Matthew 44 | கண்ணுக்கு கண் பல்லுக்கு பல் | Matthew 5:38 | Bro. Abraham David John | WCF London |

Matthew 5:38-42

Matthew 5:38-42, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. 40 If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. 41 And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. 42 Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away. Very potent, insightful, and misunderstood passage of Scripture. One element of the great philosophy of life is that we all have certain undeniable rights.

We are hyper-conscious of our rights. We have had civil rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, and prisoners’ rights. We have unions to demand rights for the employees.

We are very conscious of our rights. Deep down in the human heart is a retaliatory, vengeful, spiteful spirit. Part of the curse of sin, and it’s there in all of us, and it comes out in most strange ways. Deep down in the human heart is this retaliatory, get-even kind of thing. Rather we make heroes out of the kind of people who take nothing from nobody. They are the strong and the tough and the courageous macho, and our society looks down on the meek and the non-retaliating, the gentle, the forgiving, the gracious, the merciful person who demands nothing from anybody.

Basically, that was the heart of the Jewish miscomprehension of an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Give them what they are due. That is the way it was being applied in Jesus’ time. It had become a license for vengeance.

It had become a biblical permission to have a grudge, to strike back. But Jesus said, “But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. I And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two.

That’s antithetical to everything in human society. That doesn’t cut it with the human heart. It is going to be lawlessness because when people begin to live on the basis of their rights, then a dominant selfishness begins to take place. When you have a whole lot of people being selfish, they will invariably tread on each other.

In a fight for rights, what is lawful sort of gets pushed into the background. We have a sense of justice that is because we are the image of God. But in the fall, that sense of justice became perverted into a vengeful spirit.

If a person does something wrong, we want it to be made right to uphold the law and to maintain a righteous standard so that God, who made the righteous standard, can be glorified. We want to get even. That is the perversion of a moral righteousness given us in the creation of God.

James 4:1-2, Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask.

Because the normal desire for justice is perverted into vengeance and retaliation. That is the reason we have wars. So, in our society, everybody fights for their rights. We are so big on rights right now that we are just setting the law aside.

We have a vengeful society if they don’t get their rights. Contrast the fight for rights, the demand for your due with apostle Paul.

1 Corinthians 9:4-7, Do we have no right to eat and drink? 5 Do we have no right to take along a believing wife, as do also the other apostles, the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas? 6 Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working? 7 Who ever goes to war at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Or who tends a flock and does not drink of the milk of the flock?

1 Corinthians 9:11-12, If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it a great thing if we reap your material things? 12 If others are partakers of this right over you, are we not even more? Nevertheless we have not used this right, but endure all things lest we hinder the gospel of Christ. Paul says, “My life is all about setting aside my rights.”

Romans 14:14-16, I know and am convinced by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself; but to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. 15 Yet if your brother is grieved because of your food, you are no longer walking in love. Do not destroy with your food the one for whom Christ died. 16 Therefore do not let your good be spoken of as evil;

We have rights, but rights can be offensive to somebody else. If pushed far enough, our grasping desire for our due and our rights literally obliterates law. This is precisely the issue to which our Lord speaks here in Matthew. He contrasts the ethics of His Kingdom, which is forgiveness, seeking nothing, no defensiveness, no self- protection, no rights for me, with a grasping, retaliatory, spiteful, vengeful, grudging spirit. It characterizes society.

Jesus is speaking directly at the form of religion developed by the scribes and the Pharisees.

• They believed that they had attained self-righteousness on their own merit.
• They believed that they were able to enter the Kingdom of God on the basis of their own self- righteousness.

• They had attained a standard of excellence by law, by legalism, by ritual, and they masked the reality of their sinfulness.

Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount ripping off their masks, stripping their hypocrisies, so that they will see themselves as wretched sinners. The kindest thing you ever do for anybody is show them their sin so that they know they need a Saviour. This sermon by Jesus is not hard hitting but kindest thing Jesus showing them.

Nobody is going to come to a Saviour unless they know they need one. This passage has led to some confusion in many people’s minds. People have used this passage to teach lawlessness. People have used this passage to teach pacifism.

People have used it to teach objection to war. People have used against capital punishments. People have used to bring about a disbelief in justice and civil law. Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist, used the Sermon on the Mount and this very passage to make his main point.

