“An Eye for an Eye” – Matthew 5:38–42
Hear now the word of the Lord from Matthew 5:38-42.
38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 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. 42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.
Matthew 5:38-42
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. On January 7th, 1865, a man named Asa McCoy was murdered by a group of Confederate home guards called the Logan Wildcats. Asa had returned from fighting in the Civil War. He fought for the Union in the 45th Kentucky Infantry, and when he came home, he was murdered by Confederate sympathizers. One of the chief suspects for Asa McCoy's death was a man named William Anderson Hatfield. He was immediately suspected of this crime. However, later it came to see that, in fact, he hadn't committed it because he had been home sick at the time. But that started the beginning of some bad blood between the Hatfield’s and McCoys.
A little over a decade later, in 1878, there was another issue. This time not over a murder, over something small. It was a disputed property right over a hog. A man named Bill Staton, who had relations to both families, the Hatfields and McCoys, he gave testimony that ultimately led the judge to award ownership of the hog to the Hatfield family. Well, now the McCoys felt that, well, they had someone murdered, and maybe it was that Hatfield guy. They lost a hog to these Hatfields. So two of the McCoy brothers rose up to murder Bill Staton as retaliation for what they perceive was to be gross injustice.
Well, from there, things spiraled out of control. One thing led to another. One side's retaliation led the other side to retaliate even more back and forth the violence went, until this became an absolutely legendary feud where over a dozen people on both sides were killed.
If you look at a story like that, a legendary story, the Hatfields and McCoys. By the way, they eventually did make some sort of peace in 1979, members from both of those families came together for a weeklong special of the television show Family Feud. So every day they had five of these episodes and these two family members did it. However, when the Hatfields won more money, the show wisely gave the McCoys an equal amount so that they wouldn't cause increase to the issues there.
You look at the story of how that turned out in the 19th century, the back and forth, the murdering, the tit for tat, the eye for an eye, the revenge, the retaliation. Then two questions arise. You think, why didn't someone stop it earlier? Why didn't someone stand up and say, enough is enough? This is only causing more bloodshed, more violence, more sorrow. We've got to stop this before it gets more out of control. The second thing I think we also have to ask is, even if we're not murdering people over hog rights, isn't it true that my own heart wants to get even? Isn't it true that I want justice for all the ways in which I feel like people have aggrieved me, have wronged me? I want to get even. I want to get my eye for an eye. I want to get my pound of flesh. How often do we feel that way in our hearts as we relate to the world?
Well as Jesus teaches about this law, an eye for an eye. He's showing us two things. First of all, he is showing us that that this sense in attitude and spirit of retaliation, that we approach almost everything in life, all of our relationships in life, Jesus wants us to see just how much suffering it causes. Not only the suffering that we inflict upon other people, but the suffering in our own souls.
The second thing that Jesus wants us to see is that to put an end to all of this, he had to come to suffer for sinners. That's our big idea today that Jesus came to suffer for sinners. The solution to this problem, what is going to put an end to all of these endless bouts of retaliation, is that Jesus came to suffer for sinners.
As we study this Texas morning, we'll look at two parts. The first part I'll call dispassionate suffering, and there's a reason I'm using that term, dispassionate suffering. We'll talk about that when we're going to try to unpack what exactly Jesus is teaching us here. What's the principle that he's trying to communicate? Then second, we're going to look at affectionate love, affectionate love. You may have a definition for what that means in your mind, put that out of your mind. We're going to look to biblical definitions for passions and affections as we're going to talk about this this morning. Affectionate love where we're going to look at the illustrations that Jesus gives about how we are then to conduct our lives. The first point we'll take a little bit longer as we try to unpack what Jesus is saying here, because we need to see it. It's very important for our lives.
