The teaching in today's passage is hard for the average person to swallow. When I first read it as a child, I flat-out told Jesus He was wrong. Adolescence refined me; in high school I remarked that this was a lovely thought, but that it just wouldn't work in the real world. Oddly enough, some prominent Christian writers (Joseph Benson, for example) have said similar things! Over time though, I have become persuaded that the Lord's words are not to be explained away as casually as some have done.
By way of background, the rule "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is found a few places in the Old Testament. Leviticus 24:17-22 is as good an example as any. In context it is a command from God to Israel as a nation regarding how cases of injury or damage are to be handled by the nation's representatives. In the case of personal injury, it states that the person who caused the injury is himself to lose whatever the victim lost. This strikes a lot of people as a barbaric practice, but other law codes of that time allowed someone of higher rank to take more than an eye or a tooth if injured by an inferior. Besides, as any modern rabbi will tell you, the authorities had stopped carrying out the command literally long before Jesus' time, if indeed they ever did so. Instead they had decided how much money an eye or a tooth was worth, and that was the penalty they exacted.
Unfortunately, they didn't stop there. They extended the principle to cases that God never mentioned, including those where the injury was emotional instead of physical. If one person slapped another, the rabbis levied a fine. If one person insulted another, there was a fine for that too. But of course, once allowance is made for unseen injuries, then anyone can claim to be injured (and seek damages) in any interaction--and that was the sort of thing that was going on in Jesus' time. That is the situation He addresses here. He is not ruling on criminal law or national policy here. On the website jewishanswers.org there's an interesting post from one Rabbi Litt. He firmly denies that Judaism advocates "turning the other cheek" (it's not clear who he heard claiming that it does). He doesn't discuss slaps or insults. No, he goes straight to the case of a suicide bomber in Tel Aviv! Now, I do not know what anyone, Jew or Gentile, should do in response to such a vile deed. I do know, however, that the Lord was talking about what each of us should do when somebody wrongs us--not how the government should react to the commission of a crime.
For example, suppose somebody slaps you. A slap is not a punch. It does indeed cause pain, but the intent is to insult someone, to injure the pride more than the body. The ancient rabbis grouped it with the act of spitting on someone or flicking their ear. Now an insult is no light thing. In verse 22 of this same chapter, Jesus informed us that an insult spoken in anger is on par with murder in God's eyes. Nevertheless, He commands His followers to turn the other cheek. Matthew Henry's famous commentary says that "Christians must avoid disputing and striving . . . Suffer any injury that can be borne for the sake of peace." Some might object that they wouldn't think much of such a peace.
But hold on! Surely there's more to this. You don't suffer injuries "for the sake of peace" by turning the other cheek You take your stinging cheek and walk away quietly. You don't tell the guy to try again! Granted it seems nice and strong to get in someone's face and let them know they're not going to get away with it, but doing so shows that we see the world in pretty much the same way they do. We show that we believe in the value of pride, that slaps are an insult, and that loss of face must be recovered. Whatever threat we may pose by fighting back, we DO NOT threaten the other's value system. Of course the weak person who dares not fight back also shows that he or she shares the same values, that fighting back would be desirable if only it could be done.
However, if I turn the other cheek I am a witness to a different way of looking at things. I meet the insult with a refusal to be insulted. The implied message in any insult--that the person doing the insulting is superior--is turned upside down. Perhaps he or she will slap the other cheek, but if I refuse to be insulted, what's the point? There is an emptiness where the meaning was supposed to be. Instead of broiling in shame, I witness that I am drawing meaning from a whole different source. In other words, I am witnessing to the Gospel!
The same theme may be seen in the other two examples of "non-resistance" that the Lord gives. Someone who sues you for your shirt probably thinks that taking it will make them richer and you poorer. They also probably assume that being richer is good and poorer bad. If I fight back, then win or lose I show that I see the situation the same way. However, if I give up my shirt and then strip off the costlier outer coat, then clearly I'm depending on something other than the clothes I possessed to sustain me. I'm depending on the Lord who says, "Seek first His kingdom and HIs righteousness, and all these things will be added to you (Matthew 6:33)."
The third example is taken from a law that the Romans imposed on occupied populations. A Roman soldier could at any time compel a Jewish man or boy to carry his pack for one mile. The Jews did not care much for this law. They obeyed, of course, because they had no choice. However, many of them made a point of not going one more step than they had to. A Roman mile was 1,000 paces. I can imagine them counting them off as they walked; can't you? It's not hard to understand why they felt that way. Aside from the inconvenience, there is the humiliation of being treated by those in power not as a fellow human being but as a tool. Again, though, the man who threw the pack down after 1,000 paces wasn't communicating anything that soldier didn't already know. On the other hand, the man who carried it cheerfully for 2,000 paces would baffle him. He might put it out of his mind, but for a few seconds he would feel like he was in the presence of something he did not understand. And who knows? People have been led to the Lord in such ways.
Maybe you have heard the story of Nicky Cruz. Nicky was in trouble all the time as a boy in Puerto Rico, so he was sent to live with relatives in New York city, where the situation became even worse. While still in his teens he became the leader of a violent street gang called the Mau Maus. To all appearances he was on the short road to death or prison, but then a preacher named David Wilkerson started preaching the Gospel in the Mau Maus' territory. He even witnessed to Nicky Cruz. They had some major confrontations. In the most famous one, Nicky warned, "You come near me, and I'll kill you!" The preacher replied, "Yeah, You could do that. You could cut me up into a thousand pieces and lay them in the street, and every piece will still love you."
How's that for not resisting him who is evil? As it turns out, Nicky Cruz did not kill David Wilkerson. After a while, he was converted to the powerful love of Jesus Christ. Eventually, he became an evangelist himself. Now, I'm not going to lie by saying I am ready to put my life on the line so another person can be confronted by the Gospel. Thank God that in Nicky Cruz' case, someone was. Fortunately, here Jesus does not require us to go that far. He only commands us to show that we follow a higher value when somebody insults us, sues us or orders us around. Obeying Him will cost us, of course. We will take blows to our pride, our possessions, and our independence. We don't like taking any blows at all; getting back an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth sounds more appealing. However, the Lord never said that following Him would not involve suffering. He even spoke about taking up our crosses and following Him (Matt. 10:38). Too many people in our community don't think there's any significant difference between the way a follower of Christ acts and the way everybody else does. Let us make a covenant with the Lord that we will let Him use us to open people's eyes to the truth, even if it means turning the other cheek, giving up our cloak, or going a second mile. By Your grace, Lord, do in us what we cannot do in our own strength. Live through us. Amen.
