Is Your Cheek Red Enough?
by Pastor Jim May
Portions of this message were taken from a message by Rev. Victor Shepherd at another sermon site)
Matthew 5:38-42, "Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away."
How many of you find it easy to “turn the other cheek” when you have been offended or attacked by another person? It’s not easy to do sometimes. Our natural reaction is to lash back at them, first in self-defence, then in retaliation. Our first thought is to stop any damage to our body, our family or our possessions, then to counter-attack with even greater force to gain the upper advantage and stop such an attack from ever happening again.
Frank Robinson was an outstanding player with the Baltimore Orioles baseball team. He retired as a player and soon became the team manager. One day an opposing pitcher threw the ball at one of Baltimore’s batters and knocked him down at the plate. The inning continued on, and it ended without anything being said or done about the bad pitch that hurt the batter. Then came Baltimore ’s turn to take to the field.
The Baltimore pitcher threw his first pitch over home plate for a strike. That was a good way to begin the inning. According to baseball stats, if a pitcher’s first pitch to each batter isn’t a strike, then the odds are greatly against him pitching a strikeout. Most baseball coaches would have been happy with his pitcher’s performance, but no Frank Robinson. He was angry and he had a score to settle with the other team.
As soon as the pitcher had the ball back, and before he could wind up for a second pitch, Robinson charged out to the mound like wild man. He started screaming and threatening his own pitcher in front of over 40,000 fans.
“How many times have I told you?” he shouted at his pitcher. “When they knock down one of our men you are to knock down their first batter in the next inning with your very first pitch. Never mind throwing a strike. I want to see their batter in the dirt. We don’t let opponents get away with anything.”
Frank Robinson spoke for the mindset of the whole world: “Don’t let them get away with anything. Give them a taste of their own medicine.” That’s the attitude of the world we live in. Strike back – hit ‘em hard – don’t let anybody get away with anything – get even. How many times have I heard someone say, “I don’t mad; I get even!” Even worse than that, I have heard people say many times, “I don’t get mad; I don’t get even; but I give more than I get!”
So in the matter of turning the other cheek, where do we draw the line? Just what does “turning the other cheek” mean anyway? Are we to allow people to walk all over us while we act like a limp dishcloth? At what point do we stand up and stop our attacker?
Before we talk about what “turning the other cheek” means and how far we must go as Christians to obey Jesus’ commands, I think that we should point out what turning the other cheek does not mean.
1) To turn the other cheek does not mean that we should act as though we don’t have all that’s coming to us mentally. It is not mean that we are super-Christians just because we try to put down ourselves and lower our self-esteem, and then develop a lack of self-confidence in who we are and what we are in Christ.
We are all aware of people who have no self-confidence. They regard themselves as insignificant and useless; something less than a human being, created in God’s own image. They think of themselves as doormats, and not surprisingly, everyone around them treats them like a doormat. Sadly, there are many preachers and pastors who have developed this kind of thinking. As a result their enemies in the congregation “walk all over them” and their friends in the church, “lead them around like a puppy on a rope”.
I feel sorry for anyone who has this kind of thinking. They are leading an unhappy and demoralized existence and they will never become the true man or woman of God that they could be. We must not think that to turn the other cheek is to glorify being a doormat for the Lord. We must not think that we should open ourselves up to being victimized by anyone and everyone who decides to come against us and try to control us because it’s so easy for them to do so.
Remember, Jesus didn’t act like a doormat and let others treat him anyway they wanted because he didn’t think that He was worth anything. He said, “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.”
2) Also, turning the other cheek is not to turn a blind eye to justice. Christians must uphold justice. A society without justice quickly collapses into anarchy. Either we must oppose injustice, wherever we see it, or sit back and allow injustice to reign supreme. The church has set back long enough and allowed injustice to go without speaking out against it.
We cannot overlook the mistreatment of people in this world. We must do all we can to right the wrongs that we see and to see that all men are treated with respect. Jesus certainly “turned the other cheek” on the cross, but whenever he went, he was always the Champion for those who were mistreated and oppressed.
Jesus never looks the other way, never turns his head, when he sees defenceless people abused; but he turns his cheek when he’s abused himself. He never turns a blind eye to the abuse of others; but he will turn a blind eye when he’s abused himself.
What then does the Lord mean when He says that we should “turn the other cheek”?
The command to turn the other cheek means simply this: we are not to retaliate. Have you ever wondered why Jesus said, “thy right cheek”, instead of just saying “cheek”?
(Seek a volunteer to demonstrate the “right cheek” slap)
The commands in the Word of God are addressed to people who would understand what Jesus meant when he used the term “right cheek”.
Let me see if I can explain it to you.
When a right-handed person punches someone else, the blow normally lands on the assaulted person’s left cheek because they are facing one another and the left check is the closest target to punch. But think about this. If I were to hit you with a backhand using my right hand, where does that blow land? It hits against the right cheek of my opponent.
Which hit does the most damage physically? Which was does the most damage to your pride?