1. Dispassionate Suffering
2. Affectionate Love.
Dispassionate Suffering
So coming into this first point, dispassionate suffering. Jesus here in verse 38 says, "You have heard that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." Jesus is quoting here what many people, whether they're looking at the Bible or really a lot of ancient laws, a lot of ancient civilizations had this kind of a law. It's called Lex Talionis, which is a Latin term. That simply means the law of retaliation, a law of retaliation, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
We see this all over the Old Testament, Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:20, Deuteronomy 19:21. Each time, as Jesus has taught about different aspects of the Old Testament law, we always have to ask ourselves, how is Jesus quoting this? In what sense is He quoting this? What does He want us to get from this quotation and what is Jesus teaching us about this legal principle from the Old Testament law.
We have seen a few occasions where Jesus has quoted the law to show that there has been an unlawful narrowing of the scope of the law. So when he talked about murder, he said, you can't simply narrow that to say that only physical murder is forbidden by the law. The law against murder, the Sixth Commandment, addresses how our hearts feel. If anger rises up against us, Jesus says you were already guilty of violating the Sixth Commandment. In terms of adultery, Jesus says, you can't just limit that, narrow that to physical adultery. If lust arises in your heart toward someone who is not your spouse, you have already committed a sin of adultery in your heart. You have violated the Seventh Commandment.
Last week when we looked at oaths and vows. You cannot narrow the terms of what God says about our oaths and vows to say that you're only bound to your word if you have explicitly invoked the name of God. That's what the Pharisees were teaching. Jesus says, we are, to be honest in all of our dealings with the people around us.
Sometimes Jesus is quoting unlawful narrowing of the law, but sometimes He is then also quoting an expansion an unlawful expansion of the law. So, for example, in his teaching on divorce, he quoted Deuteronomy 24:1, which said that if a man wants to divorce his wife because there is some indecency found in her, and Jesus says the one who divorced his wife for the sake of sexual immorality, that's one thing, there Deuteronomy 24:1 pertains. You have to offer a certificate of divorce to finalize that divorce. Jesus says what the Pharisees had done is to expand that, to say, well, really, just a certificate is what's important. Any reason at all you might have for wanting to divorce your spouse? That's fine. Just so long as you submit the correct paperwork. It's an unlawful expansion of what the law taught.
Well, here we are coming to another unlawful expansion of what the law taught. You see, when we look at the law for an eye for an eye, Jesus is reminding us that there was a very specific scope, a very specific scope for the eye, for an eye, a law of retaliation. Namely, the scope was for public justice. This was a law for public justice. The idea was if you put out the eye of my friend and I'm angry about that and I want justice. I see that, in fact, the retaliation is administered in public by the civil magistrate who is charged with keeping the peace, keeping justice, administers the same kind of punishment to the one who has done this to my friend. That should, I may still be angry about it, but that should settle my desire for wanting to seek justice privately. It limits vengeance. I see that justice has been done and I don't have to do anything.
Furthermore, this limits the kind of punishments that could happen if you were the one accused of a crime. If you stole a loaf of bread, you could not have your hand chopped off. If you put out someone's eye, you could not be put to death for it. There was a limitation on how far justice could go, and that was utterly honest. An eye for an eye.
Which means that sometimes you may see the bumper sticker or something that says an eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind. Understand, that's absolutely not what eye for an eye taught. It was putting a strict limitation on the public justice that could be administered. That misunderstands the whole point of the law.
The Pharisees misunderstood the law in another way. They were trying to expand the scope of eye for an eye out of the public sphere, the public sector of justice. They were trying to expand this to even our private lives, that if you do this to me, I get to do that to you. You aggrieve me in some way, you hurt me in some way, I get to bring that right back to you. Eye for an eye, there it is in the Bible. What Jesus is pointing out, and he's drawing on the whole of the Old Testament law, is that private vengeance, private vendettas were, in fact strictly forbidden by the law.
