LIFE IN GOD’S KINGDOM
IMITATES GOD
MATTHEW 5: 38-48
INTRODUCTION
This morning I feel the need to pray before I begin more than usual.
I feel the weight of my inadequacy to stand before you and make plain
what God is saying in the pages of this book more than usual. These verses
are a massive mountain and a glittering sword. I so yearn for them to
have the impact that Jesus means for them to have in our lives. I want
us to mourn over our wickedness and to passionately plead with God for
a higher and better goodness. Let’s pray.
One of my fondest memories of being with my dad is from when I was 10
years old. In our family that was the age a child could go with Dad when
he went deer hunting. I remember the long drive to Minong, WI which is
where my dad was born and raised and where we hunted. We arrived late
in the afternoon of opening day and it was snowing very hard. After we
unpacked the car Dad asked if I’d like to go hunting for the last hour
of daylight. We put on our red hunting clothes and went out into the thickly
falling snow. The vivid memory I have is of my dad framed between two
snow covered pine trees in his bright red hunting clothes with his gun
cradled in his arms as I trudged in his footprints through the snow. It
evokes very warm and happy emotions in me whenever I call it to mind.
It is as a result of numerous memories like this that I love deer hunting.
I have come to imitate my father in his love for and practice of deer
hunting. Why have I come to imitate him in this way? I would suppose there
are lots of reasons. I love and respect my father and wanted to please
him as a child and if he was excited about something then I wanted to
be excited about it. It seemed to me as a young child to be a very grown
up thing to do and so it was part of becoming grown up. I’m trying to
pass on a love for hunting to my children in large part because of the
love for hunting my dad gave to me.
Just as I have imitated my father in my love for and practice of deer
hunting, so the Bible commands us to imitate our heavenly Father. It is
the rare person who does not claim or at least want to claim to be a child
of God. However, as Jesus has been making plain to us as we have marched
through Matthew 5: 20-48, claiming to be God’s child and actually being
one of God’s children are not necessarily the same thing. The religious
teachers of Jesus’ day were absolutely convinced they were God’s children
because they were of Jewish decent and they obeyed God’s laws. Beginning
in v. 20 where Jesus says, "Unless your righteousness surpasses that of
the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter
the kingdom of heaven." And ending with his command, "Therefore, be perfect
as your heavenly Father is perfect." Jesus is showing his audience and
us that we are not as good as we think and no amount of human effort will
ever make us God’s child. The only people who are God’s children are made
so by the work of God. However, as Jesus makes plain in v. 45 (read it),
all who are made God’s children want to live like their Father. Just like
a good daughter wants to please her mother and make her proud and not
ashamed, so the Christian wants to protect and promote God’s reputation
by his or her life. To claim to be God’s child and to not want to be like
God is a contradiction. So in these final verses of Matthew 5, Jesus makes
plain that…
MAIN POINT
God’s true children show off God’s greatness by …
I. Not retaliating but by being kind to those who injure them (vv.
38-42)
Before we get into examining what Jesus means and what he doesn’t mean
in these verses I need to make sure that you have felt the sting of what
Jesus is saying here. We have in these verses 2 of the most radical things
that Jesus Christ ever said. Before I dull the brilliance and the sharpness
of Jesus’ commands with words of explanation, I want to make sure you
at least see them. Jesus says in v. 39, "do not resist an evil person"
and he says in v. 44 "love your enemies." These are without question two
of the most astounding commands that have ever been uttered by human lips.
They go against every natural impulse in us. They are completely at odds
with how we want to live and how we actually live. If nothing else, these
statements alert us to the fact that when evil is done to us by another
person our initial, natural response to that person is probably wrong.
I must stop and think about how these two commands affect my response
to the one who does evil to me. This morning, it is my task to help us
get straight what Jesus is commanding here, both so we can see how different
God is from us and so that we can love and pursue being like our Father
in heaven.
Jesus begins by quoting a phrase that is used several times in the OT.
Turn back to Exodus 21:22-25 (page 55) and then Deuteronomy 19: 16-21
(page 139). This is a foundational principle of any society that wants
to call itself a "just" society. It is the principle that the punishment
must fit the crime. This law was instituted in Israel for two reasons.
First, to make sure that the victim’s of crimes were compensated and that
the perpetrator’s were not excessively punished. Second, to make sure
no one took matters into their own hands and sought their own vengeance.
