Hey guys,
Again, you heard that it was said by those of a previous time, You shall not perjure yourself but you shall discharge your oaths with reference to the Lord. But I say to you, Do not put yourself under oath at all, neither by heaven, because it is the throne of God, nor by the earth, because it is the footstool of His feet, neither by Jerusalem, because it is the city of the great King. Neither put yourself under oath by your head, because you are not able to make one hair white or black, but let your word be, Yes, Yes, No, No; and that which is more than these things is of the evil which is in active opposition to the good.
You heard that it was said, An eye in substitution for an eye, a tooth in substitution for a tooth. But as for myself, I am saying to you, Do not set yourself against the evil which is in active opposition to the good, but whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him also the other. And to the one who desires to summon you to be put on trial and have judgment passed upon you for the purpose of taking away your under-garment, yield up your outer-garment also. And whoever commandeers your services as a courier for a mile, be going off with him two miles. To the one asking you for something, give, and from the one who desires to borrow money from you at interest, do not turn away. You heard that it was said, You shall love your friend and hate the one who is hostile to you, hates you, and opposes you. But, as for myself, I am saying to you, be loving with a divine, self-sacrificial love those who are hostile to you and hate and oppose you, and be praying for those who are persecuting you, in order that you may become sons of your Father in heaven, because His sun He causes to shine on those who are actively opposed to that which is good and upon those who are good, and causes it to rain on those who are fair and equitable in their dealings with others and on those who are not. For if you are loving those who are loving you, what reward are you having? Are not even the collectors of taxes doing the same? And if you greet with deference and respect your brethren only, what more are you doing? Are not even the pagan Gentiles doing the same? Therefore, as for you, you shall be those who are complete in your character, even as your Father in heaven is complete in His being. Wuest, K. S [1]
Verses 27–32 We have here an exposition of the seventh commandment, given us by the same hand that made the law, and therefore was fittest to be the interpreter of it: it is the law against uncleanness, which fitly follows upon the former; that laid a restraint upon sinful passions, this upon sinful appetites, both which ought always to be under the government of reason and conscience, and if indulged, are equally pernicious.
I. The command is here laid down (v. 27), Thou shalt not commit adultery; which includes a prohibition of all other acts of uncleanness, and the desire of them: but the Pharisees, in their expositions of this command, made it to extend no further than the act of adultery, suggesting, that if the iniquity was only regarded in the heart, and went no further, God could not hear it, would not regard it (Ps. 66:18), and therefore they thought it enough to be able to say that they were no adulterers, Lu. 18:11.
II. It is here explained in the strictness of it, in three things, which would seem new and strange to those who had been always governed by the tradition of the elders, and took all for oracular that they taught.
1. We are here taught, that there is such a thing as heart-adultery, adulterous thoughts and dispositions, which never proceed to the act of adultery or fornication; and perhaps the defilement which these give to the soul, that is here so clearly asserted, was not only included in the seventh commandment, but was signified and intended in many of those ceremonial pollutions under the law, for which they were to wash their clothes, and bathe their flesh in water. Whosoever looketh on a woman (not only another man’s wife, as some would have it, but any woman), to lust after her, has committed adultery with her in his heart, v. 28. This command forbids not only the acts of fornication and adultery, but, (1.) All appetites to them, all lusting after the forbidden object; this is the beginning of the sin, lust conceiving (James 1:15); it is a bad step towards the sin; and where the lust is dwelt upon and approved, and the wanton desire is rolled under the tongue as a sweet morsel, it is the commission of sin, as far as the heart can do it; there wants nothing but convenient opportunity for the sin itself. Adultera mens est—The mind is debauched. Ovid. Lust is conscience baffled or biassed: biassed, if it say nothing against the sin; baffled, if it prevail not in what it says. (2.) All approaches toward them; feeding the eye with the sight of the forbidden fruit; not only looking for that end, that I may lust; but looking till I do lust, or looking to gratify the lust, where further satisfaction cannot be obtained. The eye is both the inlet and outlet of a great deal of wickedness of this kind, witness Joseph’s mistress (Gen. 39:7), Samson (Jdg. 16:1), David, 2 Sa. 11:2. We read the eyes full of adultery, that cannot cease from sin, 2 Pt. 2:14. What need have we, therefore, with holy Job, to make a covenant with our eyes, to make this bargain with them that they should have the pleasure of beholding the light of the sun and the works of God, provided they would never fasten or dwell upon any thing that might occasion impure imaginations or desires; and under this penalty, that if they did, they must smart for it in penitential tears! Job 31:1. What have we the covering of the eyes for, but to restrain corrupt glances, and to keep out of their defiling impressions? This forbids also the using of any other of our senses to stir up lust. If ensnaring looks are forbidden fruit, much more unclean discourses, and wanton dalliances, the fuel and bellows of this hellish fire. These precepts are hedges about the law of heart-purity, v. 8. And if looking be lust, they who dress and deck, and expose themselves, with design to be looked at and lusted after (like Jezebel, that painted her face and tired her head, and looked out at the window) are no less guilty. Men sin, but devils tempt to sin.
2. That such looks and such dalliances are so very dangerous and destructive to the soul, that it is better to lose the eye and the hand that thus offend then to give way to the sin, and perish eternally in it. This lesson is here taught us, v. 29, 30. Corrupt nature would soon object against the prohibition of heart-adultery, that it is impossible to governed by it; “It is a hard saying, who can bear it? Flesh and blood cannot but look with pleasure upon a beautiful woman; and it is impossible to forbear lusting after and dallying with such an object.” Such pretences as these will scarcely be overcome by reason, and therefore must be argued against with the terrors of the Lord, and so they are here argued against.
(1.) It is a severe operation that is here prescribed for the preventing of these fleshly lusts. If thy right eye offend thee, or cause thee to offend, by wanton glances, or wanton gazings, upon forbidden objects; if thy right hand offend thee, or cause thee to offend, by wanton dalliances; and if it were indeed impossible, as is pretended, to govern the eye and the hand, and they have been so accustomed to these wicked practices, that they will not be withheld from them; if there be no other way to restrain them (which, blessed be God, through his grace, there is), it were better for us to pluck out the eye, and cut off the hand, though the right eye, and right hand, the more honourable and useful, than to indulge them in sin to the ruin of the soul. And if this must be submitted to, at the thought of which nature startles, much more must we resolve to keep under the body, and to bring it into subjection; to live a life of mortification and self-denial; to keep a constant watch over our own hearts, and to suppress the first rising of lust and corruption there; to avoid the occasions of sin, to resist the beginnings of it, and to decline the company of those who will be a snare to us, though ever so pleasing; to keep out of harm’s way, and abridge ourselves in the use of lawful things, when we find them temptations to us; and to seek unto God for his grace, and depend upon that grace daily, and so to walk in the Spirit, as that we may not fulfil the lusts of the flesh; and this will be as effectual as cutting off a right hand or pulling out a right eye; and perhaps as much against the grain to flesh and blood; it is the destruction of the old man.
(2.) It is a startling argument that is made use of to enforce this prescription (v. 29), and it is repeated in the same words (v. 30), because we are loth to hear such rough things; Isa. 30:10. It is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, though it be an eye or a hand, which can be worse spared, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. Note, [1.] It is not unbecoming a minister of the gospel to preach of hell and damnation; nay, he must do it, for Christ himself did it; and we are unfaithful to our trust, if we give not warning of the wrath to come. [2.] There are some sins from which we need to be saved with fear, particularly fleshly lusts, which are such natural brute beasts as cannot be checked, but by being frightened; cannot be kept from a forbidden tree, but by cherubim, with a flaming sword. [3.] When we are tempted to think it hard to deny ourselves, and to crucify fleshly lusts, we ought to consider how much harder it will be to lie for ever in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone; those do not know or do not believe what hell is, that will rather venture their eternal ruin in those flames, than deny themselves the gratification of a base and brutish lust. [4.] In hell there will be torments for the body; the whole body will be cast into hell, and there will be torment in every part of it; so that if we have a care of our own bodies, we shall possess them in sanctification and honour, and not in the lusts of uncleanness. [5.] Even those duties that are most unpleasant to flesh and blood, are profitable for us; and our Master requires nothing from us but what he knows to be for our advantage.
3. That men’s divorcing of their wives upon dislike, or for any other cause except adultery, however tolerated and practised among the Jews, was a violation of the seventh commandment, as it opened a door to adultery, v. 31, 32. Here observe,
(1.) How the matter now stood with reference to divorce. It hath been said (he does not say as before, It hath been said by them of old time, because this was not a precept, as those were, though the Pharisees were willing so to understand it, ch. 19:7, but only a permission), “Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a bill of divorce; let him not think to do it by word of mouth, when he is in a passion; but let him do it deliberately, by a legal instrument in writing, attested by witnesses; if he will dissolve the matrimonial bond, let him do it solemnly.” Thus the law had prevented rash and hasty divorces; and perhaps at first, when writing was not so common among the Jews, that made divorces rare things; but in process of time it became very common, and this direction of how to do it, when there was just cause for it, was construed into a permission of it for any cause, ch. 19:3.
(2.) How this matter was rectified and amended by our Saviour. He reduced the ordinance of marriage to its primitive institution: They two shall be one flesh, not to be easily separated, and therefore divorce is not to be allowed, except in case of adultery, which breaks the marriage covenant; but he that puts away his wife upon any other pretence, causeth her to commit adultery, and him also that shall marry her when she is thus divorced. Note, Those who lead others into temptation to sin, or leave them in it, or expose them to it, make themselves guilty of their sin, and will be accountable for it. This is one way of being partaker with adulterers Ps. 50:18.[3]
Verses 33–37
We have here an exposition of the third commandment, which we are the more concerned right to understand, because it is particularly said, that God will not hold him guiltless, however he may hold himself, who breaks this commandment, by taking the name of the Lord in vain. Now as to this command,
I. It is agreed on all hands that it forbids perjury, forswearing, and the violation of oaths and vows, v. 33. This was said to them of old time, and is the true intent and meaning of the third commandment. Thou shalt not use, or take up, the name of God (as we do by an oath) in vain, or unto vanity, or a lie. He hath not lift up his soul unto vanity, is expounded in the next words, nor sworn deceitfully, Ps. 24:4. Perjury is a sin condemned by the light of nature, as a complication of impiety toward God and injustice toward man, and as rendering a man highly obnoxious to the divine wrath, which was always judged to follow so infallibly upon that sin, that the forms of swearing were commonly turned into execrations or imprecations; as that, God do so to me, and more also; and with us, So help me God; wishing I may never have any help from God, if I swear falsely. Thus, by the consent of nations, have men cursed themselves, not doubting but that God would curse them, if they lied against the truth then, when they solemnly called God to witness to it.
It is added, from some other scriptures, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths (Num. 30:2); which may be meant, either, 1. Of those promises to which God is a party, vows made to God; these must be punctually paid (Eccl. 5:4, 5): or, 2. Of those promises made to our brethren, to which God was a Witness, he being appealed to concerning our sincerity; these must be performed to the Lord, with an eye to him, and for his sake: for to him, by ratifying the promises with an oath, we have made ourselves debtors; and if we break a promise so ratified, we have not lied unto men only, but unto God.