You may know that the second commandment, when Jesus says, "The greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. The second is like it, you should love your neighbor as yourself." You may know that comes the second commandment, loving your neighbor as yourself comes from Leviticus 19:18. That's only the second half of the verse. The first half of the verse says this, "You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself." It was forbidden explicitly in the law to take out these private tit for tats, eye for eye, going to get my pound of flesh retaliation against other people in your private matters.
Now, if someone actually causes severe, significant bodily harm, well, the public courts could administer that justice, but you are forbidden from kind of pursuing your own private individual justice. So to oppose this unlawful expansion of the law. Jesus said in verse 39, says something that's very hard. He says, "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."
How do we interpret this? This is such a hard word. Now, in all of this, we have to keep in mind something that Jesus said at the very beginning of his teaching on the law back in verse 17 that started this section. Jesus said, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them." Jesus is not saying, Oh, that eye for and eye thing, that was terrible, you should have never been doing that, put that away. He's not saying that at all. He came to fulfill the law, not to abolish the law.
So however we understand what Jesus is saying in verse 39, we have to understand He is not criticizing the law. He is criticizing the wrong interpretation of the law, namely that unlawful expansion of the law to our private lives.
So if we understand this, the law of retaliation was for public justice, then the first principle we see is that Jesus is not talking about, again, those public justice matters. He's teaching privately, how do I respond when I am hurt, when I am aggrieved, when I am wronged in some way? What's the private, internal, spiritual response that rises up in me?
The second principle we need to see is that even in our private lives, our private matters, we need to understand that Jesus is not talking about saying that self-defense, lawful self-defense, is somehow wrong. Because even the law acknowledged necessary defense. It is a lawful thing to defend your life or the life of others. We see this in Westminster Larger Catechism 136, necessary defense is not prohibited by the law, but it's actually encouraged by the Sixth Commandment to take the lives of others seriously. To take the Sixth Commandment against murder seriously is to protect your own life and the life of others. So in Exodus 22:2, the law explicitly stated that if a thief breaks into your house and that thief dies as you are protecting yourself and your family, that's not murder. In fact, there is a duty to defend yourself and your family in such a situation. It's not murder, it's actually a duty commanded to defend yourself and the life of others. So that's the second principle. Jesus isn't talking here about self-defense so much, against bodily harm to you or to someone else.
So what then does he mean when he talks about if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also? Well, you have to really understand what Jesus is saying, and he's talking about being struck on the right cheek. If your right hand and most people are if you swing like this to try to maximize the pain that you would cause to somebody or punch somebody with your right hand, you're going to strike that person on the left side. Destruction one in the right side, you would have to actually back-handedly slap that person. That's important because a backhanded slap is not calculated so much to inflict bodily injury as it is to give someone a severe insult. The rabbi has talked extensively about the greater insult that this would be in the particular damages that you could sue for if someone gave you this kind of a backhanded, very shame inducing, kind of a slap.
So what Jesus is talking about is saying when someone, not so much talking about injuries, he is talking about insults. When someone insults you, how do you respond? Jesus says the fullness of the law requires you in your own private dealings, in the ways that someone insults you. You were required to respond with such great peace that you're ready to turn the other cheek and be slapped there as well.
Now, how do we understand this? What's he getting at? Well, to understand what Jesus is talking about, we have to recover the biblical teaching of the passions of our souls. This is something that older Christians talked about a lot. This has been largely forgotten in the last couple of hundred years. We don't talk often about the passions of the soul, but it's a very biblical concept.
Now, often when we think about passion, we still use the word, we usually use it in the realm of sexual desire. Put that idea out of your mind. There are places where passion refers to that kind of a thing, but not in the way that we think about it. Here's the biblical definition of the passions of the soul, "The passions of the soul are reactions to the world around us that are characterized by spiritual suffering." When the Bible talks about the passions of our soul, these are reactions to the world around us that are characterized by spiritual suffering. Not primarily bodily suffering, although that can induce sort of these passions to rise up in us. But the passions of the soul are reactions as we evaluate the world around us that are characterized by spiritual suffering.
