An eye for an eye?

You have heard that it was said, ‘Any eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth.'   But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. – Matthew 5.38-39

We seem obsessed with not letting someone get away with anything. We have this idea that there has to be some sort of cosmic balance and that if someone does me wrong I have to balance the scales by doing wrong to them.

The ‘eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth’ concept is the source of all kinds of problems. In the Old Testament it set a standard for the courts; the punishment was to suit the crime. It had since developed into a tradition that allowed people to exact retribution in kind. That kind of thinking leads to fights and wars and squabbles and marital spats and family feuds and church splits and broken fellowship and road rage and all kinds of societal ills. It happens in the world all the time, and sadly it also infects the church.

This is not easy teaching for us to accept. ‘If someone slaps you give them the other cheek to slap. Don’t resist an evil person. You don’t have to respond.’

Obviously Jesus is not teaching some kind of principle where His followers are not permitted to protect themselves from harm. The principle is clear though. It is not our place to seek vengeance or revenge of any kind when we have to deal with evil. The idea is that we don’t have to exact revenge. The phrase translated ‘do not resist’ refers to standing up in opposition. This is the principle expressed in the rest of the New Testament. Our task is not to return evil in the place of evil. ‘Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous; not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing.’

Revenge should never be our goal or our motivation. Our problem is not taking this teaching too literally; the problem is that we ignore it completely. We need to keep our minds off of revenge and on to being a blessing no matter what we face.