. And if I can’t do it, well then, I’ll at least feed that grudge against my brother, because it’s a well-deserved grudge.

But this law wasn’t given to produce this attitude. It was a means of protecting the society of Israel, not of telling individual Israelites how they should react towards one another. It was a deterrent for how the Israelites managed times of injustice, not a guide for how individuals should live their lives in times of peace. And if we look at the rest of the law, and the kinds of people God encouraged his people to be, we can see that. 

So Jesus reminds us of that fact: even if “eye for an eye” might be fair, it isn’t necessary, and it should not be our gut instinct. V. 39:  

39 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. 40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.

It’s hard to think of anything more controversial than this, because it seems so unfair. It goes against everything we’ve been taught about what it means to be strong. It seems unfair, and it is unfair. It feels—at least initially—like injustice upon injustice. 

But if we’re honest, is “fair” what we really want? If we really take that concept all the way through to its conclusion, we do not want fair. Because if we get what is fair, in the end we will find ourselves not face to face with our adversaries, but face to face with the God of the universe against whom we have rebelled. “Fair” would see God, in his rightful capacity as righteous Judge, pouring out his wrath on us for all eternity because of our rebellion against his good rule. 

That would be fair. But that’s not what we’re getting, and that’s not what Jesus got. We got life, and he got death. We get adoption, he got rejection. We do not want fair. We do not want justice—at least not by our standards. The justice we are looking for is not the kind of justice we would give. 

The justice we are truly looking for—even though we may not realize it—is God’s justice. It is justice that is tempered by knowledge and wisdom, knowing when to give it and how to give it. And it is justice that is tempered by love—which knows that sometimes, for reasons only he knows, giving us what we deserve is not what is most beautiful.

You see, the attitude we should be nurturing in our own hearts is not an attitude of anger towards those who have wronged us—no matter how righteous that anger may be. The attitude God’s Law is meant to build in his people is that of generosity. 

When Jesus says, “if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,” he is telling us to be generous. Because in that moment, we are showing our wrongdoers the beauty of humility rather than punishment, or the anger they are seeking to drag out of us. We are showing them what they need, not what they want or deserve. That is what Christ did for us, and that is what he calls us to.

And he goes even further: generosity towards those who hurt us is difficult. So if we are this kind of generous, that generosity will naturally spill over into generosity in other situations as well. V. 42:  

42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. 

God’s people are called to be people who are so humble, so disinterested in their own reputation or merit or even possessions, that we are willing to let it all go if it means showing those around us what God’s kindness looks like. In those situations where any ordinary person would balk at “being had”, God’s people let their light shine before men, to show them what God’s generosity and grace look like.

Grace to the unjust and demanding, and generosity to those in need. This is the model Christ gives us.

And in the next verses, Jesus is going to take that idea further than any of us would have wanted him to.

Hate and Love (v. 43-48)

V. 43:  

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’

Now this isn’t an exact quote of what the Law said. This comes from Leviticus 19.18, which says,  

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. 

So we can already see that by this time in Israel, the point of the law has been twisted. Leviticus 19.18 goes very much in the same direction of what Jesus said just before about turning the other cheek. No vengeance, no grudges—loving your neighbor as yourself.

The problem is that if you lose the context, and you remember only that God said to “love our neighbors,” the natural question that pops up is, “What about those who aren’t my neighbor?” The law said not to bear a grudge or take vengeance against the sons of your own people. The people of Israel had quite a different attitude towards those who weren’t part of Israel, who were very often literally the enemies of the people. So the law became, love your fellow Israelites, yes; but anyone belonging to other nations were owed no such treatment. They were enemies, and so were to be treated as enemies.

This is the kind of thinking that had seeped into the people’s mentality, and it’s completely logical. This is how we all naturally think. If someone acts like an enemy, you respond to them as an enemy.

So what does Jesus do? He brings us back to the law, and extends it even further. The goal, he says, wasn’t to build up nationalistic loyalty, but real, actual love. V. 44:  

44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… 

It’s not hard to see why this was so shocking, because it’s still shocking today. We’re not in the same context today, but most of us have been treated as enemies by someone, at some point in time. We know what it is to be the subject of slander, or unfair abuse—whether it’s because we’re Christians or not. Most of us know what it’s like to be at the receiving end of unjust, unrighteous treatment by another person. 

If this has happened to you—particularly if it’s happened recently—take a second to think about it. How do you feel towards that person? What is your natural reaction to them? It’s hatred. It’s anger. They treated you unfairly, and you want vengeance. You want retaliation. You want them to receive what you received. You want an eye for an eye.

But once again: God’s people are not called to feed such feelings. Rather, we are called to love our enemies, and to pray for those who persecute us.