There should be

• no police,
• no armies,

• no soldiers,
• no authorities in society.

That is ridiculous! V 38, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ Earlier in all the 4 instances Jesus spoke about their traditions. But here, it was an exact quote from the Old Testament, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”

They were trying to play holy, and Jesus is trying to show them they are sinful. That is how it is used by your rabbinical traditionalists. But behind that they had just shifted the emphasis and messed up the interpretation, as they so often did with the Old Testament.

This passage is in putting into balance and perspective where the law fits in the life of a believer. The Bible upholds law and order. While we can talk about forgiveness and turning the other cheek, it never is to the detriment of what is lawful.

Throughout the Bible, God exalts law. God made society to be lawful.

In the minor prophets we will hear how God over and over indicting Israel for unjust judges, for unlawful acts, for inequities in their nation. Law is an essential thing.

Romans 13:1-2, Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.

Do you want to know why God gave the law?

1 Timothy 1:9-11, knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, 10 for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust.

God gave law to protect righteous men against ungodly! “If we are to forgive, if we are to turn the other cheek, if we are to never retaliate. If somebody sues us, we don’t fight him, we just give him everything we have got and more. Anybody wants to borrow we just lend it.

Where does the legal recourse come?

Where’s the balance? What happens if somebody commits a crime against me, do I just say, ‘It’s all right, brother, would you like anything else?

Is that what we do? We just let them all go and just forgive them?

Is that what this is saying? Or do we uphold the law and punish them? V 38, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ Some critics of the Bible used to say there was a different God who wrote the Old Testament. The God of the New Testament is not the God of the Old Testament.

The God of the Old Testament was an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Whoever does anything to you, get them back, and he pokes your eye. Knocks your tooth out, get his.

Is that what it’s saying? No!

Why people interpret it that way?

Because that’s the way the human heart is. But that’s not the way God’s heart is! That is not what it means in the Old Testament when it says that. Exodus 20, we have the law of God. Exodus 20, we have the moral law, that is between a man and God, a woman and God, the moral law.

In Exodus 21 to 23, we have the civil law. The civil law is taken care of relationship between human to human, within the framework of magistrates, judges, courts, and duly constituted authorities. God instituted judges, magistrates, and authorities to take care of civil matters.

The phrase, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” is mentioned three times in the Old Testament. All three of those times relate to a civil situation. They relate to something occurring within a duly constituted authority (a judge, a magistrate, et cetera).

“An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” is not a statement that is in any way related to personal relationships. But the Pharisees precisely that is what they did with it.

They took a divine principle of tribunal, a divine principle for the courts, and they made it a matter of daily vendettas. Let us look at the three Scriptures where this phrase is mentioned. (Exodus 21, Leviticus 24, and Deuteronomy 19)

1. Law restraints

Exodus 21:22-25, “If men fight, and hurt a woman with child, so that she gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follows, he shall surely be punished accordingly as the woman’s husband imposes on him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. 23 But if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. You harm a woman with child there could be harm where she doesn’t lose the child, there could be harm where she does lose the child - but the point is then the husband has the right to seek some damages and the judge will determine.

This is a civil situation. The husband doesn’t go and get a club and beat up the guy. This is not vigilante approach. This is not personal vengeance.

For there to be structure in law and order, and in order for there to be preservation of society and you cannot have personal vengeance. Even in the Old Testament, in civil law, there were judges to deal with these matters, and so the judge determines.

Exodus 21:26-27, “If a man strikes the eye of his male or female servant, and destroys it, he shall let him go free for the sake of his eye. 27 And if he knocks out the tooth of his male or female servant, he shall let him go free for the sake of his tooth. You have got a servant and you get angry at your servant, and you haul off and belt your servant. For some reason or other, you knock his eye out or you wound his eye so he can’t see. Or the eye of his maid and the eye perish, then let the servant go free for his eye’s sake. If he smites out his manservant’s tooth or his maidservant’s tooth, he shall let him go free for his tooth’s sake. Within the framework of the civil law, God was protecting the weak from the strong. He was protecting the good from the evil by saying, “There will be just recourse.”

But you notice the term “judges” there? This is civil.