For you, as well as those that received this teaching in Bible times, a backhand blow is more than just an attack, it’s an absolute insult! A backhand slap, unlike a closed fist punch, does very little real physical damage. It’s not much more than a slap that would normally be given. But because it’s backhanded, it’s absolutely insulting. It does vastly more damage to our pride than a punch does to our body.
Jesus said, if anyone “shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” In other words, “if anyone not only attacks you but insults you terribly as well, don’t retaliate. You are not to retaliate by lashing insults back at them, but take the punishment as a good soldier accepts his suffering for the greater cause of justice.”
In the same paragraph Jesus said that we should not, “resist one who is evil.” I can already hear you thinking, “But surely we are called by God, as Christians, to resist evil”! Yes we are! Even Jesus resisted evil wherever He saw it. He overturned the tables of the money changers at the temple. He cast out devils consistently. He opposed the religious self-righteous crowd at every opportunity. But that doesn’t negate his command here to “resist not evil”.
We have to consider the context of what Jesus is saying in the whole verse. In the context of cheek-turning our Lord means this: “When someone does evil against you, don’t you lash out on a vendetta against them personally. When someone assaults you slightly but insults you greatly (insult is much more difficult to withstand than assault, isn’t it?) don’t fly back at them in a fit of revenge. It’s not up to you to get even.”
“What about that phrase, ‘eye for eye and tooth for tooth’?”
“Eye for eye” is a quotation straight from the original Hebrew bible. So how can we miss its real meaning?
We fail to understand something very important. “Eye for eye” means only an eye for an eye, no more than an eye for an eye. Because of sin and human depravity, whenever our “eye” is taken we want to retaliate by taking eye, but we also take an arm and a leg along with it. In the original Hebrew the phrase, “eye for eye”, was a limiting device meant to determine just how far justice could go. An Israelite was to limit the severity of the retaliation to the severity of the offence. Jesus goes one step farther than that by saying that we are not retaliate at all. The “eye for eye” doesn’t pertain to you and I and we have no right to exact justice on those who offend us.
What is the Lord’s commands to us now? Turn the other cheek – take the offence and endure it without retaliation.
Philippians 2:4, "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others."
Romans 12:19-21, "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."
That’s a tall order isn’t it? Most Christians would rather that Jesus had never given that command at all. How can we stand by, allow someone to attack us, berate us, and falsely accuse us without lashing back at them, not just in defence, but to make them appear as fools and idiots for attacking us in the first place?
How can we obey these commandments from the Lord? We can only do it through the work of grace within us that comes from Jesus within us.
Retaliation is sweet to those who live in sin. We revel in the fact that anyone who attacks our country is counter-attacked and utterly defeated.
After the 9-11 attacks in New York and Washington DC, most people looked at our retaliation against Osama Ben Laden with celebration. I must admit that I was glad, and still am, to see something being done to exact justice and protect us from this happening as much as possible. But desiring justice is very different from those who would have the attitude that we should just bomb the whole country into oblivion. That would be far more than and “eye for an eye”. Revenge is sweet to those who don’t know Christ, but to a Christian, any form of violence, even justifiable, is not welcomed. Punish the offenders but not the innocent bystanders who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Harold Ballard used to own the Maple Leaf Hockey Club. Carl Brewer used to play for the Maple Leaf Hockey Club. Brewer thought Ballard had exploited him in some manner, and therefore Brewer sued Ballard. The sum Brewer asked for wasn’t huge; it was only eight or ten thousand dollars. But the courts decided against Brewer and he came away with no money.
Shortly thereafter, as Brewer snooped around, he discovered that while Ballard owned the hockey club, he had never registered the name of the club with the proper authorities. Brewer quickly registered the name for himself and suddenly he owned all exclusive rights to the name “Maple Leaf Hockey Club”.
Now Ballard owned the hockey club, but Brewer owned the name of the club. How desperate was Ballard to own the name? He was willing to pay much more than ten thousand dollars.
Brewer waited until the time was right and then made his move. He retaliated against Ballard required a huge amount of money to sell him the name of the club. So much that Ballard had to sell the club to Brewer and let him have it all.
Revenge is sweet to us fallen creatures. It’s sweet enough when we’ve been wounded and can even the score. It’s sweeter still when we’ve been insulted and are gathering a greater retaliatory insult. It’s sweetest of all when our retaliation plunges someone else into public humiliation and pays us a fortune as well.
The feeling of euphoria from getting even and the sweetness of getting our revenge only disguises the deadly poison to our heart and soul.
For that reason Jesus doesn’t tell us to limit retaliation; he tells us to renounce it completely. As long as we are limiting retaliation, even limiting it so as to reduce it to a minimum, we are still operating with the mindset of retaliation. Jesus said that we are to get past that kind of thinking completely.
In Romans chapter12, Paul outlines the pattern of a Christian life. He says that we are never to avenge ourselves, since to avenge ourselves only adds to the evil that is in the world. Paul knew that if we lash out in retaliation, then we have already been overcome with evil.