Love and prayer are inextricably linked. If we truly love our enemies, we will want what is best for them, and we will know that we can’t give them what is best for them. So we will pray that God might save them, and bless them, and show them his love, as he has shown us his love. It is nearly impossible to hold on to anger, to maintain a desire for vengeance, when we pray for our enemies—if we truly pray that God would do for them what he has done for us, our anger against them dissipates like fog under sunlight.

The question is, why should we act this way? It doesn’t make sense. Why would we want the best for our enemies? Why should we hope and pray for their good?

Jesus gives us two reasons. V. 44 again:  

44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. 

Tim Keller told the story of the king of a vast kingdom who decided to adopt a poor orphan child from the street. The king brought the child into the palace, washed the mud from his body, took off his rags and gave him the clothes of a prince. Once the child was cleaned and dressed, the king looked down at him and said, “All that I have is yours. You are my son, and I am your father.” The child asked, “Why are you doing this? Why have you adopted me?” To which the king responded, “That’s not for you to know. All you need to know is that now that you are my child, you must start learning how to live like my child. If you are a son of the king, you must learn to live like a son of the king.”

We are sons and daughters of the King of Kings. We have been adopted into his family. Now, we must learn to live as his sons and daughters. We must learn to live as he lives, to love as he loves.

And how does God love? V. 45b:  

For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 

We are all part of God’s creation; he has always been the Lord of all things. And yet, how unfairly do we treat God? How often do we neglect God? How often do we refuse his gracious leading? The answer is, constantly. We do nothing but this, apart from his grace. We want nothing to do with him, or his good rule.

And yet, how does he respond—not after giving us faith, but before? He responds with what we call “common grace.” Common grace is the grace that God shows to all men and women, indiscriminately, simply because we live in his world. Now of course, some people suffer more than others; some people prosper more than others. What Jesus is getting at here is that if we are alive, that is only because God has given us a measure of grace. He gives sun and rain to the just and the unjust, to the good and the evil. He gives life to all; he is generous to all humanity. 

And if we are his sons and daughters, we will do the same. We won’t base our treatment of anyone else on what that person actually deserves (because we all deserve God’s judgment). We will see the example our Father set, giving sun and rain to the evil and the good alike, and we will do the same. The love we extend to our brothers, we will seek to extend it to all—even to those who wound us.

So we love our enemies because our Father shows common grace to all, and we are his children. And secondly, we love our enemies not only because we are his children, but to show that we are his children. 

V. 46:  

46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

So what he’s saying is, essentially, we set ourselves apart by the love we show to our enemies. Anyone in the world can not do this. Anyone can show love to a brother, and hate an enemy. This is the natural way of things. We are drawn to those who love us, and we naturally want to respond with love. 

But it is not natural to respond to persecution with love. No one loves a bully. No one naturally acts like this. If we act like this, it is because something remarkable has happened in us, to produce that love in us. 

Of course, some people who aren’t Christians have learned to be kind and generous to others as well, even those who mistreat them. But they’re not doing it for the same reasons. We don’t love our enemies because we have adopted a philosophy that requires it. We don’t love our enemies out of simple altruism, which we have learned is admirable. We love our enemies, Jesus says, so that we may be sons of our Father who is in heaven. 

This is the spectacular thing that has happened in us: we have been adopted as sons and daughters of God. And loving our enemies because we are God’s children, loving our enemies in order to be like our Father, proves that we are his children. It proves—to ourselves and to the world—our identity as members of his family.

This is what Jesus was talking about when he said, Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. This happens when the world sees us respond in such a way that there is no other way to explain it other than the work of God in us. This is what it means to be salt and light; this is what it means to preserve and to present the message and character of the kingdom.

That is the goal. And that is why we aim, not just for surface obedience, but for a deeper obedience. Or to put it another way, this is why we aim for perfection. V. 48:  

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

This is a verse that has terrified me over the years, as it has terrified many of us. But what Christ is saying is simple: we aim for the perfect righteousness of our heavenly Father, because he is perfect, and we are his. His perfection is the goal, because he is our Father, and we are learning to live as his children. Our Father is perfect, and we want to be like our Father. If we want a target to hit, that’s it.

And it shouldn’t be surprising—Jesus has already said this. He said it way back in v. 20:  

“…unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

This “righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees” is the perfect righteousness of our heavenly Father. This is our goal. This is what he is bringing us toward. And this is what, one day when all is finished, he will produce in us. We’re not there yet, but that’s where we’re headed.

The Example of Christ

It’s difficult to think clearly about these passages because they have both almost become clichés by now. Even unbelievers have heard these phrases: “Turn the other cheek...” “Love your enemies...” And what makes a cliché a cliché is that we’ve heard it so many times we no longer take it entirely seriously.