This is not a matter of personal vengeance. If you are a servant and your employer knocks your tooth out, you don’t catch him at an unwary moment and knock his out. You would go to the court in Israel, and you would say, “This is what happened,” it would be confirmed in the mouth of two or three witnesses, and the just due would be given to you, you would be set free.

This would temper the master’s treatment of his slaves if he knew that he struck his slave and his slave lost a tooth, he lost a slave. That would be a high price to pay. Law is a restraint, and when justice is enacted speedily and equitably, it has a great effect on society.

2. Law fits the crime

Leviticus 24:19-22, ‘If a man causes disfigurement of his neighbour, as he has done, so shall it be done to him— 20 fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he has caused disfigurement of a man, so shall it be done to him. 21 And whoever kills an animal shall restore it; but whoever kills a man shall be put to death. 22 You shall have the[e] same law for the stranger and for one from your own country; for I am the Lord your God.’ ”

The punishment is to fit the crime, and it is a civil setting.

3. Law to be proven with witness

Deuteronomy 19:15-21, “One witness shall not rise against a man concerning any iniquity or any sin that he commits; by the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter shall be established. 16 If a false witness rises against any man to testify against him of wrongdoing, 17 then both men in the controversy shall stand before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who serve in those days. 18 And the judges shall make careful inquiry, and indeed, if the witness is a false witness, who has testified falsely against his brother, 19 then you shall do to him as he thought to have done to his brother; so you shall put away the evil from among you. 20 And those who remain shall hear and fear, and hereafter they shall not again commit such evil among you. 21 Your eye shall not pity: life shall be for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

We have got witnesses coming.

Where are they coming? This is a court setting, this is a tribunal, this is a magistrate, this is a civil thing.

How to get rid of evil in your society? Give just punishment speedily for people who commit crimes! There is no place in a law court for pity. Pity is not in a law court. The law demands justice. If society is to be preserved, there must be justice. The court is not the place for pity.

Court is the place to hold the standard of righteous law high.

Why? Because that and that alone will preserve society and put fear in the hearts of men. You take a sinful man with a depraved nature and give him his rights, and he will run right into chaos if you don’t make consequences for his behaviour.

Parents, start it with your children. If there are no consequences in the behaviour of your children, they will never learn what it means to live a righteous life. Never! In all three of those passages, you will see that the law was for the civil courts. It even mentions judges and magistrates several times.

Summary

The law was never to be taken into the hands of an individual. God knew that would be utter chaos. The intent of the Mosaic law was to control sin. In this case, the sin of anger, violence, and revenge. Even in marriage people play that one-upmanship deal.

• If the husband feels the wife got an upper hand, then he waits for a chance to equal with her.
• If the wife thinks that her husband has got an upper hand, then she waits for chance to make it equal.

Mosaic law, an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, maintain the standard of justice in the courts. In the courts. But that is not all that the Old Testament teaches. “An eye for eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot,”

What it means? The punishment must fit the crime! No less and no more.

It was a restraint on the innate vengeance that’s in an evil heart. An eye for an eye didn’t mean, when you get it, give it back. It meant that when justice functions, let it never go beyond its bounds. If it’s only a tooth, then only a tooth should be taken, or in kind, and usually it was money to compensate, not an actual tooth.

God was limiting the innate, evil human heart, which always seeks to go beyond how it’s been offended. Nobody ever murdered anybody because they got murdered. Never. They go way beyond. “You mess around with someone whom I love, you are dead.”

It’s always beyond, it’s always an overreaction. That is why God said an eye for eye and a tooth for tooth, no more, no less. Put the boundaries on justice. In the Old Testament, it doesn’t mean take personal revenge. That isn’t the idea at all.

The oldest law in the world is known as lex talionis. It’s the oldest law in the world. We found it in the Code of Hammurabi. Sometimes it’s called tit for tat, Sometimes it’s called quid pro quo. It just means equal punishment for the crime.

In the Code of Hammurabi says this: “If a man has caused the loss of a gentleman’s eye, his eye shall be caused to be lost. If he shattered a gentleman’s limb, one shall shatter his limb.” In other words, bound up in the human heart is a sense of justice. But the problem is it gets perverted into vengeance.

That is a good law. It’s a law to put fear in the hearts of people. That law doesn’t do anything at all but good for righteous people.