So when we look at the world around us, when the world inflicts itself upon us, what then arises in us, these passions where we want justice. We may want money, we may want peace, we may want sex, we may want power, we may want love. Because we don't have the things that we want, especially the things that we sinfully want, we suffer. These things that rise in us are called the passions of the soul.
Now we see this, for example, in Romans 1:26, we read about the dishonorable passions of homosexual sexual desires. Then in 1 Thessalonians 4:5, we talk about the talks about the passions of lust, just general lust. These are passions arriving arising in our soul. Then in Colossians 3:5, the word for passions appears in a list of different desires rising up in our heart, impure evil desires. Some of them are sexual, but some of them involve desires like greed or covetousness. Probably the clearest place where we see the Bible defined passions, and this is where I'm getting my definition, is James 4:1-2, where James says, "What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and you quarrel."
There's this war of our passions inside of us that are constantly raging, seething, desiring. When we don't have that, we are experiencing intense spiritual suffering that is constantly leading us to lash out, to try to correct and react to the suffering in our hearts. That's what Jesus is talking about. If you were dealt this blow, this blow not so much to your body as to your ego, what arises in you? Is not that blood comes spurting out from this, it's that your heart rages up in desire to want to get an eye for an eye. How am I going to get back at this person who has done this to me?
Now, what we need to be very clear about is that the Bible also teaches, by contrast, that God does not have passions. God is without passions. The Westminster Confession of Faith two paragraph one says, "God is without body parts or passions." We get that directly from the Bible and Acts 14:15, the ESV, when Paul and Barnabas are in Lystra and they're ministering and performing miracles, the people begin to think and Lystra that Paul and Barnabas are gods. So they start sacrificing to them. And, and Paul and Barnabas says, No, no, no, don't do this. The ESV has, "We are men of like nature with you", but very literally that we are men of like passions with you. In other words, you know that we're humans because we share the same kind of passions in you, this spiritual suffering. But if we were gods, the implication is then we wouldn't have that God is without passions. Christ, however, you've probably heard of the idea of the Passion of Christ. Christ had a passion. He suffered. Why? Well, because he took a human nature upon himself, precisely so that he could suffer.
Now most of the passions that are seething and raging and our soul trying to get whatever we can, most of our passions are sinful passions. They're corrupted by sin that's always wanting, always greedy, always grabbing after something and is angry whenever we don't get what we want, especially justice like what Jesus is talking about in this passage. But Christ, when he experienced his passions, he did so innocently.
So, for example, we read about Christ's passion at his temptation. That Christ suffered when he was tempted. When we experience temptation, our hearts are enticed by the passions that are lurching and desiring whatever we're tempted by, but Christ only experienced temptation as suffering. As suffering for the weight of what He had to undergo in human flesh.
Then particularly, this word arises to talk about the suffering of Christ at the cross. There the suffering of Christ was not so much bodily suffering as much as bodily suffering He did experience. The passion of Christ primarily refers to the spiritual suffering of Christ's anguish as he bore up under the weight of God's wrath.
God is without passions. Christ had passions because he took a human nature to suffer under these things and yet he suffered innocently. But the passions of our soul are raging and seething and lusting and desiring toward what we cannot have and we're angry about it. So when we're humiliated, when we're afraid, when we're hurt, when we're betrayed, when we're envious, when we're sad, when we're lonely, when we're anxious, when we are ashamed. This passion of anger rises in us and wants to get even. I want an eye for an eye. I want to do to you what you have done to me. I want you to suffer in the way that I am suffering according to this.
You may think about the way that we sometimes describe crimes that are committed in the heat of this kind of anger, a crime of passion. There's that older sense of the word. It's not something that's premeditated, it's something that happens on the spur of the moment, because these passions that react according to the suffering of our souls. Understand God doesn't respond to us that way. God doesn't have a temper. In Exodus 34:6, we read that God is, "Slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love." Again, God's temper isn't just lashing out at us when he has a bad day. That never happens with God. He faces infinite insult from us.