II. It is here added, that the commandment does not only forbid false swearing, but all rash, unnecessary swearing: Swear not at all, v. 34; Compare Jam. 5:12. Not that all swearing is sinful; so far from that, if rightly done, it is a part of religious worship, and we in it give unto God the glory due to his name. See Deu. 6:13; 10:20; Isa. 45:23; Jer. 4:2. We find Paul confirming what he said by such solemnities (2 Co. 1:23), when there was a necessity for it. In swearing, we pawn the truth of something known, to confirm the truth of something doubtful or unknown; we appeal to a greater knowledge, to a higher court, and imprecate the vengeance of a righteous Judge, if we swear deceitfully.
Now the mind of Christ in this matter is,
1. That we must not swear at all, but when we are duly called to it, and justice or charity to our brother, or respect to the commonwealth, make it necessary for the end of strife (Heb. 6:16), of which necessity the civil magistrate is ordinarily to be the judge. We may be sworn, but we must now swear; we may be adjured, and so obliged to it, but we must not thrust ourselves upon it for our own worldly advantage.
2. That we must not swear lightly and irreverently, in common discourse: it is a very great sin to make a ludicrous appeal to the glorious Majesty of heaven, which, being a sacred thing, ought always to be very serious: it is a gross profanation of God’s holy name, and of one of the holy things which the children of Israel sanctify to the Lord: it is a sin that has no cloak, no excuse for it, and therefore a sign of a graceless heart, in which enmity to God reigns: Thine enemies take thy name in vain.
3. That we must in a special manner avoid promissory oaths, of which Christ more particularly speaks here, for they are oaths that are to be performed. The influence of an affirmative oath immediately ceases, when we have faithfully discovered the truth, and the whole truth; but a promissory oath binds so long, and may be so many ways broken, by the surprise as well as strength of a temptation, that it is not to be used but upon great necessity: the frequent requiring and using of oaths, is a reflection upon Christians, who should be of such acknowledged fidelity, as that their sober words should be as sacred as their solemn oaths.
4. That we must not swear by any other creature. It should seem there were some, who, in civility (as they thought) to the name of God, would not make use of that in swearing, but would swear by heaven or earth, etc. This Christ forbids here (v. 34) and shows that there is nothing we can swear by, but it is some way or other related to God, who is the Fountain of all beings, and therefore that it is as dangerous to swear by them, as it is to swear by God himself: it is the verity of the creature that is laid at stake; now that cannot be an instrument of testimony, but as it has regard to God, who is the summum verum—the chief Truth. As for instance,
(1.) Swear not by the heaven; “As sure as there is a heaven, this is true;” for it is God’s throne, where he resides, and in a particular manner manifests his glory, as a Prince upon his throne: this being the inseparable dignity of the upper world, you cannot swear by heaven, but you swear by God himself.
(2.) Nor by the earth, for it is his footstool. He governs the motions of this lower world; as he rules in heaven, so he rules over the earth; and though under his feet, yet it is also under his eye and care, and stands in relation to him as his, Ps. 24:1. The earth is the Lord’s; so that in swearing by it, you swear by its Owner.
(3.) Neither by Jerusalem, a place for which the Jews had such a veneration, that they could not speak of any thing more sacred to swear by; but beside the common reference Jerusalem has to God, as part of the earth, it is in special relation to him, for it is the city of the great King (Ps. 48:2), the city of God (Ps. 46:4), he is therefore interested in it, and in every oath taken by it.
(4.) “Neither shalt thou swear by the head; though it be near thee, and an essential part of thee, yet it is more God’s than thine; for he made it, and formed all the springs and powers of it; whereas thou thyself canst not, from any natural intrinsic influence, change the colour of one hair, so as to make it white or black; so that thou canst not swear by thy head, but thou swearest by him who is the Life of thy head, and the Lifter up of it.” Ps. 3:3.
5. That therefore in all our communications we must content ourselves with, Yea, yea, and nay, nay, v. 37. In ordinary discourse, if we affirm a thing, let us only say, Yea, it is so; and, if need be, to evidence our assurance of a thing, we may double it, and say, Yea, yea, indeed it is so: Verily, verily, was our Saviour’s yea, yea. So if we deny a thing, let is suffice to say, No; or if it be requisite, to repeat the denial, and say, No, no; and if our fidelity be known, that will suffice to gain us credit; and if it be questioned, to back what we say with swearing and cursing, is but to render it more suspicious. They who can swallow a profane oath, will not strain at a lie. It is a pity that this, which Christ puts in the mouths of all his disciples, should be fastened, as a name of reproach, upon a sect faulty enough other ways, when (as Dr. Hammond says) we are not forbidden any more than yea and nay, but are in a manner directed to the use of that.
The reason is observable; For whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil, though it do not amount to the iniquity of an oath. It comes ek tou Diabolou; so an ancient copy has it: it comes from the Devil, the evil one; it comes from the corruption of men’s nature, from passion and vehemence; from a reigning vanity in the mind, and a contempt of sacred things: it comes from that deceitfulness which is in men, All men are liars; therefore men use these protestations, because they are distrustful one of another, and think they cannot be believed without them. Note, Christians should, for the credit of their religion, avoid not only that which is in itself evil, but that which cometh of evil, and has the appearance of it. That may be suspected as a bad thing, which comes from a bad cause. An oath is physic, which supposes a disease.
Verses 38–42
In these verses the law of retaliation is expounded, and in a manner repealed. Observe,
I. What the Old-Testament permission was, in case of injury; and here the expression is only, Ye have heard that is has been said; not, as before, concerning the commands of the decalogue, that it has been said by, or to, them of old time. It was a command, that every one should of necessity require such satisfaction; but they might lawfully insist upon it, if they pleased; an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. This we find, Ex. 21:24; Lev. 24:20; Deu. 19:21; in all which places it is appointed to be done by the magistrate, who bears not the sword in vain, but is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath, Rom. 13:4. It was a direction to the judges of the Jewish nation what punishment to inflict in case of maims, for terror to such as would do mischief on the one hand, and for a restraint to such as have mischief done to them on the other hand, that they may not insist on a greater punishment than is proper: it is not a life for an eye, nor a limb for a tooth, but observe a proportion; and it is intimated (Num. 35:31), that the forfeiture in this case might be redeemed with money; for when it is provided that no ransom shall be taken for the life of a murderer, it is supposed that for maims a pecuniary satisfaction was allowed.
But some of the Jewish teachers, who were not the most compassionate men in the world, insisted upon it as necessary that such revenge should be taken, even by private persons themselves, and that there was no room left for remission, or the acceptance of satisfaction. Even now, when they were under the government of the Roman magistrates, and consequently the judicial law fell to the ground of course, yet they were still zealous for any thing that looked harsh and severe.
Now, so far this is in force with us, as a direction to magistrates, to use the sword of justice according to the good and wholesome laws of the land, for the terror of evil-doers, and the vindication of the oppressed. That judge neither feared God nor regarded man, who would not avenge the poor widow of her adversary, Lu. 18:2, 3. And it is in force as a rule to lawgivers, to provide accordingly, and wisely to apportion punishments to crimes, for the restraint of rapine and violence, and the protection of innocency.
II. What the New-Testament precept is, as to the complainant himself, his duty is, to forgive the injury as done to himself, and no further to insist upon the punishment of it than is necessary to the public good: and this precept is consonant to the meekness of Christ, and the gentleness of his yoke.
Two things Christ teaches us here:
1. We must not be revengeful (v. 39); I say unto you, that ye resist not evil;—the evil person that is injurious to you. The resisting of any ill attempt upon us, is here as generally and expressly forbidden, as the resisting of the higher powers is (Rom. 13:2); and yet this does not repeal the law of self-preservation, and the care we are to take of our families; we may avoid evil, and may resist it, so far as is necessary to our own security; but we must not render evil for evil, must not bear a grudge, nor avenge ourselves, nor study to be even with those that have treated us unkindly, but we must go beyond them by forgiving them, Prov. 20:22;24:29; 25:21, 22; Rom. 12:17. The law of retaliation must be made consistent with the law of love: nor, if any have injured us, is our recompence in our own hands, but in the hands of God, to whose wrath we must give place; and sometimes in the hands of his viceregents, where it is necessary for the preservation of the public peace; but it will not justify us in hurting our brother to say that he began, for it is the second blow that makes the quarrel; and when we were injured, we had an opportunity not to justify our injuring him, but to show ourselves the true disciples of Christ, by forgiving him.
Three things our Saviour specifies, to show that Christians must patiently yield to those who bear hard upon them, rather than contend; and these include others.
(1.) A blow on the cheek, which is an injury to me in my body; “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek,” which is not only a hurt, but an affront and indignity (2 Co. 11:20), if a man in anger or scorn thus abuse thee, “turn to him the other cheek;” that is, “instead of avenging that injury, prepare for another, and bear it patiently: give not the rude man as good as he brings; do not challenge him, nor enter an action against him; if it be necessary to the public peace that he be bound to his good behaviour, leave that to the magistrate; but for thine own part, it will ordinarily be the wisest course to pass it by, and take no further notice of it: there are no bones broken, no great harm done, forgive it and forget it; and if proud fools think the worse of thee, and laugh at thee for it, all wise men will value and honour thee for it, as a follower of the blessed Jesus, who, though he was the Judge of Israel, did not smite those who smote him on the cheek,” Micah 5:1. Though this may perhaps, with some base spirits, expose us to the like affront another time, and so it is, in effect, to turn the other cheek, yet let not that disturb us, but let us trust God and his providence to protect us in the way of our duty. Perhaps, the forgiving of one injury may prevent another, when the avenging of it would but draw on another; some will be overcome by submission, who by resistance would but be the more exasperated, Prov. 25:22. However, our recompence is in Christ’s hands, who will reward us with eternal glory for the shame we thus patiently endure; and though it be not directly inflicted, it if be quietly borne for conscience’ sake, and in conformity to Christ’s example, it shall be put upon the score of suffering for Christ.
(2.) The loss of a coat, which is a wrong to me in my estate (v. 40); If any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat. It is a hard case. Note, It is common for legal processes to be made use of for the doing of greatest injuries. Though judges be just and circumspect, yet it is possible for bad men who make no conscience of oaths and forgeries, by course of law to force off the coat from a man’s back. Marvel not at the matter (Eccl. 5:8), but, in such a case, rather than go to the law by way of revenge, rather than exhibit a cross bill, or stand out to the utmost, in defence of that which is thy undoubted right, let him even take thy cloak also. If the matter be small, which we may lose without any considerable damage to our families, it is good to submit to it for peace’ sake. “It will not cost thee so much to buy another cloak, as it will cost thee by course of law to recover that; and therefore unless thou canst get it again by fair means, it is better to let him take it.”