Do you know that? It just protects them. The stricter the law, the more protection for the righteous people. All they affect negatively are people they ought to affect negatively, evil people whose evil is out of control.

• a) Law is just.

It’s a just law because punishment should fit the crime.

Illustration

Judges 1:6-7, Then Adoni-Bezek fled, and they pursued him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and big toes. 7 And Adoni-Bezek said, “Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off used to gather scraps under my table; as I have done, so God has repaid me.” Then they brought him to Jerusalem, and there he died. He was busy cutting off other people’s thumbs and toes, and so he got his own cut off. Did you know today in Iran, when they catch a thief, what they do to him? Cut off his hands. That has a tremendous effect on shoplifting. Please listen carefully I am not advocating for that, what I am saying is people are sinful. I am sinful. If there aren’t rules and there isn’t some fear put in our hearts, we will pursue an evil path.

Galatians 6:7, Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.

Matthew 7:2, For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.

• b) Law is merciful.

“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. Is merciful because it limits vengeance. It does away with the vendettas, it does away with the blood feuds. We have read so many times about caste-based violence in our countries.

When there was a problem between two people belongs to 2 different castes. Instantly it becomes a big problem between two castes and people killing each other and burning other properties. In the west a native, he goes over to the other tribe and he kills somebody in the tribe and what happens?

The whole tribe comes over and slaughters everybody in the other tribe.

No, that law says only the person who committed the crime and only commensurate with the crime should be the punishment. It’s a merciful law. It puts a lid on human vengeance. If a master of a slave brutally beat his slave and he lost a tooth, he would have to free that slave. The courts would free that slave. That slave could take his case to court, and he would be set free.

The law never hurts the good and the righteous people.

• c) Law protects the weak.

The law was designed to protect the weak against the strong, the peaceful from the violent. Our suffering society gets everything twisted. We talk about rights so much now that it seems often today those criminals have more rights than honest people.

Our suffering society, overrun with crime and violence, would do well to re-examine the Old Testament law. But you see,

once you deny God and once you let that go, everything is gone. The pulpit must be the place to put this all back into perspective again. We must preach a just character in the heart of God, and we must enact a just, lawful discipline in the church.

We must preach an eternal punishment in hell.

Why? So that the world knows there is right and wrong. Reward and consequence. When the pulpit went liberal and stopped preaching the character of God, hell, and eternal punishment and the church stopped disciplining sin that society just fell into the flow.

To restrain evil is merciful, to restrain evil is beneficent, not to restrain evil, not to have punishments, not to have the things the way they should be is to allow evil to run rampant and everybody pays the price. Magistrates and judges were never ordained by God for the purpose of reforming reprobates or pampering degenerates but to be His instruments for preserving law and order, and

that by being a terror to the evil, Romans chapter 13 says, they are to be an avenger to execute wrath on him that doeth evil. There’s to be terror. The law has been ignored because

• God’s character has been ignored,
• eternal punishment has been ignored,
• the church doesn’t even bother to discipline.

Jesus, whatever He says will uphold the Old Testament law. He won’t avert it or change that.

Matthew 5:18-19, For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

What Jesus is doing here when He says, “But I say,” is not obviating the law but saying, “Let me clarify what God meant. I speak for God.” Law must be upheld, and justice must rule.

What should be our attitude?

In the work of justice, do we hate the criminal?

Do we feel vengeance and bitterness and spite? Listen to what the Old Testament also teaches.

Leviticus 19:18, You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord. You should never hold a grudge. You should never avenge. If there is a crime committed, then you should seek the law to do its work because that preserves society and exalts God, who wrote the law.

But your heart is filled with forgiveness and your heart is filled with love. Jesus said about how we should respond.

Luke 6:27-28, “But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you.

What would you do when you are in your home a man coming in with a knife to maim one of your children? What would you do if he came in and killed one of your children?

What Jesus is asking you to do this? Catch the man, hold the man. If he was hungry, feed him. If he was thirsty, give him to drink. If he needed Christ, give him the gospel. Most of all, forgive him, love him, and then let the law do exactly what God gave the law to do.

One belongs in the courts Other belongs in the heart. Both works together. An attitude of forgiveness.