Certainly, we can't injure God. We can't injure God. But we do hurdle all kinds of insults at Him and God bears up under all of this. But he doesn't suffer it. We read, in fact, in Malachi 3:6, and this is essential for our ongoing existence, "The Lord says, 'For I, the Lord do not change, therefore, you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed." Because God is the eternally existing one. He is self-existent, he is self-sustaining. He possesses all things. There is nothing that he lacks. He does not change. Therefore, God doesn't react from his suffering in the way do we do to try to get even. When God's wrath comes. It comes as perfect, pure, and exact justice. Not because God flies off the handle or loses his temper.
God, however, while he doesn't have passions, theologians talk about what God does instead. The Bible is filled with words and phrases that describe to us the feelings that God has. God certainly has feelings, but not the feelings that come from the passions, from some suffering in his soul that he's trying to correct. God doesn't have that. God's feelings come from His affections. Affections are very different than passions. The affections arise as not a reaction, but a proactive, deliberate, conscious choice of the will to set your love on something. It's not like a child grasping at something I want and can't have. It's God setting his love on his people from before the foundation of the earth, according to his wisdom, according to his knowledge, according to his goodness, according to his kindness. For his own glory, God proactively sets his affections on us so that whenever He bears up under insults, it's always his affections. It's always the love that he has extended toward us in Christ Jesus that is what spills out onto His people.
God is patient and caring toward us, even when we sin. Even for those who reject God, God's patience comes and giving them extended time. His kindness and patience is meant to lead people to repentance. God takes all our abuse and yet continues to love us and to show us His kindness. Jesus says, this is how we must act. The law requires that in our private dealings, we're not just simply reacting. We're not just simply letting it all hang out and telling you exactly what's on my mind. Rather dealing so kindly and patiently with one another. So that even when someone gives us this backhanded, shame inducing slap, our hearts are so guided by our affections and love for one another, so we're just ready to turn the other cheek. We're ready to go again because I love you so much. That's the way that God responds to us.
Now, I've said a lot about theology, a lot about what the Bible text says about the ways in which our souls operate and how God's souls operate. Let me boil this down to an illustration, I think a fairly simple illustration to understand. I'm a parent. We've had a lot of little children in our home, especially little babies. One of the things I didn't know about little babies is that their fingernails grow, too. So you're holding this tiny, cute, adorable little baby, and they just reach up and just smile at you as they rake your face. Now, when that happens and these are just sharp to beat the band, right? When that happens and they just slash you, you have sort of two emotions as a parent. I mean, like if someone else had done this, oh, man, you're ready to go. Let's roll. Let's rumble. Right? This is a little child whom your affections are set on. So you recognize I can't fly off the handle at this baby. This baby has no idea what's just happened.
Now I once saw this, I saw video of this. I saw an older father dealing with his grown son. A grown son who had severe mental and physical disabilities. So much so that when the son became excited about something, he would become fairly physically aggressive with his father. Not just a baby that you can sort of control where they put their hands, but a grown child where it was actually fairly difficult to do this, a grown man. As I saw this video of this father interacting with the son whom clearly, he had had a thousand such interactions over the course of this child's life, his son's life. I saw the father stop his son from hurting him, stop his son from hitting him. But you could see on his face there wasn't a trace of anger. There wasn't a trace of, how dare you? There wasn't a trace of, I'm going to show you. His eyes were locked on his son with perfect love. With perfect, dispassionate suffering. He loved his son, his affections were poured on his son, and he kept dealing with his son according to his love. This is what the Bible requires of us.
So to summarize this, when we suffer physically or spiritually, the law requires that we not respond from our passions, from that anger that rises up to say, I want to get even. Our actions and even our attitudes must be guided not by the raging passions inside of us, but by our deliberate conscious, shaped according to the Word of the Lord, affections. Affections where God trains us to respond to others as He responds to us.