(3.) The going a mile by constraint, which is a wrong to me in my liberty (v. 41); “Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, to run an errand for him, or to wait upon him, grudge not at it, but go with him two miles rather than fall out with him:” say not, “I would do it, if I were not compelled to it, but I hate to be forced;” rather say, “Therefore I will do it, for otherwise there will be a quarrel;” and it is better to serve him, than to serve thy own lusts of pride and revenge. Some give this sense of it: The Jews taught that the disciples of the wise, and the students of the law, were not to be pressed, as others might, by the king’s officers, to travel upon the public service; but Christ will not have his disciples to insist upon this privilege, but to comply rather than offend the government. The sum of all is, that Christians must not be litigious; small injuries must be submitted to, and no notice taken of them; and if the injury be such as requires us to seek reparation, it must be for a good end, and without thought of revenge: though we must not invite injuries, yet we must meet them cheerfully in the way of duty, and make the best of them. If any say, Flesh and blood cannot pass by such an affront, let them remember, that flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
2. We must be charitable and beneficent (v. 42); must not only do no hurt to our neighbours, but labour to do them all the good we can. (1.) We must be ready to give; “Give to him that asketh thee. If thou has an ability, look upon the request of the poor as giving thee an opportunity for the duty of almsgiving.” When a real object of charity presents itself, we should give at the first word: Give a portion to seven, and also to eight; yet the affairs of our charity must be guided with discretion (Ps. 112:5), lest we give that to the idle and unworthy, which should be given to those that are necessitous, and deserve well. What God says to us, we should be ready to say to our poor brethren, Ask, and it shall be given you. (2.) We must be ready to lend. This is sometimes as great a piece of charity as giving; as it not only relieves the present exigency, but obliges the borrower to providence, industry, and honesty; and therefore, “From him that would borrow of thee something to live on, or something to trade on, turn not thou away: shun not those that thou knowest have such a request to make of thee, nor contrive excuses to shake them off.” Be easy of access to him that would borrow: though he be bashful, and have not confidence to make known his case and beg the favour, yet thou knowest both his need and his desire, and therefore offer him the kindness. Exorabor antequam rogor; honestis precibus occuram—I will be prevailed on before I am entreated; I will anticipate the becoming petition. Seneca, De Vitâ Beatâ. It becomes us to be thus forward in acts of kindness, for before we call, God hears us, and prevents us with the blessings of his goodness.
Verses 43–48
We have here, lastly, an exposition of that great fundamental law of the second table, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, which was the fulfilling of the law.
I. See here how this law was corrupted by the comments of the Jewish teachers, v. 43. God said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour; and by neighbour they understood those only of their own country, nation, and religion; and those only that they were pleased to look upon as their friends: yet this was not the worst; from this command, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, they were willing to infer what God never designed; Thou shalt hate thine enemy; and they looked upon whom they pleased as their enemies, thus making void the great command of God by their traditions, though there were express laws to the contrary, Ex. 23:4, 5; Deu. 23:7. Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite, nor an Egyptian, though these nations had been as much enemies to Israel as any whatsoever. It was true, God appointed them to destroy the seven devoted nations of Canaan, and not to make leagues with them; but there was a particular reason for it—to make room for Israel, and that they might not be snares to them; but it was very ill-natured from hence to infer, that they must hate all their enemies; yet the moral philosophy of the heathen then allowed this. It is Cicero’s rule, Nemini nocere nisi prius lacessitum injuriâ—To injure no one, unless previously injured. De Offic. See how willing corrupt passions are to fetch countenance from the word of God, and to take occasion by the commandment to justify themselves.
II. See how it is cleared by the command of the Lord Jesus, who teaches us another lesson: “But I say unto you, I, who come to be the great Peace-Maker, the general Reconciler, who loved you when you were strangers and enemies, I say, Love your enemies,” v. 44. Though men are ever so bad themselves, and carry it ever so basely towards us, yet that does not discharge us from the great debt we owe them, of love to our kind, love to our kin. We cannot but find ourselves very prone to wish the hurt, or at least very coldly to desire the good, of those that hate us, and have been abusive to us; but that which is at the bottom hereof is a root of bitterness, which must be plucked up, and a remnant of corrupt nature which grace must conquer. Note, it is the great duty of Christians to love their enemies; we cannot have complacency in one that is openly wicked and profane, nor put a confidence in one that we know to be deceitful; nor are we to love all alike; but we must pay respect to the human nature, and so far honour all men: we must take notice, with pleasure, of that even in our enemies which is amiable and commendable; ingenuousness, good temper, learning, and moral virtue, kindness to others, profession of religion, etc., and love that, though they are our enemies. We must have a compassion for them, and a good will toward them. We are here told,
1. That we must speak well of them: Bless them that curse you. When we speak to them, we must answer their revilings with courteous and friendly words, and not render railing for railing; behind their backs we must commend that in them which is commendable, and when we have said all the good we can of them, not be forward to say any thing more. See 1 Pt. 3:9. They, in whose tongues is the law of kindness, can give good words to those who give bad words to them.
2. That we must do well to them: “Do good to them that hate you, and that will be a better proof of love than good words. Be ready to do them all the real kindness that you can, and glad of an opportunity to do it, in their bodies, estates, names, families; and especially to do good to their souls.” It was said of Archbishop Cranmer, that the way to make him a friend was to do him an ill turn; so many did he serve who had disobliged him.
3. We must pray for them: Pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you. Note, (1.) It is no new thing for the most excellent saints to be hated, and cursed, and persecuted, and despitefully used, by wicked people; Christ himself was so treated. (2.) That when at any time we meet with such usage, we have an opportunity of showing our conformity both to the precept and to the example of Christ, by praying for them who thus abuse us. If we cannot otherwise testify our love to them, yet this way we may without ostentation, and it is such a way as surely we durst not dissemble in. We must pray that God will forgive them, that they may never fare the worse for any thing they have done against us, and that he would make them to be at peace with us; and this is one way of making them so. Plutarch, in his Laconic Apophthegms, has this of Aristo; when one commended Cleomenes’s saying, who, being asked what a good king should do, replied, Tous men philous euergetein, tous de echthrous kakōs poiein—Good turns to his friends, and evil to his enemies; he said, How much better is it tous men philous euergetein, tous de echthrous philous poiein—to do good to our friends, and make friends of our enemies. This is heaping coals of fire on their heads.
Two reasons are here given to enforce this command (which sounds so harsh) of loving our enemies. We must do it,
[1.] That we may be like God our Father; “that ye may be, may approve yourselves to be, the children of your Father which is in heaven.” Can we write a better copy? It is a copy in which love to the worst of enemies is reconciled to, and consistent with, infinite purity and holiness. God maketh his sun to rise, and sendeth rain, on the just and the unjust, v. 45. Note, First, Sunshine and rain are great blessings to the world, and they come from God. It is his sun that shines, and the rain is sent by him. They do not come of course, or by chance, but from God. Secondly, Common mercies must be valued as instances and proofs of the goodness of God, who in them shows himself a bountiful Benefactor to the world of mankind, who would be very miserable without these favours, and are utterly unworthy of the least of them. Thirdly, These gifts of common providence are dispensed indifferently to good and evil, just and unjust; so that we cannot know love and hatred by what is before us, but by what is within us; not by the shining of the sun on our heads, but by the rising of the Sun of Righteousness in our hearts. Fourthly, The worst of men partake of the comforts of this life in common with others, though they abuse them, and fight against God with his own weapons; which is an amazing instance of God’s patience and bounty. It was but once that God forbade his sun to shine on the Egyptians, when the Israelites had light in their dwellings; God could make such a distinction every day. Fifthly, The gifts of God’s bounty to wicked men that are in rebellion against him, teach us to do good to those that hate us; especially considering, that though there is in us a carnal mind which is enmity to God, yet we share in his bounty. Sixthly, Those only will be accepted as the children of God, who study to resemble him, particularly in his goodness.
[2.] That we may herein do more than others, v. 46, 47. First, Publicans love their friends. Nature inclines them to it; interest directs them to it. To do good to them who do good to us, is a common piece of humanity, which even those whom the Jews hated and despised could give as good proofs as of the best of them. The publicans were men of no good fame, yet they were grateful to such as had helped them to their places, and courteous to those they had a dependence upon; and shall we be no better than they? In doing this we serve ourselves and consult our own advantage; and what reward can we expect for that, unless a regard to God, and a sense of duty, carrying us further than our natural inclination and worldly interest? Secondly, We must therefore love our enemies, that we may exceed them. If we must go beyond scribes and Pharisees, much more beyond publicans. Note, Christianity is something more than humanity. It is a serious question, and which we should frequently put to ourselves, “What do we more than others? What excelling thing do we do? We know more than others; we talk more of the things of God than others; we profess, and have promised, more than others; God has done more for us, and therefore justly expects more from us than from others; the glory of God is more concerned in us than in others; but what do we more than others? Wherein do we live above the rate of the children of this world? Are we not carnal, and do we not walk as men, below the character of Christians? In this especially we must do more than others, that while every one will render good for good, we must render good for evil; and this will speak a nobler principle, and is consonant to a higher rule, than the most of men act by. Others salute their brethren, they embrace those of their own party, and way, and opinion; but we must not so confine our respect, but love our enemies, otherwise what reward have we? We cannot expect the reward of Christians, if we rise no higher than the virtue of publicans.” Note, Those who promise themselves a reward above others must study to do more than others.
Lastly, Our Saviour concludes this subject with this exhortation (v. 48), Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. Which may be understood, 1. In general, including all those things wherein we must be followers of God as dear children. Note, It is the duty of Christians to desire, and aim at, and press toward a perfection in grace and holiness, Phil. 3:12–14. And therein we must study to conform ourselves to the example of our heavenly Father, 1 Pt. 1:15, 16. Or, 2. In this particular before mentioned, of doing good to our enemies; see Lu. 6:36. It is God’s perfection to forgive injuries and to entertain strangers, and to do good to the evil and unthankful, and it will be ours to be like him. We that owe so much, that owe our all, to the divine bounty, ought to copy it out as well as we can.--Henry, M [2]
The Sermon on the Mount: Divorce
31 “And it was said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’g 32 But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for a matter of sexual immorality, causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
The Sermon on the Mount: Taking Oaths
33 “Again you have heard that it was said to the⌊people of old⌋,h ‘Do not swear falsely,i but fulfill your oaths to the Lord.’j 34 But I say to you, do not swear at all, either by heaven, because it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, because it is the footstool of his feet, or by Jerusalem, because it is the city of the great king. 36 And do not swear by your head, because you are not able to make one hair white or black. 37 But let your statement be ‘Yes, yes; no, no,’ and anything beyond these is from the evil one.k
The Sermon on the Mount: Retaliation
38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’l 39 But I say to you, do not resist the evildoer, but whoever strikes you on the right cheek,m turn the other to him also. 40 And the one who wants to go to court with you and take your tunic, ⌊let him have⌋n your outer garment also. 41 And whoever forces you to go one mile,o go with him two. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
The Sermon on the Mount: Love for Enemies
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor’p and ‘Hate your enemy.’q 44 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, because he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not the tax collectors also do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing that is remarkable? Do not the Gentiles also do the same? 48 Therefore you be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. The Lexham English Bible [3]
These two verses can hardly be thought to represent the sum total of our Lord’s instruction on the mountain about divorce. They seem to give an abbreviated summary of his teaching, of which indeed Matthew records a fuller version in chapter 19. We shall be wise to take the two passages together and to interpret the shorter in the light of the longer. This is how his later debate with the Pharisees went:
19:3And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, ‘Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?’ 4He answered, ‘Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, 5and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? 6So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.’ 7They said to him, ‘Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?’ 8He said to them, ‘For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery.’