The apostle Paul, when writing his first letter to the Corinthians church, addresses a problem they were having with Christians pursuing legal action against other Christians. He talks about it at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 6, and in v. 7, you can almost hear his disbelief at the situation. He says:  

To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?

Now of course it’s a slightly different context, but I mention it just because many Christians won’t even entertain this as a possibility. Many Christians wouldn’t for a moment consider the idea of simply letting the bad guy get away with it, at least for now. No matter that God has said that he will judge all sin. No matter that God said that vengeance belongs to him, and not to us. If an injustice is committed against me, I will not let it stand.

These Christians will quote “Turn the other cheek” and “Love your enemies” with joy because they have become such common phrases in Christianity that we don’t think twice about them. But will they actually do it? For many of us, I highly doubt it. We will defend ourselves to the last breath because we simply can’t conceive of any other possibility. We will defend our honor, no matter the cost.

But it’s no accident that Jesus put these two things together. Turning the other cheek and loving your enemies are the same thing. They are variations on the same theme. And if you keep reading the rest of the gospel, you quickly realize that Jesus isn’t just giving a happy life principle here—he is foreshadowing. He is saying, “Turn the other cheek…love your enemies…and if you want to know what that looks like, keep watching me, because this is exactly what I’m about to do for you.”

Jesus went so far beyond this. He loved his enemies to such an extent that not only did he give them his other cheek to strike; he gave them his life. And who were his enemies? The apostle James says in James 4.4:  

Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 

There is not one single person in this room who was not at one point “friends of the world”—that is, alongside those who do not know God, loving what they love and rejecting God as they reject God. We are all naturally guilty of this; we are all, in our fallen human nature, active and hostile enemies of God.

So Christ’s enemies weren’t only those who cried out for his condemnation; it wasn’t just those who set out to trap him in some fault so they could accuse him; it wasn’t just those who nailed him to the cross. Paul tells us in Romans 5.6-8, in a beautiful echo of what Jesus says here:  

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Christ turned his other cheek to us, because our sin sent the strike. Christ loved us while we were his enemies, and he showed his love for us by dying for us. By taking the condemnation that we absolutely deserved as his enemies. By being generous to us in sharing his perfect life with us.

There is not one thing Jesus says in this passage that he did not first live himself. 

So if we know what he has done for us; if we know what we have in him, and how loved us although we were his enemies, how is it even thinkable to still count eye for eye and tooth for tooth? How is it even thinkable to love our friends and hate our enemies? to maintain bitterness and anger towards those who have wronged us, when Christ has all the more reason to hate us, and yet loved us enough to die for us? 

This is the call he has placed on us. This is the perfect love to which he calls us, because he loved us first.

Conclusion

As you know, I’ve been preaching basically the same sermon for the last five or six weeks, because Jesus has been giving example after example of the same truth. He is calling us to be salt and light to the world, to preserve and present the message and character of the kingdom. We do this by pursing deeper obedience. And the examples he has given are only examples: he’s not being exhaustive here. He calls us to deeper obedience, in all things—not only seeking to conform to a certain standard of behavior, but also, and most of all, seeking to reflect the perfect righteousness of our heavenly Father back to the world.

We do not stop at the command to not murder; we control our emotions, and we don’t let them rule us.

We do not stop at the command to not commit adultery; we bring our thoughts into captivity, and remain pure in heart.

We do not stop at the command to follow a certain procedure when we want to divorce our spouse; we become husbands and wives of such faithfulness that divorce will be unthinkable.

We do not stop at the command to not betray an oath; we become people of such faithfulness that oaths aren’t necessary.

We do not stop at the command to exercise justice; we trust that our Father has exercised justice for us in the person of his Son, and we show generous humility to those who mistreat us.

We do not stop at the command to love our neighbor; we reflect the love of our heavenly Father, and love our enemies, just as he loved us when we were still his enemies.

And we do the same for every commandment we see. We don’t content ourselves with “simple” obedience (though simple obedience to a commandment is the beginning); we go deeper. We don’t just try to do the right thing, but to be the right kind of people, with his help—to learn to live as children of the King. 

Jesus is going to continue showing us what this looks like in the next two chapters. But for now, we have to remember that this will not be possible without God’s help. It’s possible to not kill, to not commit adultery, to not lie. It is not possible, on our own, to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.

But this is the gift we have been given: with his help, by his Holy Spirit, we pursue his perfection. We pursue this righteousness which is greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees. And with his help, by his Spirit, we wil be salt and light to the world; we will preserve and present the message and the character of the kingdom. We will let our light shine before others, so that they might see our good works, and give glory to our Father in heaven.