So our Larger Catechism Question 135 says that the sixth commandment against murder requires us to subdue all passions. In 136 Larger Catechism Question 136 we read that one of the things that the Sixth Commandment forbids is all excessive passions. Again, older Christians talk this way. We need to recover this teaching of what's happening in our soul, how to account for those feelings.
Affectionate Love
So Jesus, to make it plain, gives us three more applications. We'll go through these fairly quickly, in the second section of Affectionate Love. What does it look like for our affections to subdue our passions? Again, affectionate love, we're not talking about someone being cuddly. We're talking about these affections, subduing our excessive passions so that it's not our passions lashing out. It's rather our actions are guided by our affections, deliberate according to what God does toward us.
So verse 40, Jesus says, "And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well." Now, Jesus is not teaching us to enable all evil behavior. He's not teaching us to encourage theft and extortion. It is not loving to give a con artist everything that he asks for. Rather, Jesus is driving at the disposition of your heart. So often when we have people who are needy, our tendency is to withdraw, to get a little bit farther away, to see them on the other side of the room and go to the other side, not wanting to be caught in a situation. Jesus says, your heart always shaped by this affection for the other person, where you are ready to continue to give and to give and to give. Not unwisely, but to give to meet needs.
Verse 41, Jesus gives us another illustration, "If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles." The Romans could requisition people to do this kind of thing. The same language shows up at the cross when Simon of Cyrene is requisitioned, compelled to carry Jesus's cross. Now, none of us like to be requisitioned. We don't like to be bossed around. Simon probably didn't want to carry Jesus's cross. We don't want to be drafted into the military. We don't want to be drafted into jury duty. We don't want to be drafted for anything. But Jesus says that when we are drafted, our hearts should not be begrudging and hard. We should be ready to serve with attitudes that accompany that.
Verse 42, Jesus goes on and says, "Give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you." Again, the heart is the main target. There are times when helping hurts. Giving to people who are con artists, that's not always a good thing. We want to help people in the fullest sense of this and not just in superficial ways that actually hurt. What Jesus is saying, is we are called to be generous, not foolish, but generous in all the ways that we give. The question is, what is the disposition of my heart when someone asks for something?
As a parent, it is right for me to withhold something from my children that would harm them. Dad, can I have a loaded gun? Absolutely not. It is wrong, however, that if my children ask for bread, I would give them a stone instead. Even if I've had a bad day, even if I've had it up to here with them, it's wrong for me to give them a stone. A good father gives his bread to his children.
It was right, for example, when Moses railed at the Israelites when they had sinned with the golden calf. Because you can see his heart immediately after interceding with God that if you will not go among us, Lord, blot me out of your name of the book of life. That's the heart that hates sin, but loves the sinner. It was wrong, however, when Moses railed at the Israelites when they were thirsty, even though they had grumbled at him, even though he'd had it up to here with them, even though I personally have sinned a thousand times in the same way, it was wrong for Moses and it's wrong for me.
You know, as a child. I remember going to a pancake restaurant. I remember going to a pancake restaurant with my grandparents. And I remember I ate too many pancakes as children do. And I remember I threw up right there in the dining area, right in the middle of all these people. Even as a child, I knew that the waitress now had a horrible task. Even as a child, I remember thinking, oh, I don't know how much she's paid, but it can't be enough to clean up the horror of what I've just done. I've ruined her night. I remember being afraid of this. To this day I remember her kindness. She didn't see that me. She very kindly and gently said, it's all right. I'll take care of it.