We know that a current controversy about divorce was being conducted between the rival rabbinic schools of Hillel and Shammai. Rabbi Shammai took a rigorist line, and taught from Deuteronomy 24:1 that the sole ground for divorce was some grave matrimonial offence, something evidently ‘unseemly’ or ‘indecent’. Rabbi Hillel, on the other hand, held a very lax view. If we can trust the Jewish historian Josephus, this was the common attitude, for he applied the Mosaic provision to a man who ‘desires to be divorced from his wife for any cause whatsoever’.1 Similarly Hillel, arguing that the ground for divorce was something ‘unseemly’, interpreted this term in the widest possible way to include a wife’s most trivial offences. If she proved to be an incompetent cook and burnt her husband’s food, or if he lost interest in her because of her plain looks and because he became enamoured of some other more beautiful woman, these things were ‘unseemly’ and justified him in divorcing her. The Pharisees seem to have been attracted by Rabbi Hillel’s laxity, which will explain the form their question took: ‘Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?’2 In other words, they wanted to know whose side Jesus was on in the contemporary debate, and whether he belonged to the school of rigorism or of laxity.
Our Lord’s reply to their question was in three parts. It is revealing to consider these separately and in the order in which he spoke them. In each he dissented from the Pharisees.
a. The Pharisees were preoccupied with the grounds for divorce; Jesus with the institution of marriage
Their question was so framed as to draw Jesus on what he considered to be legitimate grounds for divorce. For what cause might a man divorce his wife? For one cause or several causes or any cause?
Jesus’ reply was not a reply. He declined to answer their question. Instead, he asked a counter-question about their reading of Scripture. He referred them back to Genesis, both to the creation of mankind as male and female (chapter 1) and to the institution of marriage (chapter 2) by which a man leaves his parents and cleaves to his wife and the two become one. This biblical definition implies that marriage is both exclusive (‘a man … his wife’) and permanent (‘cleave’ or ‘be joined’ to his wife). It is these two aspects of marriage which Jesus selects for emphasis in his comments which follow (6). First, ‘So they are no longer two but one flesh,’ and secondly, ‘What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.’ Thus marriage, according to our Lord’s exposition of its origins, is a divine institution by which God makes permanently one two people who decisively and publicly leave their parents in order to form a new unit of society and then ‘become one flesh’.
b. The Pharisees called Moses’ provision for divorce a command; Jesus called it a concession to the hardness of human hearts
The Pharisees responded to Jesus’ exposition of the institution of marriage and its permanence by asking: ‘Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?’1 Jesus’ quotation of scribal teaching in the Sermon on the Mount was similar: ‘It was also said, “Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce”.’2
Both these were garbled versions of the Mosaic provision, typical of the Pharisees’ disregard for what Scripture really said and implied. They laid their emphasis on the giving of a divorce certificate, as if this were the most important part of the Mosaic provision, and then referred to both the certificate and the divorce as ‘commands’ of Moses.
A careful reading of Deuteronomy 24:1–4 reveals something quite different. To begin with, the whole paragraph hinges on a long series of conditional clauses. This may be brought out in the following paraphrase: ‘After a man has married a wife, if he finds some indecency in her, and if he gives her a divorce-certificate and divorces her and she leaves, and if she marries again, and if her second husband gives her a divorce-certificate and divorces her, or if her second husband dies, then her first husband who divorced her is forbidden to remarry her …’ The thrust of the passage is to prohibit the remarriage of one’s own divorced partner. The reason for this regulation is obscure. It appears to be that if her ‘indecency’ had so ‘defiled’ her as to be a sufficient ground for divorce, it was also a sufficient reason for not taking her back. It may also have been intended to warn a husband against a hasty decision, because once made it could not be rescinded, and/or to protect the wife against exploitation. For our purposes here it is enough to observe that this prohibition is the only command in the whole passage; there is certainly no command to a husband to divorce his wife, nor even any encouragement to do so. All there is, instead, is a reference to certain necessary procedures if a divorce takes place; and therefore at the very most a reluctant permission is implied and a current practice is tolerated.
How, then, did Jesus respond to the Pharisees’ question about the regulation of Moses? He attributed it to the hardness of people’s hearts. In so doing he did not deny that the regulation was from God. He implied, however, that it was not a divine instruction, but only a divine concession to human weakness. It was for this reason that ‘Moses allowed you to divorce …’, he said (8). But then he immediately referred again to the original purpose of God, saying: ‘But from the beginning it was not so.’ Thus even the divine concession was in principle inconsistent with the divine institution.
c. The Pharisees regarded divorce lightly; Jesus took it so seriously that, with only one exception, he called all remarriage after divorce adultery
This was the conclusion of his debate with the Pharisees, and this is what is recorded in the Sermon on the Mount. It may be helpful to see his two statements side by side.
5:32: But I say to you that every one who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
19:9: And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery.
It seems to be assumed that a divorce would lead to the remarriage of the divorced parties. Only this assumption can explain the statement that a man divorcing his wife without cause ‘makes her an adulteress’. His action could have that result only if she married again. Besides, a separation without a divorce—in legal terms a mensa et toro (from table and bed) but not a vinculo (from the marriage bond)—is a modern arrangement unknown in the ancient world.
Since God instituted marriage as an exclusive and permanent union, a union which he makes and man must not break, Jesus draws the inevitable deduction that to divorce one’s partner and marry another, or to marry a divorced person, is to enter a forbidden, adulterous relationship. For the person who may have secured a divorce in the eyes of human law is still in the eyes of God married to his or her first partner.
Only one exception is made to this principle: except on the ground of unchastity (5:32) or except for unchastity (19:9). The so-called ‘exceptive clause’ is a well-known crux. Commentators are not agreed about either its authenticity or its meaning.
First, its authenticity. I would wish to argue, as do virtually all conservative commentators, that we must accept this clause not only as a genuine part of Matthew’s Gospel (for no MSS omit it) but also as an authentic word of Jesus. The reason why many have rejected it, regarding it as an interpolation by Matthew, is that it is absent from the parallel passages in the Gospels of Mark and Luke. Yet Plummer was right to dub ‘a violent hypothesis’1 this easy dismissal of the exceptive clause as an editorial gloss. It seems far more likely that its absence from Mark and Luke is due not to their ignorance of it but to their acceptance of it as something taken for granted. After all, under the Mosaic law adultery was punishable by death (although the death penalty for this offence seems to have fallen into disuse by the time of Jesus);2 So nobody would have questioned that marital unfaithfulness was a just ground for divorce. Even the rival Rabbis Shammai and Hillel were agreed about this. Their dispute was how much more widely than this the expression ‘some indecency’ in Deuteronomy 24:1 could be interpreted.
The second question about the exceptive clause concerns what is meant by unchastity. The Greek word is porneia. It is normally translated ‘fornication’, denoting the immorality of the unmarried, and is often distinguished from moicheia (‘adultery’), the immorality of the married. For this reason some have argued that the exceptive clause permits divorce if some pre-marital sexual sin is later discovered. Some think that the ‘indecency’ of Deuteronomy 24:1 had the same meaning. But the Greek word is not precise enough to be limited in this way. Porneia is derived from pornē, a prostitute, without specifying whether she (or her client) is married or unmarried. Further, it is used in the Septuagint for the unfaithfulness of Israel, Yahweh’s bride, as exemplified in Hosea’s wife Gomer.1 It seems, therefore, that we must agree with R. V. G. Tasker’s conclusion that porneia is ‘a comprehensive word, including adultery, fornication and unnatural vice’.2 At the same time we have no liberty to go to the opposite extreme and argue that porneia covers any and every offence which may be said in some vague sense to have a sexual basis. This would be virtually to equate porneia with ‘incompatibility’, and there is no etymological warrant for this. No, porneia means ‘unchastity’, some act of physical sexual immorality.
What, then, did Jesus teach? N. B. Stonehouse offers a good paraphrase of the first part of the antithesis in the Sermon on the Mount: ‘Ye have heard of the appeal of Jewish teachers to Deuteronomy 24:1 in the interest of substantiating a policy which permits husbands freely at their own pleasure to divorce their wives—simply by providing them with a duly attested document of the transaction.’3 ‘But I say to you,’ Jesus continued, that such irresponsible behaviour on the part of a husband will lead him and his wife and their second partners into unions which are not marriage but adultery. To this general principle there is one exception. The only situation in which divorce and remarriage are possible without breaking the seventh commandment is when it has already been broken by some serious sexual sin. In this case, and in this case only, Jesus seems to have taught that divorce was permissible, or at least that it could be obtained without the innocent party contracting the further stigma of adultery. The modern tendency of Western countries to frame legislation for divorce on the basis rather of the ‘irretrievable breakdown’ or ‘death’ of a marriage than of a ‘matrimonial offence’ may make for better and juster law; it cannot be said to be compatible with the teaching of Jesus.
Nevertheless, the matter cannot be left there. For this reluctant permission of Jesus must still be seen for what it is, namely a continued accommodation to the hardness of human hearts. In addition, it must always be read both in its immediate context (Christ’s emphatic endorsement of the permanence of marriage in God’s purpose) and also in the wider context of the Sermon on the Mount and of the whole Bible which proclaim a gospel of reconciliation. Is it not of great significance that the Divine Lover was willing to woo back even his adulterous wife, Israel?1 So one must never begin a discussion on this subject by enquiring about the legitimacy of divorce. To be preoccupied with the grounds for divorce is to be guilty of the very pharisaism which Jesus condemned. His whole emphasis in debating with the rabbis was positive, namely on God’s original institution of marriage as an exclusive and permanent relationship, on God’s ‘yoking’ of two people into a union which man must not break, and (one might add) on his call to his followers to love and forgive one another, and to be peacemakers in every situation of strife and discord. Chrysostom justly linked this passage with the beatitudes and commented in his homily on it: ‘For he that is meek, and a peacemaker, and poor in spirit, and merciful, how shall he cast out his wife? He that is used to reconcile others, how shall he be at variance with her that is his own?’2 From this divine ideal, purpose and call, divorce can be seen only as a tragic declension.
So, speaking personally as a Christian pastor, whenever somebody asks to speak with me about divorce, I have now for some years steadfastly refused to do so. I have made the rule never to speak with anybody about divorce, until I have first spoken with him (or her) about two other subjects, namely marriage and reconciliation. Sometimes a discussion on these topics makes a discussion of the other unnecessary. At the very least, it is only when a person has understood and accepted God’s view of marriage and God’s call to reconciliation that a possible context has been created within which one may regretfully go on to talk about divorce. This principle of pastoral priorities is, I believe, consistent with the teaching of Jesus.1
2. Honesty in speech (33)
If the rabbis tended to be permissive in their attitude to divorce, they were permissive also in their teaching about oaths. It is another example of their devious treatment of Old Testament Scripture, in order to make it more amenable to obedience. We must look first at the Mosaic law, then at the pharisaic distortion and finally at the true implication of the law on which Jesus insisted.