In every case this principle is put forward as something the community
does, not something that individuals are to do. It is the role of government,
as Peter says, "to punish those who do wrong". When Jesus says, "Do not
resist an evil person", he is not contradicting this fundamental principle
of human society. He is not advocating abolishing police forces and armies
and the justice system. He is not saying when your home is burglarized,
don’t call the police. But what is he saying?
To get at what Jesus is requiring and what he’s condemning we must understand
how the religious teachers were using this basic principle. Just like
good Americans, the religious teachers took this principle and generalized
it to say you have a right, even a duty, to make sure that whenever someone
wrongs you they pay for what they did to you. Like good conservatives,
"Everyone must be held responsible for their actions", was their cry.
"If your rights are trampled on or your property damaged or your reputation
maligned, don’t just sit there, sue the bums!" Theirs was the cry of a
child when confronted by a parent to stop insulting their sibling, "He
called me a name first. So obviously, in order for the world to be made
right and balance to be brought back into the universe I must insult him.
Fairness demands it. Equality requires it." Just like us, they turned
personal vengeance into a virtue by insisting it was your duty to make
sure that people were held accountable for their actions.
Notice that after the prohibition, "don’t resist an evil person", Jesus
gives 4 examples of what he is talking about. Before we look at each one
I want to make 3 general observations about them:
- It’s important to note that the source of each of these "attacks"
is an evil person. In none of these cases are bad things happening because
you did something wrong. Jesus assumes you are innocent in each of the
scenarios and are being attacked without provocation. The person attacking
is evil to do so.
- Second, Jesus is not giving us new laws. These are illustrations of
the main principle—do not resist an evil person. There are several ways
we know this. First, if Jesus means for these to be specific laws for
us to obey then he is narrowing, rather than expanding the force of
God’s law. When was the last time you’ve had your face slapped, someone
sue you in court for your shirt, or an authority tell you to walk a
mile? A major part of Jesus’ goal is to show us how completely we disobey
God’s laws. If these are laws, then few us of will ever have the chance
to disobey them and so they cannot prove our guilt. In addition there
is obvious exaggeration in these examples. Is Jesus commanding masochism?
Does he really mean for you to offer your other cheek for no good reason?
Is Jesus really telling us that we are to walk around in our underwear?
This is what you must say if you say that the 2nd example
is literal.
- Third, Jesus is arguing from the greatest to the least here. If you
are not to resist an evil person who injures you, then how should you
treat your loved ones, like your spouse, your child, your parent, when
they injure you? If we are to never retaliate when an evil person assaults
us, then how should you respond when your spouse assaults you? If you
are to generously give to an evil person, then how should you respond
to the request of a child?
The four illustrations deal with four categories of assault.
- The first example is of personal insult. The slap that Jesus is referring
to here is the slap of contempt and mockery. The word is used only one
other time in the Bible. It is used in Matthew 26: 67-68, "Then they
spit in his face and struck him with their fists. Others slapped him
and said, ‘Prophesy to us, Christ. Who hit you?’" In other words, when
someone insults you or mocks you or disses you without provocation,
don’t retaliate. Not only are you not to retaliate but you are to give
them your other cheek so they can insult you again.
- The second example is from the court of law. Someone is suing you
without cause. How does a person who is obeying Jesus respond? Rather
than counter-suing, he gives to the one who sues more than he asks for.
- The third example is an example of the abuse of power. The word that
is translated "forces" refers to the right of Roman soldiers to require
civilians to do work for them without pay. The word is used later in
Matthew when Simon from Cyrene is forced by the Roman soldiers to carry
Jesus’ cross. What Jesus was telling his Jewish audience who were living
under the rule of Roman occupation was that when a Roman soldier, your
oppressor, asks you to carry his luggage, don’t just go as far as he
asks you to go, offer to carry it further.
- The fourth example is different in that it isn’t an assault but rather
a request. When an evil person asks you for something or wants to borrow
money from you, don’t refuse him, but generously give him what he requests
from you. The context requires that we see the request not so much as
asking but as demanding and the borrowing is being done with no intention
of repayment and you know it.
If we are only paying a little bit of attention to what Jesus is saying
here, our minds are full of protests. You mean that the wife who is getting
beaten by her husband has to stay there and take it? You mean when the
teenage son asks for $20 you know that he will spend foolishly, you are
to give it to him? You mean when my neighbor sues me for damage to his
property that I didn’t cause, I’m not supposed to fight him? You mean
when a customer refuses to pay his bills, I shouldn’t send the collection
agency after him? There’s a thousand examples like this. The answer the
Christian is to give to each of these situations is, maybe.