Now, I don't know that I totally understood this until as a parent, when you deal with this sort of thing. we have a son who threw up just last night. That's why not all of our family can be here today, sadly. But right after this, my son kept saying, "I'm so sorry, I'm terribly sorry, I'm terribly sorry", which I don't know if he's British or what, but I'm terribly sorry. It was really funny how he phrased it. My wife and I, as much as we're like, oh, this is disgusting and we have to clean this up now, both of us are like, don't worry, don't be apologizing. You're sick, we want to help you. That's the kind of thing that God is requiring. That even when someone hurts us, even when someone puts us in a bad situation, it's a heart that's not seeking to get revenge. It's a heart that loves and seeks to do right and to be gentle with the other person.
Application
You know, as we consider this text or application throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus continues to shine his pure light into the darkest, yet most hidden corners of our heart. No one can see as my passions rage inside me but God. So Jesus takes his word and shines it into my heart, he continues to do so here. Who among us has not felt rage over insults that cut far deeper than the actual injuries we receive? How could we possibly redouble affection for those who have insulted us in such deep ways? Where's the justice in turning the other cheek?
At every turn in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has led us to despair over our sin. Not so that we despair altogether. Jesus wants us to see how impossible it is in our own sinful selfish hearts to do what God demands so that we will be driven, because we have nowhere else to go, but to the foot of the cross. Because who can control the corrupt motions of our hearts? I can't. You can't. But Jesus can. The Holy Spirit can. Christ promises forgiveness and righteousness to those who repent from their sins. Even when I can't fix it, but to turn from this and look to the Lord and ask for him to save me.
Once again, as we deal with this text, throughout the Sermon on the Mountain, I tried to show that Jesus is not just teaching here things for us to do. He is showing us a part of what he has come to do. Jesus came to suffer for sinners. Jesus is indeed the one who turns the other cheek. Isaiah 50:6 says, "I gave my back to those who strike and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard. I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting." In Isaiah 53:7, we read, "He (Jesus) was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that has led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before it shears, is silent, so he opened, not his mouth."
Then in the New Testament as Peter is reflecting on this, both on what Jesus has done and how we should respond. He writes this in 1 Peter 2:19-25, where the word passion shows up four times to talk about how we should suffer. It's the word suffer. Peter writes,
For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. 20 For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. 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. 22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. 1 Peter 2:19-25, ESV
Who can forgive our sins of passion and our outbursts of retaliation? Who can cleanse our hearts from the corruption of sin that stirs and seethes and boils and rages in response to our suffering? Only the Lord Jesus Christ, only the one who perfectly obeyed with perfect love and perfect peace toward those who hurt him. Even praying, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, as the Roman soldiers were nailing him to the cross. He did this, offering himself as the perfect sacrifice for you and for me. To forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from deep within.
As we've talked about, this gives us clarity in our day to day strategy for mortifying, putting to death our sin. When you feel these passions rise up in you turn to Jesus, say, Jesus, there's that anger, there's that lust, there's that corruption of wanting whatever it is that I want and can't have. I hate it. Lord, I hate it. I turn from it. I ask you to forgive me and to cleanse me. Give me a right spirit, Father. I pray. Tell them all this, pray this. Stop where you are and pray right then and turn from the sin that's raging in your heart before it spills out to cause even more suffering.
We will never rid ourselves of this corruption in this life. We are certainly waiting for the life to come when we will be perfectly glorified and rid of this corruption. But God does promise real forgiveness now. More than this, God promises real growth, real cleansing, real sanctification. To transform us into people who are increasingly conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, who did not revile in return, did not threaten, but instead continue to trust himself to the one who judges justly. That's the image of our Savior, and that's what God commands for us. There's no hope outside this gospel. There's no hope outside the fact that Jesus came to suffer for sinners. Look to him and be saved.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would give us Christ. That you would cleanse us from the inside out by the blood of Jesus, applied to us by your Holy Spirit, sent from Heaven. To cleanse the corruptions of our soul. To forgive us from our sins. To make us increasingly more like Christ. Oh, we pray, conform us to Christ image until the day when He comes and we shall be like Him, for we shall see him as he is in all of His splendor and glory. It's in Christ name we pray. Amen.