Again you have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’
This is not an accurate quotation of any one law of Moses. At the same time, it is a not inaccurate summary of several Old Testament precepts which require people who make vows to keep them. And the vows in question are, strictly speaking, ‘oaths’ in which the speaker calls upon God to witness his vow and to punish him if he breaks it. Moses often seems to have emphasized the evil of false swearing and the duty of performing to the Lord one’s oaths. Here are a few examples:
‘You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain’ (Ex. 20:7, the third commandment).
‘You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God’ (Lv 19:12).
‘When a man vows a vow to the Lord, … he shall not break his word’ (Nu. 30:2).
‘When you make a vow to the Lord your God, you shall not be slack to pay it’ (Dt. 23:21).
Even a superficial reading of these commandments indicates plainly their intention. They prohibit false swearing or perjury, that is, making a vow and then breaking it.
But the casuistical Pharisees got to work on these awkward prohibitions and tried to restrict them. They shifted people’s attention away from the vow itself and the need to keep it to the formula used in making it. They argued that what the law was really prohibiting was not taking the name of the Lord in vain, but taking the name of the Lord in vain. ‘False swearing’, they concluded, meant profanity (a profane use of the divine name), not perjury (a dishonest pledging of one’s word). So they developed elaborate rules for the taking of vows. They listed which formulae were permissible, and they added that only those formulae which included the divine name made the vow binding. One need not be so particular, they said, about keeping vows in which the divine name had not been used.
Jesus expressed his contempt for this kind of sophistry in one of the ‘woes’ against the Pharisees (‘blind guides’ he called them) which Matthew records later (23:16–22):
Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If any one swears by the temple, it is nothing; but if any one swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ 17You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? 18And you say, ‘If any one swears by the altar, it is nothing; but if any one swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’ 19You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20So he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; 21and he who swears by the temple, swears by it and by him who dwells in it; 22and he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.
Our Lord’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount is similar. The second part of his antithesis, in which he set his teaching over against that of the rabbis, reads as follows:
5:34But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.
He begins by arguing that the question of the formula used in making vows is a total irrelevance, and in particular that the Pharisees’ distinction between formulae which mention God and those which do not is entirely artificial. However hard you try, Jesus said, you cannot avoid some reference to God, for the whole world is God’s world and you cannot eliminate him from any of it. If you vow by ‘heaven’, it is God’s throne; if by ‘earth’ it is his footstool; if by ‘Jerusalem’ it is his city, the city of the great King. If you swear by your head, it is indeed yours in the sense that it is nobody else’s, and yet it is God’s creation and under God’s control. You cannot even change the natural colour of a single hair, black in youth and white in old age.
So if the precise wording of a vow-formula is irrelevant, then a preoccupation with formulae was not the point of the law at all. Indeed, since anybody who makes a vow must keep it (whatever formula of attestation he uses), strictly speaking all formulae are superfluous. For the formula does not add to the solemnity of the vow. A vow is binding irrespective of its accompanying formula. That being so, the real implication of the law is that we must keep our promises and be people of our word. Then vows become unnecessary. Do not swear at all (34), but rather let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ (37). As the apostle James was to put it later: ‘Let your yes be yes and your no be no.’1 And anything more than this, Jesus added, comes from evil, either from the evil of our hearts and its fundamental deceit, or from the evil one whom Jesus described as ‘a liar and the father of lies’.2 If divorce is due to human hard-heartedness, swearing is due to human untruthfulness. Both were permitted by the law; neither was commanded;3 neither should be necessary.
Two questions may arise in our minds at this point. First, if swearing is forbidden, why has God himself used oaths in Scripture? Why, for example, did he say to Abraham: ‘By myself I have sworn … I will indeed bless you …’?4 To this I think we must answer that the purpose of the divine oaths was not to increase his credibility (since ‘God is not man that he should lie’5), but to elicit and confirm our faith. The fault which made God condescend to this human level lay not in any untrustworthiness of his but in our unbelief.
Secondly, if swearing is forbidden, is the prohibition absolute? For example, should Christians, in order to be consistent in their obedience, decline to swear an affidavit for any purpose before a Commissioner of Oaths and to give evidence on oath in a court of law? The Anabaptists took this line in the sixteenth century and most Quakers still do today. While admiring their desire not to compromise, one can still perhaps question whether their interpretation is not excessively literalistic. After all, Jesus himself, Matthew later records, did not refuse to reply when the high priest put him on oath, saying: ‘I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.’ He confessed that he was and that later they would see him enthroned at God’s right hand.1 What Jesus emphasized in his teaching was that honest men do not need to resort to oaths; it was not that they should refuse to take an oath if required by some external authority to do so.
The modern application is not far to seek, for the teaching of Jesus is timeless. Swearing (i.e. oath-taking) is really a pathetic confession of our own dishonesty. Why do we find it necessary to introduce our promises by some tremendous formula, ‘I swear by the archangel Gabriel and all the host of heaven’ or ‘I swear by the Holy Bible’? The only reason is that we know our simple word is not likely to be trusted. So we try to induce people to believe us by adding a solemn oath. Interestingly, the Essenes (a Jewish sect contemporary with Jesus) had high standards in this matter. Josephus wrote of them: ‘They are eminent for fidelity and are the ministers of peace. Whatsoever they say also is firmer than an oath. But swearing is avoided by them, and they esteem it worse than perjury, for they say that he who cannot be believed without (swearing by) God, is already condemned.’2 As A. M. Hunter puts it, ‘Oaths arise because men are so often liars.’3 The same is true of all forms of exaggeration, hyperbole and the use of superlatives. We are not content to say we had an enjoyable time; we have to describe it as ‘fantastic’ or ‘fabulous’ or even ‘fantabulous’ or some other invention. But the more we resort to such expressions, the more we devalue human language and human promises. Christians should say what they mean and mean what they say. Our unadorned word should be enough, ‘yes’ or ‘no’. And when a monosyllable will do, why waste our breath by adding to it?
A Christian’s righteousness: non-retaliation and active love
Matthew 5:38–48
The two final antitheses bring us to the highest point of the Sermon on the Mount, for which it is both most admired and most resented, namely the attitude of total love which Christ calls us to show towards one who is evil (39) and our enemies (44). Nowhere is the challenge of the Sermon greater. Nowhere is the distinctness of the Christian counter-culture more obvious. Nowhere is our need of the power of the Holy Spirit (whose first fruit is love) more compelling.
1. Passive non-retaliation (38–42)
The excerpt from the oral teaching of the rabbis which Jesus quoted comes straight out of the Mosaic law. As we consider it, we need to remember that the law of Moses was a civil as well as a moral code. For example, Exodus 20 contains the ten commandments (the distillation of the moral law). Exodus 21 to 23, on the other hand, contain a series of ‘ordinances’ in which the standards of the ten commandments are applied to the young nation’s life. A wide variety of ‘case-laws’ is given, with a particular emphasis on damage to person and property. It is in the course of this legislation that these words occur: ‘When men strive together … if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.’1
The context makes it clear beyond question that this was an instruction to the judges of Israel. Indeed, they are mentioned in Deuteronomy 19:17,18. It expressed the lex talionis, the principle of an exact retribution, whose purpose was both to lay the foundation of justice, specifying the punishment which a wrongdoer deserved, and to limit the compensation of his victim to an exact equivalent and no more. It thus had the double effect of defining justice and restraining revenge. It also prohibited the taking of the law into one’s own hands by the ghastly vengeance of the family feud.
Similarly, in Islamic law the lex talionis specified the maximum punishment allowable. It was administered literally (and still is in e.g. Saudi Arabia) unless the wounded person waived the penalty or his heirs (in a case of murder) demanded blood-money instead.2
It is almost certain that by the time of Jesus literal retaliation for damage had been replaced in Jewish legal practice by money penalties or ‘damages’. Indeed there is evidence of this much earlier. The verses immediately following the lex talionis in Exodus enact that if a man strikes his slave so as to destroy his eye or knock out his tooth, instead of losing his own eye or tooth (which he would deserve but which would be no compensation to the disabled slave), he must lose his slave: ‘He shall let the slave go free for the eye’s (or tooth’s) sake.’3 We may be quite sure that in other cases too this penalty was not physically exacted, except in the case of murder (‘life for life’); it was commuted to a payment of damages.
But the scribes and Pharisees evidently extended this principle of just retribution from the law courts (where it belongs) to the realm of personal relationships (where it does not belong). They tried to use it to justify personal revenge, although the law explicitly forbade this: ‘You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people.’4 Thus, ‘This excellent, if stern, principle of judicial retribution was being utilized as an excuse for the very thing it was instituted to abolish, namely personal revenge.’1
In his reply Jesus did not contradict the principle of retribution, for it is a true and just principle. Later in the Sermon he himself stated it in the form: ‘Judge not, that you be not judged’ (7:1), and all his teaching about the terrible reality of divine judgment on the last day rests upon the same foundation principle. What Jesus affirmed in the antithesis was rather that this principle, though it pertains to the law courts and to the judgment of God, is not applicable to our personal relationships. These are to be based on love, not justice. Our duty to individuals who wrong us is not retaliation, but the acceptance of injustice without revenge or redress: Do not resist one who is evil (39).
But what exactly is the meaning of this call to non-resistance? The Greek verb (anthistēmi) is plain: it is to resist, oppose, withstand or set oneself against someone or something. So whom or what are we forbidden to resist?
Perhaps the other uses of the verb in the New Testament will help to set the context for our thinking. According to its major negative use, we are above all not to resist God, his will, his truth or his authority.2 We are constantly urged, however, to resist the devil. The apostles Paul, Peter and James all tell us to oppose him who is ‘the evil one’ par excellence, and all the powers of evil at his disposal.3 So how is it possible that Jesus told us not to resist evil? We cannot possibly interpret his command as an invitation to compromise with sin or Satan. No, the first clue to a correct understanding of his teaching is to recognize that the words tō ponērō (‘the evil’) are here masculine not neuter. What we are forbidden to resist is not evil as such, evil in the abstract, nor ‘the evil one’ meaning the devil, but an evil person, one who is evil (as RSV rightly translates) or ‘the man who wrongs you’ (NEB). Jesus does not deny that he is evil. He asks us neither to pretend that he is other than he is, nor to condone his evil behaviour. What he does not allow is that we retaliate. ‘Do not take revenge on someone who wrongs you’ (GNB).
The four mini-illustrations which follow all apply the principle of Christian non-retaliation, and indicate the lengths to which it must go. They are vivid little cameos drawn from different life-situations. Each introduces a person (in the context a person who in some sense is ‘evil’) who seeks to do us an injury, one by hitting us in the face, another by prosecuting us at law, a third by commandeering our service and a fourth by begging money from us. All have a very modern ring except the third, which sounds a bit archaic. The verb translated forces (angareusei), Persian in origin, was used by Josephus with reference to ‘the compulsory transportation of military baggage’.1 It could be applied today to any form of service in which we find ourselves conscripts rather than volunteers. In each of the four situations, Jesus said, our Christian duty is so completely to forbear revenge that we even allow the ‘evil’ person to double the injury.