Are we to never resist the evil person or evil institutions? The simple
answer is no, sometimes we must resist evil. Jesus resisted the false
teachers many times and quite violently in Matthew 23. (read vv. 1-5a
and 13, 15, 16). Jesus commanded that we resist evil men in Matthew 18:
15-17 (read it). We are told that Paul, "resisted Peter to his face" because
Peter was compromising the gospel. Another time Jesus says, "when you
are persecuted in one city, flee to the next." There are many more examples.
I think when we put all this together what we come to is this. Resisting
evil and evil people is appropriate only when it is done for reasons other
than personal vengeance. Jesus did not go after the Pharisees because
they had hurt him. He went after them because they were claiming to speak
on behalf of God and so misleading the people. The same is true of Paul
with Peter. The only reason we are to resist, to fight against evil and
evil people is in order to protect others and provide for them. We resist
evil in order to promote goodness, not because we have been offended.
We are to never retaliate against others just to make sure they pay for
what they’ve done. My response to those who injure me is never to be governed
by a need to protect or defend myself but because I’m trying to promote
goodness and restrain evil for the good of others.
I think the point at which Jesus is driving can be exposed by asking
the question, "why do we retaliate, why are we so self-protective?" When
my wife says something that hurts my feelings why is my first reaction
to say something to her that will hurt her? We retaliate and refuse to
help others because we are persuaded that if we don’t take care of ourselves,
no one else will. I retaliate because I do not believe there is a God
who is paying attention, who is committed to my well-being and who will
make sure that perfect justice takes place. Every time you return an insult
you are declaring that God is either unjust or impotent or unloving or
all three. He is either unwilling or unable to defend you. Personal retaliation
is evil because it treats God with contempt.
Jesus exemplified what he is commanding here when he went through his
trial, beatings and crucifixion. No one deserved to be honored and treated
with respect more than Jesus. In all of the suffering he endured you will
find not one word of protest, not one curse upon those who persecuted
him. How did he do this? Peter tells us how, "When they hurled their insults
at him, he did not retaliate, when he suffered he made no threats. Instead
he entrusted himself to him who judges justly." The patient endurance
of Jesus was made possible because he believed in a God who was paying
attention, who loved him and who was going to make all wrongs right. Jesus
refused to call into question the justice and love of God by retaliating
against those who unjustly attacked him.
God’s true children show off God’s greatness by…
- Not retaliating but by being kind to those who injure them.
- And by…
II. Hating no one and actively loving those who injure them (vv. 43-47)
Jesus moves now from the passive side of our response to those who injure
us to the active side. He does not merely tell us to refrain from retaliation,
he also commands us to actively love those who injure us. He begins by
summarizing the teaching of the Jews on the matter of love for your neighbor.
Lev. 19: 18 says this, "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one
of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself." So the Jewish teachers
were rightly telling people to love their neighbor. However, notice they
were leaving off the "as yourself" qualifier. But then they were teaching
people that God commands you to hate your enemy. There is no command to
hate your enemy in the OT. It was an inference they made from the OT,
erroneously. I’m not going to go into how the Jewish teachers came up
with this divine command. If you are interested in pursuing it on your
own you can talk with me afterwards and I’ll give you some clues as to
where to start. Where did they get the idea that the OT commands that
you hate your enemy? By taking OT statements out of context and twisting
them to fit in with their own desires.
While most of us naturally hate our enemy, we would not say that God
commands us to do so, at least not out loud. Yet there isn’t a person
in here who cannot tell me why it is right for them to hate the people
that they hate. Our hatred is justified and therefore, by implication,
approved of by God. What I’m trying to say is that all of us naturally
live just like these religious teachers. We don’t need biblical justification
to do so, it’s just natural. We restrict our love to our neighbors and
give our hatred to all others. Look at vv. 46 & 47 (read them). See
what Jesus is saying here? The Jews and we restrict our love to our neighbor.
Who is our neighbor? The one who loves us is our neighbor. Who is our
enemy? Everyone else.