Proverbs 25:21, If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink;

The Old Testament says, “If your enemy hungers, give him bread to eat; if he thirsts, give him water to drink.” But it also says if he commits a crime, take him to court, to the judges, to give him due punishment for his crime.

Proverbs 24:29, Do not say, “I will do to him just as he has done to me; I will render to the man according to his work.”

If you say, then it is vengeance. Jesus hangs on a cross, they have set to murder Him, He knows it will be a little time until they will murder His disciples. He looks down the ages and He see all the heroes of the faith who will die in martyrdom.

He looks at an ungodly, unruly world and says to them, “Father forgive them.” He knew that justice would take its course. He knew if they died without repentance, they would spend eternity in hell, and yet His heart was a heart of forgiveness.

So, when you catch that man in your house who’s killed your loved one, you must forgive him in the love of Christ. You must tell him about Christ, and you must feed him. But on the other hand, you must let the law take its course because that is to uphold the divine standard.

You cannot say I will do so to him as he has done to me. The Pharisees had perverted this great truth into a personal vengeance principle. If somebody gets your tooth, get his. Instead of taking it as a limit on vengeance, they took it as a mandate for vengeance.

• Their emphasis was wrong.
• They removed it from the courts.
• They made it a personal revenge.
• They used it to justify hearts full of hate.

Jesus is saying to them, “You are not righteous at all. If you were righteous, you wouldn’t be vengeful.” They cherished a spirit of retaliation.

Conclusion

How do you find this kind of balance where you can uphold the law of God and still in your heart be free to forgive? Very simple! The only person who is non-defensive, non-protective, non- vengeful, never bears a grudge, has no spite in his heart, is a person who has died to self.

What is there to defend?

What is there to defend? If I die to self, what is to defend? But if I am going to fight for my rights, then I prove the point that self is on the throne, self is ruling.

Jesus had died to self in the sense that He had abandoned Himself to the Father’s will. He died, He died. Paul had abandoned himself to the Father’s will and died to self.

Romans 14:8, For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. Paul knew what it was to say, “I die daily.”

1 Corinthians 15:31, I affirm, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. If Paul had lived for himself, he would have gone through his life defending himself against his critics - he never did. Selfishness is

• defensive,
• protective,
• vengeful,
• spiteful, and
• reactionary.

So, if we are to have the spirit that Jesus asked for, we must die to ourselves.

Die to ourselves. One of the biographers of William E. Gladstone, (1868-1898) the great British Prime Minister. “Of how few who have lived for more than 60 years in the full light of their countrymen and have as party leaders been exposed to angry and sometimes spiteful criticism, can it be said that there stands against them no malignant word and no vindictive act?

This was due, not perhaps entirely, to Gladstone’s natural sweetness of disposition but rather to self-control and a certain largeness of soul, which would not condescend to anything mean and petty”.

What about the death of self? If someone kills my child, if I have died to self, I don’t take it as a personal grief. I will uphold the law for the glory of God, but I am not going to strike that man back out of personal anger and vengeance.

The heart of the matter, then, is to understand what it means to die to self.

• When you are neglected, or purposely set at naught, and you sting and hurt with the insult or the oversight,

but your heart is happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ, that is dying to self.

• When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinions ridiculed, and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart, or even defend yourself, but you take it all in patient, loving silence, that is dying to self.
• When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, any irregularity, any annoyance, when you can stand face- to-face with waste and folly and extravagance and spiritual insensibility and you can endure it as Jesus endured it, that is dying to self.
• When you are content with any circumstance, any food, any offering, any clothing, any climate, any society, any solicitude, any interruption by the will of God, that is dying to self.
• When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation, or to record your own good works, or itch after any commendation from others, when you can truly love to be unknown, that is dying to self.
• When you see your brother prosper and have his needs met and can honestly rejoice with him in spirit and feel no envy nor question God while your own needs are far

greater and your circumstances more desperate, that is dying to self.

• When you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself and can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart, that is dying to self.

Are you dead yet? If we are to know the balance between holding up the law of God in an evil society and pouring out a heart filled with forgiveness, filled with love and empty of any vengeance, empty of any self. It will be when we learn what Jesus meant when He said this: “If any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself. Take up his cross daily and follow me.”