But I say to you: don’t use violence to resist evil! Matthew 5:39 (TKNT)
The Other Cheek – Sermon on the Mount Series – Part 4
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“You have heard that it was said: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you: don’t use violence to resist evil! Instead, when someone hits you on the right cheek, turn the other one towards him.
When someone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your cloak, too. And when someone forces you to go one mile, go a second with him. Give to anyone who asks of you, and don’t refuse someone who wants to borrow from you.” Matthew 5:38-42 (N.T. Wright’s “The Kingdom New Testament Translation”).
PRACTICE: TURN THE CHEEK OF DIGNITY.
Don’t miss this: our Lord commands we DON’T become doormats for injustice. Yes, there are those who will distort these liberating commandments into a wooden legalism to burden abused people with demands to be passive and invite more evil. But that doesn’t fit with our Lord’s life!
Scholars make it clear to us; to be struck on the right cheek was how a ‘superior person’ in that stratified society would keep the poor, the lower class and women “in their place.” Yet Jesus commands (!) we “turn the cheek of dignity” forcing them to strike us as an equal (the left cheek is how you’d hit someone of the same social standing.)
The lives of history’s greatest change-makers – be they Martin Luther King Jr, Wangari Maathai, Gandhi, Vincent Lingiari or the martyrs of the church (!) – show that this way (the way of the Cross) is not just faithful, it is the most effective way to fight evil without becoming like its violence.
The powerless are invited into a new kind of power – the power of the Cross – where the principalities and powers are unmasked and disarmed through the assertion of our dignity and practice of a power more potent than violence; Calvary-like love.
Ask God to show you how you can “turn the cheek of dignity”? Have you rejected the way of violence so you can be open to live the way of Jesus?
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, thank you for the Cross where you turned the cheek, where you gave of your garments, where you went the extra mile and gave yourself to meet our debts that we might be reconciled to God. May your Cross-shaped power be seen in our lives. Amen.
Contributed and Written by: Jarrod McKenna
Facebook.com/jarrodandmates
Twitter: @jarrodmckenna
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