We can try to justify our retaliation by saying that we are just “teaching someone a lesson that he needs to learn.” We can always tell ourselves that “we’re doing them a favour and that, one day, they will thank us.” The truth is, we’ve been overcome with evil ourselves, and we don’t even know it. We are to overcome evil with good. We must turn the other cheek.
3) If we all know that’s the way we should act, then why don’t we? The reason is because, unconsciously, we want to be like Rambo.
Rambo – the tough guy who may have to eat dirt now and then but who eventually sees his foes face down in the dirt. Anyone who steps over the line with Rambo he hammers into the ground. We all want to say, “Nobody puts anything over on me and gets away with it. I’m nobody’s fool. I might look calm, cool and harmless, but I’m a sleeping lion and I have some pretty sharp claws, so you better not mess with me.” We like to identify ourselves as the tough guy outwardly while the real us is so weak on the inside that we fear we will die if we don’t retaliate.
If we don’t make everybody think that we are “tough” then who we really are will crumble as our puffed up public image is destroyed. Because we have to keep us this front, we keep on pretending. We have the mindset that I, in my fragile condition that no one can see, can survive only if someone else is destroyed, then he will have to be destroyed. I can’t let anyone get the best of me and make me look like the dirty dog. If I don’t retaliate, I may as well lay down and die.
We can see this in a lot of marriages. The husband comes home from work and he has had a bad day. He’s not in good mood at all. He walks into the house and trips over a tricycle. “Does this place always have to look like a scrap metal yard?” he yells at his wife. “What do you do all day, anyway?” Now she’s hurt, and insulted. She feels she’s been both punched and backhanded. It would be a sign of weakness, she thinks, not to retaliate. It would only invite further hurts not to retaliate. It would only advertise herself as an underling not to retaliate, and she’s too proud to appear an underling. So she lashes back at him, “What do I do all day!” “What do you think I do all day? I simply stand around all day doing nothing since there’s nothing to do with three children underfoot. I merely wait for little Lord Fauntleroy, the King of His Domain, to come home. Who do you think prepares your supper five times a week?”
Now she is getting sarcastic. In her pain she goes one step farther. “I suppose you’re going to tell me I can’t hold a candle to your secretary, Miss Twitchy-Bottom or whatever her name is.” Now she’s gone on the attack, just to make sure her husband is pushed back far enough to allow her to survive.
Now her husband is wounded, insulted, and crushed. But he can’t appear crushed; no male ego can let that kind of stuff go unanswered for long. No red-blooded male is going to put up with an insult like this. So he comes back with his own retaliation. The fight is on and as it escalates its potential for irreversible deadliness increases.
The entire situation can be defused, and can only be defused, when one person, either one, simply turns the other cheek. But both have an image and an identity to maintain. Both are fragile; both fear that appearing weak before the other would mean ceasing to exist themselves.
There’s only one way out of having the self-preserving kind of mindset. We have to remember that our identity isn’t something we build for ourselves and then spend the rest of our lives shoring up. Jesus Christ gave us our identity and he maintains us in it.
Jesus can tell us who we are just because he has made us who we are. Because our identity is rooted in Him and not in anything we do to ourselves, our identity in him can never be destroyed.
Because Jesus made us who we are, we can always know who we are, and we can always be who we are, regardless of what others think we are. (REPEAT THIS !!)
They may think of us as King Kong or as a wet noodle. Let them think what they want. We don’t have an image to maintain. Jesus maintains it for us. We know who we are in Christ. We know what we are in Christ. So what does it matter what anyone else thinks?
If we know who we are in Christ and love who we are in Christ, then we don’t have to establish a “tough guy” identity for ourselves. And if we don’t have to do this then we are free to appear weak or silly or naïve or foolish if the occasion calls for it. That when we are free to turn the other cheek.
Now we come to the last point. We must realize that turning the other cheek is the only way reconciliation is won. Reconciliation is never won through retaliation. There is an old saying that we have to “Fight fire with Fire!” If it’s true that we have to fight fire with fire, then let’s look at what happens when we do. If the fire is already burning and we throw more fuel on the fire, what happens? Everything and everyone is burned by the blaze. Non-retaliation is the only fire extinguisher we have.
We must understand too, that the work of God’s grace in us to not retaliate will make us appear weak to the world and to those who don’t under that we are living by the commandment of Jesus to turn the other cheek. The world will look at you and think that you are stupid to not defend yourself. They might even call you a real “loser.” Be prepared for it.
How can you prepare for it? By remembering that “losing” has always been the way God wins. It’s when God himself appears to be the biggest loser of all (a Jew, the person the world loves to hate, executed by the state, rejected by his followers, dangling from a cross of shame) is when God achieves his greatest work of reconciliation.
There is only one question for us to settle: are we secure enough in Christ, big enough in Christ, mature enough in Christ to withstand looking like losers the next time we are insulted, and then to renounce retaliation? We are if our relationship is right with God. Because of the presence of the Lord in us we are free from having to prove ourselves; free from having to give in to that evil that we are resisting; and free to obey the commandments of Jesus just like He did.
Jesus said in John 8:36, "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."
