Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount is set against the backdrops of hostile authority. On the one hand, the Jewish religious leaders are oppressive & hypocritical, coming in for direct attacks and opposition from Jesus, while on the other hand the entire nation is occupied by the Empire of Rome, extracting exorbitant taxes and brutally crushing and sign of dissention.
This is why the Jewish people, even Jesus’ disciples, were looking for a messiah who would take on these oppressors and lead the people of God in revolution. But Jesus here makes it very clear that He is doing things very differently.
In the NFL, it’s well known that the penalty flag tends to go to the retaliator rather than the instigator. The same is often true in life – but Jesus’ call here goes beyond that. Jesus is calling us to avoid being defined by our enemies. Our actions should spring from love of God and love of others rather than in kind, giving hatred for hatred and violence for violence.
Jesus is calling us to creative resistance – he reimagines the traditional “eye-for-an-eye” responses to evil as nonviolent, subversive resistance that follows the Kingdom Way.
The eye-for-an-eye concept is found in the Torah, but also in law codes across the ancient world, including the Code of Hammurabi. The original intent of the concept was to enforce proportional enforcement of the laws, putting a ceiling on punishment to prevent an accelerating cycle of violence. It’s a very transactional, systemic method of ensuring proportional retribution. Jesus, though, is calling us to something even greater.
When Jesus describes the strike on the cheek, he’s describing a specific circumstance, where someone in power, very likely a Roman soldier who had the right to strike a Jewish person, or a master with the right to strike a slave, would backhand someone and be immune to legal ramifications. Corey Farr writes:
Then, one day, like so many other days, your master backhands you. He expects you to cower and whimper and slink off back to your duties. Maybe he expects you to get on your knees and beg forgiveness. But instead, you look him in the eyes and turn your head to put your left cheek forward. You’ve already insulted him by failing to break down, so he has the right (in his mind) to slap you again.
But he can’t slap you with his left hand, because that is unclean for both of you. And he can’t backhand, because your right cheek is away from him. To strike again, his only option is to slap you with the palm of his hand. And this was not the way to slap a slave. This was reserved for equals. If he chooses to slap you again, he is forced to upgrade your status. He has to bump you up to a higher class citizen in order to get his revenge.
This “victory” may seem small, but it isn’t. You have asserted your humanity and reminded the master you are not an object to be owned and controlled.
Likewise, the “go an extra mile” and “give up your cloak” are subversive responses that undermine the power structure at play, that appeals to the humanity of your enemy, providing a path for them to turn from their own wickedness, the truest form of love.
Jesus ultimately turned the Empire upside down, but He did it through these regular ongoing acts of love. We must follow Christ and His Church as we fight oppression ourselves, singing songs of hope in the darkness, loving out those songs in our daily lives.
–Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, May 18, 2025