Let it be said at once, albeit to our great discomfort, that there will be occasions when we cannot dodge this demand but must obey it literally. It may seem fantastic that we should be expected to offer our left cheek to someone who has already struck our right, especially when we recall that ‘the striking on the right cheek, the blow with the back of the hand, is still today in the East the insulting blow’ and that Jesus probably had in mind not an ordinary insult but ‘a quite specific insulting blow: the blow given to the disciples of Jesus as heretics’.2 Yet this is the standard which Jesus asks, and it is the standard which he himself fulfilled. It had been written of him in Old Testament Scripture: ‘I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I hid not my face from shame and spitting.’ And in the event first the Jewish police spat on him, blindfolded him and struck him in the face, and then the Roman soldiers followed suit. They crowned him with thorns, clothed him in the imperial purple, invested him with a sceptre of reed, jeered at him, ‘Hail, King of the Jews,’ knelt before him in mock homage, spat in his face and struck him with their hands.3 And Jesus, with the infinite dignity of self-control and love, held his peace. He demonstrated his total refusal to retaliate by allowing them to continue their cruel mockery until they had finished. Further, before we become too eager to evade the challenge of his teaching and behaviour as mere unpractical idealism, we need to remember that Jesus called his disciples to what Bonhoeffer termed a ‘visible participation in his cross’.1 This is how Peter put it: ‘Christ … suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps … When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he trusted to him who judges justly.’2 In Spurgeon’s arresting phrase, we ‘are to be as the anvil when bad men are the hammers’.3
Yes, but an anvil is one thing, a doormat is another. Jesus’ illustrations and personal example depict not the weakling who offers no resistance. He himself challenged the high priest when questioned by him in court.4 They depict rather the strong man whose control of himself and love for others are so powerful that he rejects absolutely every conceivable form of retaliation. Further, however conscientious we may be in our determination not to sidestep the implications of Jesus’ teaching, we still cannot take the four little cameos with wooden, unimaginative literalism. This is partly because they are given not as detailed regulations but as illustrations of a principle, and partly because they must be seen to uphold the principle they are intended to illustrate. That principle is love, the selfless love of a person who, when injured, refuses to satisfy himself by taking revenge, but studies instead the highest welfare of the other person and of society, and determines his reactions accordingly. He will certainly never hit back, returning evil for evil, for he has been entirely freed from personal animosity. Instead, he seeks to return good for evil. So he is willing to give to the uttermost—his body, his clothing, his service, his money—in so far as these gifts are required by love.
Thus the only limit to the Christian’s generosity will be a limit which love itself may impose. For example the apostle Paul once ‘resisted’ (same Greek word) the apostle Peter to his face. Peter’s behaviour had been wrong, evil. He had withdrawn from fellowship with Gentile brothers and so contradicted the gospel. Did Paul give in to him and let him get away with it? No. He opposed him, publicly rebuking him and denouncing his action. And I think we must defend Paul’s conduct as a true expression of love. For on the one hand there was no personal animosity towards Peter (he did not punch him or insult him or injure him), while on the other there was a strong love for the Gentile Christians Peter had affronted and for the gospel he had denied.5
Similarly, Christ’s illustrations are not to be taken as the charter for any unscrupulous tyrant, ruffian, beggar or thug. His purpose was to forbid revenge, not to encourage injustice, dishonesty or vice. How can those who seek as their first priority the extension of God’s righteous rule at the same time contribute to the spread of unrighteousness? True love, caring for both the individual and society, takes action to deter evil and to promote good. And Christ’s command was ‘a precept of love, not folly’.1 He teaches not the irresponsibility which encourages evil but the forbearance which renounces revenge. Authentic Christian non-resistance is non-retaliation.
The familiar words of the Authorized Version, ‘Resist not evil,’ have been taken by some as the basis for an uncompromising pacifism, as the prohibition of the use of force in any and every situation.
One of the most absurd instances of this is ‘the crazy saint’ whom Luther describes, ‘who let the lice nibble at him and refused to kill any of them on account of this text, maintaining that he had to suffer and could not resist evil’!2
A more reputable example, though also an extreme one, was Leo Tolstoy, the distinguished nineteenth-century Russian novelist and social reformer. In What I Believe (1884) he describes how in a time of deep personal perplexity about life’s meaning he was ‘left alone with my heart and the mysterious book’. As he read and re-read the Sermon on the Mount, ‘I suddenly understood what I had not formerly understood’ and what, in his view, the whole church for 1800 years had misunderstood. ‘I understood that Christ says just what he says,’ in particular in his command ‘Resist not evil.’ ‘These words …, understood in their direct meaning, were for me truly a key opening everything else.’3 In the second chapter (‘The Command of Non-Resistance’) he interprets Jesus’ words as a prohibition of all physical violence to both persons and institutions. ‘It is impossible at one and the same time to confess Christ as God, the basis of whose teaching is non-resistance to him that is evil, and consciously and calmly to work for the establishment of property, law courts, government and military forces …’4 Again, ‘Christ totally forbids the human institution of any law court’ because they resist evil and even return evil for evil.5 The same principle applies, he says, to the police and the army. When Christ’s commands are at last obeyed ‘all men will be brothers, and everyone will be at peace with others … Then the Kingdom of God will have come.’1 When in the last chapter he tries to defend himself against the charge of naivety because ‘enemies will come …, and if you do not fight, they will slaughter you’, he betrays his ingenuous (indeed mistaken) doctrine of human beings as basically rational and amiable. Even ‘the so-called criminals and robbers … love good and hate evil as I do’. And when they come to see, through the truth Christians teach and exhibit, that the non-violent devote their lives to serving others, ‘no man will be found so senseless as to deprive of food or to kill those who serve him’.2
One man whom Tolstoy’s writings profoundly influenced was Gandhi. Already as a child he had learnt the doctrine of ahimsa, ‘refraining from harming others’. But then as a young man he read first in London the Baghavad Gita and the Sermon on the Mount (‘It is that Sermon which has endeared Jesus to me’), and then in South Africa Tolstoy’s The kingdom of God is within you. When he returned to India about ten years later, he was determined to put Tolstoy’s ideals into action. Strictly speaking, his policy was neither ‘passive resistance’ (which he regarded as too negative), nor ‘civil disobedience’ (which was too defiant) but satyagraha or ‘truth-force’, the attempt to win his opponents by the power of truth and ‘by the example of suffering willingly endured’. His theory approached very close to anarchy. ‘The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form.’ In the perfect state which he envisaged, although the police would exist, they would seldom use force; punishment would end; prisons would be turned into schools; and litigation be replaced by arbitration.3
It is impossible not to admire Gandhi’s humility and sincerity of purpose. Yet his policy must be judged unrealistic. He said he would resist the Japanese invaders (if they came) by a peace brigade, but his claim never had to be put to the test. He urged the Jews to offer a non-violent resistance to Hitler, but they did not heed him. In July 1940 he issued an appeal to every Briton for the cessation of hostilities, in which he claimed: ‘I have been practising, with scientific precision, non-violence and its possibilities for an unbroken period of over fifty years. I have applied it in every walk of life—domestic, institutional, economic and political. I know no single case in which it has failed.’1 But his appeal fell on deaf ears. Jacques Ellul makes the perceptive comment that ‘an essential factor in Gandhi’s success’ was the people involved. These were on the one hand India, ‘a people shaped by centuries of concern for holiness and the spiritual, … a people … uniquely capable of understanding and accepting his message’ and on the other Britain which ‘officially declared itself a Christian nation’ and ‘could not remain insensible to Gandhi’s preachment of non-violence’. ‘But put Gandhi into the Russia of 1925 or the Germany of 1933. The solution would be simple: after a few days he would be arrested and nothing more would be heard of him.’2
Our main disagreement with Tolstoy and Gandhi, however, must not be that their views were unrealistic, but that they were unbiblical. For we cannot take Jesus’ command, ‘Resist not evil,’ as an absolute prohibition of the use of all force (including the police) unless we are prepared to say that the Bible contradicts itself and the apostles misunderstood Jesus. For the New Testament teaches that the state is a divine institution, commissioned (through its executive office-bearers) both to punish the wrongdoer (i.e., to ‘resist one who is evil’ to the point of making him bear the penalty of his evil) and to reward those who do good.3 This revealed truth may not be twisted, however, to justify the institutionalized violence of an oppressive regime. Far from it. Indeed, the same state—the Roman Empire—which in Romans 13 is termed ‘the servant of God’, wielding his authority, is pictured in Revelation 13 as an ally of the devil wielding his authority. But these two aspects of the state complement one another; they are not contradictory. The fact that the state has been instituted by God does not preserve it from abusing its power and becoming a tool of Satan. Nor does the historical truth that the state has sometimes persecuted good men alter the biblical truth that its real function is to punish bad men. And when the state exercises its God-given authority to punish, it is ‘the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer’.1
How does this principle apply to war? No slick or easy answer either for or against war seems possible, although all Christians will surely agree that in its very nature war is brutalizing and horrible. Certainly too the concept of the ‘just war’ developed by Thomas Aquinas, a war whose cause, methods and results must be ‘just’, is difficult to relate to the modern world. Nevertheless, I would want to argue on the one hand that war cannot be absolutely repudiated on the basis of ‘Resist not evil’ any more than police and prisons can, and on the other that its only possible justification (from a biblical viewpoint) would be as a kind of glorified police action. Further, it is of the essence of police action to be discriminate; to arrest specific evildoers in order to bring them to justice. It is because so much modern warfare lacks anything approaching this precision either in defining the evildoers or in punishing the evil that Christian consciences revolt against it. Certainly the indiscriminate horrors of atomic war, engulfing the innocent with the guilty, are enough to condemn it altogether.
The point I have been labouring is that the duties and functions of the state are quite different from those of the individual. The individual’s responsibility towards a wrongdoer was laid down by the apostle Paul at the end of Romans 12: ‘Repay no one evil for evil (surely an echo of “Do not resist one who is evil”), but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all … Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head” (i.e. shame him into repentance). Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.’2 It will be seen that Paul’s prohibition of vengeance is not because retribution is in itself wrong, but because it is the prerogative of God, not man. ‘Vengeance is mine,’ says the Lord. His purpose is to express his wrath or vengeance now through the law courts (as Paul goes on to write in Romans 13), and finally on the day of judgment.
This difference of God-given function between two ‘servants of God’—the state to punish the evildoer, the individual Christian not to repay evil for evil, but to overcome evil with good—is bound to create a painful tension in all of us, specially because all of us in different degrees are both individuals and citizens of the state, and therefore share in both functions. For example, if my house is burgled one night and I catch the thief, it may well be my duty to sit him down and give him something to eat and drink, while at the same time telephoning the police.