So Jesus commands us, "Rather than giving your love only to those who
love you, to those who are like you and agree with you and treating everyone
else with hatred, I want you to love your enemies and pray for those who
persecute you." The love that Jesus is commanding here is not merely an
emotion but neither is it merely action. Jesus is commanding both because
love is both. Love is not just acting for the good of another. It is acting
for the good of another because you delight in the other persons being
benefited. Jesus commands that you and I are to delight in good coming
to those who mistreat us and to actually work for their good.
Why does he command this? As we’ve seen throughout all of Matthew 5,
Jesus’ reasons for our obedience are God-centered, not man-centered. The
reason to love your enemies is so that you will show whose son you are.
Do this because you want to be like your Father who is in heaven. If you
are a Christian, nothing could make you happier than to know you are like
your heavenly Father and so you will have great joy in loving with an
affectionate, active love, those who treat you like dirt.
How is it that loving my enemies and praying for those who persecute
me, shows that I am God’s son? In the middle of v. 45 there is supposed
to be a "because". It should read, "that you may be sons of your Father
in heaven because he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and
sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." When you love your enemies
you are being like your father because that’s how he lives. He treats
his enemies (the evil and the unrighteous) the same way he treats his
children (the good and the righteous). What an awesome picture of our
gracious God! He owns the sun and the rain and controls all the beauty
and happiness that this world offers. He does not withhold it from his
enemies and only give it to his children. No, he continues to give the
atheist food and clothing and shelter. He impresses the Moslem who continually
worships a false God with the beauty of his sunrise. He pours out financial
success on the man who cheats on his wife every time he goes on a business
trip. He gives the abortionist a loving wife and children.
Do you see Jesus’ argument in 46 and 47? It is completely human to love
those who love you, to want to spend time with those who are like you
and agree with you. When you love those who love you, your behavior is
the same as that of the worst sinner you can imagine. Every human being
is kind to those who treat them the way they want to be treated. It’s
no great feat of spirituality to love those who love you. No one is impressed.
But if you will love your enemy, now that can only be explained as a miracle.
That shows the life of God in a person, that shows that God is living.
Where does the ability to live this way come from? An absolute unshakable
confidence that God will take care of me. I do not need to take care of
me, that’s God’s business. My business is to gladly take care of others.
Here is the greatness of God seen.
As in the previous section Jesus in his suffering and death is our example
of loving our enemies. Paul in Romans 5: 6, 8 & 10 says, "You see,
at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for
the ungodly…But God demonstrates his own love for us in this, while we
were still sinners, Christ died for us…For if, when we were God’s enemies,
we were reconciled to him through the death of his son…" Notice, Jesus’
dying was for us when we were ungodly, sinners, God’s enemies. All those
who are God’s children were loved by Jesus, when he died, while they were
hostile to him and his enemy. He didn’t wait for us to love him before
he loved us by dying for us. He died while we hated him. The other thing
to note is that while he was dying he prayed for those who were actually
driving the nails through his hands. He asked God to forgive them. I think
that Jesus gives prayer as the only specific action that love for enemies
requires because it is in prayer where love for enemies grow.
Unless you live as a hermit out in the woods you cannot avoid being injured
by others. Jesus in these verses has set forward how we are to live with
those who injure us. He tells us that those who are evil, who we consider
enemies, who persecute us and who do not love us the way we want to be
loved are to be the recipients of our heart-felt, active love. Most of
the time, those who have injured me are those who are closest to me in
my family, my work, my church. Are we living as Jesus commands in those
situations?
God’s true children show off God’s greatness by…
- Not retaliating but by being kind to those who injure them.
- Hating no one and actively loving those who injure them (vv. 43-47)
I need to ask you several questions as we close that I want you to give
careful thought to this afternoon.
- Are you a Christian? Do you claim that the God who made everything
and sent Jesus to die for our sins is your Father through your faith
in Christ?
- If that is your claim, then is it your most earnest passion to be
like your Father? The thing that gripes you more than anything else,
is it to please God and uphold his reputation in the world?
- If that is true, then is there anyone in your life you are attempting
to pay back for the wrong they have done? Is there anyone who you hate?
Is there anyone who has wronged you that you are not fervently praying
for and looking for ways to love?
The Christian life is a life of suffering.
© Copyright 2000 John Swanson.
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If you would like to post this material to the web or if your intended
use is other than outlined above, please contact River Hills Community
Church, 2843 West Court Street, Janesville, WI 53545. (608) 758-0943.
mail@riverhillsonline.org
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