Luther explained this tension by making a helpful distinction between our ‘person’ and our ‘office’. It was part of his teaching about the ‘two kingdoms’ which has, however, been justly criticized. He derived it from the text ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’. He saw in these words the existence of both a divine or spiritual realm, ‘the kingdom of Christ’, and a secular or temporal realm, ‘the kingdom of the world’ (or ‘of the emperor’). In the first, which he also called ‘the kingdom of God’s right hand’, the Christian lives as a ‘person’; in the second ‘the kingdom of God’s left hand’, he occupies an ‘office’ of some kind, whether as ‘father’, ‘master’, ‘prince’ or ‘judge’. ‘You must not confuse the two,’ Luther wrote, ‘your person or your office.’1
Here is part of his application of this distinction to the command not to resist evil: a Christian ‘lives simultaneously as a Christian toward everyone, personally suffering all sorts of things in the world, and as a secular person, maintaining, using and performing all the functions required by the law of his territory or city …’ ‘A Christian should not resist any evil; but within the limits of his office a secular person should oppose every evil.’ ‘In short, the rule in the kingdom of Christ is the toleration of everything, forgiveness, and the recompense of evil with good. On the other hand, in the realm of the emperor, there should be no tolerance shown towards any injustice, but rather a defence against wrong and a punishment of it, … according to what each one’s office or station may require.’ ‘Christ … is not saying “No one should ever resist evil” for that would completely undermine all rule and authority. But this is what he is saying: “You, you shall not do it”.’2
Luther’s clear-cut distinction between the two ‘realms’ was certainly overdrawn. ‘It is difficult to escape the feeling,’ writes Harvey McArthur, ‘that his teaching gave to the secular sphere an autonomy to which it has no rightful claim.’1 He went as far as to tell the Christian that in the secular kingdom ‘you do not have to ask Christ about your duty’, for it can be learnt from the emperor. But Scripture does not allow us to set the two kingdoms over against each other in such total contrast, as if the church were Christ’s sphere ruled by love and the state the emperor’s ruled by justice. For Jesus Christ has universal authority, and no sphere may be excluded from his rule. Further, the state’s administration of justice needs to be tempered with love, while in the church love has sometimes to be expressed in terms of discipline. Jesus himself spoke of the painful necessity of excommunicating an obstinate and unrepentant offender.
Nevertheless, I think Luther’s distinction between ‘person’ and ‘office’, or, as we might say, between individual and institution, holds. The Christian is to be wholly free from revenge, not only in action, but in his heart as well; as an office-bearer in either state or church, however, he may find himself entrusted with authority from God to resist evil and to punish it.
To sum up the teaching of this antithesis, Jesus was not prohibiting the administration of justice, but rather forbidding us to take the law into our own hands. ‘An eye for an eye’ is a principle of justice belonging to courts of law. In personal life we must be rid not only of all retaliation in word and deed, but of all animosity of spirit. We can and must commit our cause to the good and righteous judge, as Jesus himself did,2 but it is not for us to seek or to desire any personal revenge. We must not repay injury but suffer it, and so overcome evil with good.
So the command of Jesus not to resist evil should not properly be used to justify either temperamental weakness or moral compromise or political anarchy or even total pacifism. Instead, what Jesus here demands of all his followers is a personal attitude to evildoers which is prompted by mercy not justice, which renounces retaliation so completely as to risk further costly suffering, which is governed never by the desire to cause them harm but always by the determination to serve their highest good.
I do not know anybody who has expressed this in more relevant modern terms than Martin Luther King, who had learnt as much from Gandhi as Gandhi had learnt from Tolstoy, although I think he understood Jesus’ teaching better than either. There can be no doubt of the unjust sufferings which Luther King had to endure. Dr Benjamin Mays listed them at his funeral: ‘If any man knew the meaning of suffering, King knew. House bombed; living day by day for thirteen years under constant threats of death; maliciously accused of being a Communist; falsely accused of being insincere …; stabbed by a member of his own race; slugged in a hotel lobby; jailed over twenty times; occasionally deeply hurt because friends betrayed him—and yet this man had no bitterness in his heart, no rancour in his soul, no revenge in his mind; and he went up and down the length and breadth of this world preaching non-violence and the redemptive power of love.’1
One of his most moving sermons, based on Matthew 5:43–45, was entitled ‘Loving your enemies’ and was written in a Georgia gaol. Wrestling with the questions why and how Christians are to love, he described how ‘hate multiplies hate … in a descending spiral of violence’ and is ‘just as injurious to the person who hates’ as to his victim. But above all ‘love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend’ for it has ‘creative’ and ‘redemptive’ power. He went on to apply his theme to the racial crisis in the United States. For over three centuries American Negroes had suffered oppression, frustration and discrimination. But Luther King and his friends were determined to ‘meet hate with love’. Then they would win both freedom and their oppressors, ‘and our victory will be a double victory’.2
2. Active love (43–48)
We have already seen how blatant a perversion of the law is the instruction, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy,’ because of what it omits from the commandment and adds to it. It deliberately narrows both the standard of love (leaving out the crucial words ‘as yourself’, which pitch the standard very high) and its objects (qualifying the category of ‘neighbour’ by specifically excluding enemies from it and adding the command to hate them instead). I call the perversion ‘blatant’ because it is totally lacking in justification, and yet the rabbis would have defended it as a legitimate interpretation. They seized on the immediate context of the inconvenient command to love the neighbour, pointing out that Leviticus 19 is addressed ‘to all the congregation of the people of Israel’. It gives instructions to Israelites on their duties to their own parents, and more widely to their ‘neighbour’ and their ‘brother’. They were not to oppress or rob him, whatever his social status might be. ‘You shall not hate your brother in your heart … You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (vv. 17, 18).
It was easy enough for ethical casuists (consciously or unconsciously anxious to ease the burden of this command) to twist it to their own convenience. ‘My neighbour’, they argued, ‘is one of my own people, a fellow Jew, my own kith and kin, who belongs to my race and my religion. The law says nothing about strangers or enemies. So, since the command is to love only my neighbour, it must be taken as a permission, even an injunction, to hate my enemy. For he is not my neighbour that I should love him.’ The reasoning is rational enough to convince those who wanted to be convinced, and to confirm them in their own racial prejudice. But it is a rationalization, and a specious one at that. They evidently ignored the instruction earlier in the same chapter to leave the gleanings of field and vineyard ‘for the poor and the sojourner’, who was not a Jew but a resident alien, and the unequivocal statement against racial discrimination at the end of the chapter: ‘the stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself’ (34). Similarly, ‘There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.’1
They also turned a blind eye to other commandments which regulated their conduct towards their enemies. For example, ‘If you meet your enemy’s ox or his ass going astray, you shall bring it back to him. If you see the ass of one who hates you lying under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it, you shall help him to lift it up.’1 Almost identical instruction was given regarding a brother’s ox or ass,2 indicating that love’s requirement was the same whether the beasts belonged to a ‘brother’ or to an ‘enemy’. The rabbis must also have known very well the teaching of the book of Proverbs, which the apostle Paul was later to quote as an illustration of overcoming rather than avenging evil: ‘If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.’3
It is quite true that the scribes and Pharisees may have adduced as biblical warrant to hate their enemies either the Israelite wars against the Canaanites or the imprecatory psalms. But if so they misunderstood both these wars and these psalms. The Canaanites are known from modern near eastern studies to have been utterly corrupt in religion and culture. So nauseating were their abominable practices that the land itself is described as having ‘vomited them out’. Indeed if Israel were to follow their customs, she would share their fate.4 ‘The wars of Israel’, wrote Bonhoeffer, ‘were the only “holy wars” in history, for they were the wars of God against the world of idols. It is not this enmity which Jesus condemns, for then he would have condemned the whole history of God’s dealings with his people. On the contrary, he affirms the old covenant. But from now on there will be no more wars of faith.’5
As for the imprecatory psalms, in them the psalmist speaks not with any personal animosity but as a representative of God’s chosen people Israel, regards the wicked as the enemies of God, counts them his own enemies only because he has completely identified himself with the cause of God, hates them because he loves God, and is so confident that this ‘hatred’ is ‘perfect hatred’ that he calls upon God in the next breath to search him and know his heart, to try him and know his thoughts, in order to see if there is any wickedness in him.6 That we cannot easily aspire to this is an indication not of our spirituality but of our lack of it, not of our superior love for men but of our inferior love for God, indeed of our inability to hate the wicked with a hatred that is ‘perfect’ and not ‘personal’.
The truth is that evil men should be the object simultaneously of our ‘love’ and of our ‘hatred’, as they are simultaneously the objects of God’s (although his ‘hatred’ is expressed as his ‘wrath’). To ‘love’ them is ardently to desire that they will repent and believe, and so be saved. To ‘hate’ them is to desire with equal ardour that, if they stubbornly refuse to repent and believe, they will incur God’s judgment. Have you never prayed for the salvation of wicked men (e.g., who blaspheme God or exploit their fellow humans for profit as if they were animals), and gone on to pray that if they refuse God’s salvation, then God’s judgment will fall upon them? I have. It is a natural expression of our belief in God, that he is the God both of salvation and of judgment, and that we desire his perfect will to be done.
So there is such a thing as perfect hatred, just as there is such a thing as righteous anger. But it is a hatred for God’s enemies, not our own enemies. It is entirely free of all spite, rancour and vindictiveness, and is fired only by love for God’s honour and glory. It finds expression now in the prayer of the martyrs who have been killed for the word of God and for their witness.1 And it will be expressed on the last day by the whole company of God’s redeemed people who, seeing God’s judgment come upon the wicked, will concur in its perfect justice and will say in unison, ‘Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for his judgments are true and just … Amen. Hallelujah!’2
It will surely now be conceded that such pure ‘hatred’ of evil and of evil men, unmixed with any taint of personal malice, gave the rabbis no possible justification for changing God’s command to love our neighbour into a permission also to hate those who hate us, our personal enemies. The words ‘and hate your enemy’ were a ‘parasitical growth’3 upon God’s law; they had no business there. God did not teach his people a double standard of morality, one for a neighbour and another for an enemy.
So Jesus contradicted their addition as a gross distortion of the law: But I say to you, Love your enemies (44). For our neighbour, as he later illustrated so plainly in the parable of the good Samaritan,1 is not necessarily a member of our own race, rank or religion. He may not even have any connection with us. He may be our enemy, who is after us with a knife or a gun. Our ‘neighbour’ in the vocabulary of God includes our enemy. What constitutes him our neighbour is simply that he is a fellow human being in need, whose need we know and are in a position in some measure to relieve.
What, then, is our duty to our neighbour, whether he be friend or foe? We are to love him. Moreover, if we add the clauses in Luke’s account of the Sermon, our love for him will be expressed in our deeds, our words and our prayers. First, our deeds. ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you … Love your enemies, and do good …’2 ‘Do-gooders’ are despised in today’s world, and, to be sure, if philanthropy is self-conscious and patronizing, it is not what Jesus meant by ‘doing good’. The point he is making is that true love is not sentiment so much as service—practical, humble, sacrificial service. As Dostoyevsky put it somewhere, ‘Love in action is much more terrible than love in dreams.’ Our enemy is seeking our harm; we must seek his good. For this is how God has treated us. It is ‘while we were enemies’ that Christ died for us to reconcile us to God.3 If he gave himself for his enemies, we must give ourselves for ours.
Words can also express our love, however, both words addressed to our enemies themselves and words addressed to God on their behalf. ‘Bless those who curse you.’ If they call down disaster and catastrophe upon our heads, expressing in words their wish for our downfall, we must retaliate by calling down heaven’s blessing upon them, declaring in words that we wish them nothing but good. Finally, we direct our words to God. Both evangelists record this command of Jesus: ‘Pray for those who persecute (or abuse) you.’4 Chrysostom saw this responsibility to pray for our enemies as ‘the very highest summit of self-control’.5 Indeed, looking back over the requirements of these last two antitheses, he traces nine ascending steps, with intercession as the topmost one. First, we are not to take any evil initiative ourselves. Secondly, we are not to avenge another’s evil. Thirdly, we are to be quiet, and fourthly, to suffer wrongfully. Fifthly, we are to surrender to the evildoer even more than he demands. Sixthly, we are not to hate him, but (steps 7 and 8) to love him and do him good. As our ninth duty, we are ‘to entreat God Himself on his behalf’.1
Modern commentators also have seen such intercession as the summit of Christian love. ‘This is the supreme command,’ wrote Bonhoeffer. ‘Through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God.’2 Moreover, if intercessory prayer is an expression of what love we have, it is a means to increase our love as well. It is impossible to pray for someone without loving him, and impossible to go on praying for him without discovering that our love for him grows and matures. We must not, therefore, wait before praying for an enemy until we feel some love for him in our heart. We must begin to pray for him before we are conscious of loving him, and we shall find our love break first into bud, then into blossom. Jesus seems to have prayed for his tormentors actually while the iron spikes were being driven through his hands and feet; indeed the imperfect tense suggests that he kept praying, kept repeating his entreaty ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do’.3 If the cruel torture of crucifixion could not silence our Lord’s prayer for his enemies, what pain, pride, prejudice or sloth could justify the silencing of ours?
I find I am quoting Bonhoeffer in this chapter more than any other commentator. I suppose the reason is that although he wrote his exposition before the outbreak of war, he could see where Nazism was leading, and we know to what fate his Christian testimony against it brought him in the end. He quoted a certain A. F. C. Villmar of 1880, but his words sound almost prophetic of Bonhoeffer’s own day: ‘This commandment, that we should love our enemies and forgo revenge, will grow even more urgent in the holy struggle which lies before us … The Christians will be hounded from place to place, subjected to physical assault, maltreatment and death of every kind. We are approaching an age of wide-spread persecution … Soon the time will come when we shall pray … It will be a prayer of earnest love for these very sons of perdition who stand around and gaze at us with eyes aflame with hatred, and who have perhaps already raised their hands to kill us … Yes, the Church which is really waiting for its Lord, and which discerns the signs of the times of decision, must fling itself with its utmost power and with the panoply of its holy life, into this prayer of love.’1
Having indicated that our love for our enemies will express itself in deeds, words and prayers, Jesus goes on to declare that only then shall we prove conclusively whose sons we are, for only then shall we be exhibiting a love like the love of our heavenly Father’s. For he makes his sun rise (notice, in passing, to whom the sun belongs!) on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust (45). Divine love is indiscriminate love, shown equally to good men and bad. The theologians (following Calvin) call this God’s ‘common grace’. It is not ‘saving grace’, enabling sinners to repent, believe and be saved; but grace shown to all mankind, the penitent and the impenitent, believers and unbelievers alike. This common grace of God is expressed, then, not in the gift of salvation but in the gifts of creation, and not least in the blessings of rain and sunshine, without which we could not eat and life on the planet could not continue. This, then, is to be the standard of Christian love. We are to love like God, not men.
For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Or what credit is that to you? ‘Even sinners love those who love them.’2 Fallen man is not incapable of loving. The doctrine of total depravity does not mean (and has never meant) that original sin has rendered men incapable of doing anything good at all, but rather that every good they do is tainted to some degree by evil. Unredeemed sinners can love. Parental love, filial love, conjugal love, the love of friends—all these, as we know very well, are the regular experience of men and women outside Christ. Even the tax collectors (the petty customs officials who because of their extortion had a reputation for greed) love those who love them. Even the Gentiles (those ‘dogs’, as the Jews called them, those outsiders who loathed the Jews and would look the other way when they passed one in the street), even they salute each other. None of this is in dispute.
But all human love, even the highest, the noblest and the best, is contaminated to some degree by the impurities of self-interest. We Christians are specifically called to love our enemies (in which love there is no self-interest), and this is impossible without the supernatural grace of God. If we love only those who love us, we are no better than swindlers. If we greet only our brothers and sisters, our fellow Christians, we are no better than pagans; they too greet one another. The question Jesus asked is: What more are you doing than others? (47). This simple word more is the quintessence of what he is saying. It is not enough for Christians to resemble non-Christians; our calling is to outstrip them in virtue. Our righteousness is to exceed (perisseusē … pleion) that of the Pharisees (20) and our love is to surpass, to be more than (perisson) that of the Gentiles (47). Bonhoeffer puts it well: ‘What makes the Christian different from other men is the “peculiar”, the perisson, the “extraordinary”, the “unusual”, that which is not “a matter of course” … It is “the more”, the “beyond-all-that”. The natural is to auto (one and the same) for heathen and Christian, the distinctive quality of the Christian life begins with the perisson … For him (sc. Jesus) the hallmark of the Christian is the “extraordinary”.’1
And what is this perisson, this ‘plus’ or ‘extra’ which Christians must display? Bonhoeffer’s reply was: ‘It is the love of Jesus Christ himself, who went patiently and obediently to the cross … The cross is the differential of the Christian religion.’2 What he writes is true. Yet, to be more precise, the way Jesus put it was to say that this ‘super-love’ is not the love of men, but the love of God, which in common grace gives sun and rain to the wicked. So you, therefore (the ‘you’ is emphatic, distinguishing Christians from non-Christians), must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect (48). The concept that God’s people must imitate God rather than men is not new. The book of Leviticus repeated some five times as a refrain the command, ‘I am the Lord your God; … you shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.’3 Yet here Christ’s call to us is not to be ‘holy’ but to be ‘perfect’.
Some holiness teachers have built upon this verse great dreams of the possibility of reaching in this life a state of sinless perfection. But the words of Jesus cannot be pressed into meaning this without causing discord in the Sermon. For he has already indicated in the beatitudes that a hunger and thirst after righteousness is a perpetual characteristic of his disciples,4 and in the next chapter he will teach us to pray constantly, ‘Forgive us our debts.’1 Both the hunger for righteousness and the prayer for forgiveness, being continuous, are clear indications that Jesus did not expect his followers to become morally perfect in this life. The context shows that the ‘perfection’ he means relates to love, that perfect love of God which is shown even to those who do not return it. Indeed, scholars tell us that the Aramaic word which Jesus may well have used meant ‘all-embracing’. The parallel verse in Luke’s account of the Sermon confirms this: ‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.’2 We are called to be perfect in love, that is, to love even our enemies with the merciful, the inclusive love of God.
Christ’s call to us is new not only because it is a command to be ‘perfect’ rather than ‘holy’, but also because of his description of the God we are to imitate. In the Old Testament it was always ‘I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God; you shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.’ But now in New Testament days it is not the unique Redeemer of Israel whom we are to follow and obey; it is our Father who is in heaven (45), our heavenly Father (48). And our obedience will come from our hearts as the manifestation of our new nature. For we are the sons of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, and we can demonstrate whose sons we are only when we exhibit the family likeness, only when we become peacemakers as he is (9), only when we love with an all-embracing love like his (45, 48).
The last two antitheses of the series reveal a progression. The first is a negative command: Do not resist one who is evil; the second is positive: Love your enemies and seek their good. The first is a call to passive non-retaliation, the second to active love. As Augustine put it, ‘Many have learned how to offer the other cheek, but do not know how to love him by whom they were struck.’3 For we are to go beyond forbearance to service, beyond the refusal to repay evil to the resolve to overcome evil with good. Alfred Plummer summed up the alternatives with admirable simplicity: ‘To return evil for good is devilish; to return good for good is human; to return good for evil is divine.’4
Throughout his exposition Jesus sets before us alternative models by which he contrasts secular culture and Christian counter-culture. Ingrained in non-Christian culture is the notion of retaliation, both the retaliation of evil and the retaliation of good. The first is obvious, for it means revenge. But the second is sometimes overlooked. Jesus expressed it as ‘doing good to those who do good to you’.1 So the first says, ‘You do me a bad turn, and I’ll do you a bad turn,’ and the second, ‘You do me a good turn and I’ll do you a good turn,’ or (more colloquially) ‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.’ So retaliation is the way of the world; revenge on the one hand and recompense on the other, paying back injuries and paying back favours. Then we are quits, we are no man’s debtors, we keep even with everybody. It is the device of the proud who cannot bear to be indebted to anybody. It is an attempt to order society by a rough and ready justice which we administer ourselves, so that nobody gets the better of us in any way.
But it will not do in the kingdom of God! Sinners, Gentiles and tax collectors behave that way. It is the highest to which they can rise. But it is not high enough for the citizens of God’s kingdom: What more are you doing than others? Jesus asks (47). So the model he sets before us as an alternative to the world around us is our Father above us. Since he is kind to the evil as well as the good, his children must be too. The life of the old (fallen) humanity is based on rough justice, avenging injuries and returning favours. The life of the new (redeemed) humanity is based on divine love, refusing to take revenge but overcoming evil with good.
Jesus accused the Pharisees of placing two serious restrictions on their love. Of course they believed in love. Everybody believes in love. Yes, but not love for those who had injured them, and not love for those Gentile outsiders either. The spirit of pharisaism is still abroad. It is the spirit of revenge and of racialism. The first says, ‘I’ll love nice harmless people, but I’ll get even with those who wrong me.’ The second says, ‘I’ll love my own kith and kin, but you can’t expect me to love people who have no claim on me.’ In fact Jesus does expect of his followers the very things which others think cannot reasonably be expected of anybody. He calls us to renounce all those convenient restrictions we like to put on love (especially revenge and racialism) and instead to be all-embracing and constructive in our love, like God.
Looking back over all six antitheses, it has become clear what the ‘greater’ righteousness is to which Christians are summoned. It is a deep inward righteousness of the heart where the Holy Spirit has written God’s law. It is new fruit exhibiting the newness of the tree, new life burgeoning from a new nature. So we have no liberty to try to dodge or duck the lofty demands of the law. Law-dodging is a pharisaic hobby; what is characteristic of Christians is a keen appetite for righteousness, hungering and thirsting after it continuously. And this righteousness, whether expressed in purity, honesty or charity, will show to whom we belong. Our Christian calling is to imitate not the world, but the Father. And it is by this imitation of him that the Christian counter-culture becomes visible.[4]
Appendix / Bibliography
[1] New Testament: An Expanded Translation by Kenneth S Wuest (Translator) (1961). (Mt 5:31–48). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
[2] Henry, M. (1994). Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume (pp. 1633–1635) Peabody: Hendrickson.
[3] Harris, W. H., III, Ritzema, E., Brannan, R., Mangum, D., Dunham, J., Reimer, J. A., & Wierenga, M. (Eds.). (2012). The Lexham English Bible (Mt 5:31–48). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press
As you guys know, we are in Jesus’ Sermon on the mount. Have you ever considered these verses as the demands Jesus requires? Why does He require them? How does our opinion of the demands effect our relationship with Christ? What other biblical examples could we reflect on to help us answer these questions?
See you guys tomorrow night.
May His grace be with you,
Nathan
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