The Right to Get Even

There are four John Wick movies, and the body count in those movies is pretty high. And it all started because someone killed his dog. I don't think anyone here, though, has hired a hitman like John Wick. Nobody's gone on—I think Craigslist is the place to do it, not Facebook Marketplace—to find someone to take care of somebody.

But many of us have sat in a chair composing a text message or an email that we should not send. And if you showed that to one friend, they would say, "Do not send that." We have replayed conversations in our head. We are perfect in our comebacks; every time, we win every argument. We have said things that we should not say.

We have a running tally in our head of who should apologize to us. And it's mostly small things: getting cut off on the road, socks that never get put away, you leave your stuff around the house and no one picks it up, a sibling who has been given favoritism. And all you want, you tell yourself, is that it could just be fair.

We even have a logic for it: If your brother hits you, you can hit him. If a coworker undercuts you, you can undercut them. If your spouse won't do something for you, you don't have to do something for them.

We have an instinct to keep score. We keep a record of wrongs against us like they're some sort of precious treasure. They're the ring in The Lord of the Rings—"My precious." You know, like there's something we nurse, we nurture it, we take it out, we look at it: "Look at all these records of wrongs that I have." And the word we want to live by is what? Fair. Fair.

That's not fair. I mean, how many arguments do you think on Sunday morning in these rooms down here boil down to fair? "That's not fair. They got three animal crackers; I got 2.75 animal crackers." You laugh, but you have your own arguments about animal crackers.

And Jesus is about to take the word "fair" away from us. So, we're in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:38–42. It is the longest stretch of teaching we have where Jesus just speaks continuously. He has said in Matthew 5:17 he has not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them. And then he says unless our righteousness surpasses the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, we will not enter the kingdom—that's Matthew 5:20.

And that sounds impossible when you read it at first, because the Pharisees are the most religious people alive. They not only wanted to keep the law; they created extra rules around the law so that they could never get close to breaking the law. "You have heard it said," Jesus says six times. "But I tell you," he says six times. And he's not correcting the Old Testament; he's correcting the religious teachers and what they've done to it.

We've covered four: anger, lust, divorce, oaths. "Don't murder," and Jesus says don't hate your brother. "Don't commit adultery," and Jesus says don't look at her that way. "Get the paperwork right on divorce," and Jesus says why do you make her a victim? "Keep your sworn oaths," and Jesus says why do you even need an oath? Every time, the teachers find a way to be technically obedient and actually rebellious.

Isn't that religion in a nutshell, right? Checking every box and being a thousand miles away from the truth. And so here's the fifth "I tell you." And this one, honestly, hits a little different. The other four, let's be for real, they feel like sin. Like, nobody's defending lust. Nobody's like, "I'm so proud I'm a liar." But getting even? We make movies about it. We call it justice.

So here it is again:

"You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you."

My guess is that when you hear that read and you begin to think about it, your first thought is, "We need some nuance. What about self-defense? What about my kids? What about the guy who keeps taking advantage of me if I don't stop him?" And those are real questions that we'll try to get some answers for.

But notice what just happened. Jesus has barely finished speaking a sentence, and you, in your head, are already negotiating your way out of what you think it means. You're going to look for a version you can live with. And so here's what we'll do: We'll look at the right verse misapplied, and then the right to get even surrendered, and then the right to get even paid for. Those are the three things.

1. The Right Verse Misapplied

Okay, here's verse 38: the right verse misapplied. "Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth." I feel like this is just in our culture; everyone has heard this phrase before. It shows up three times in the Old Testament: Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:20, and Deuteronomy 19:21, which I'm sure you all knew. So the Pharisees are quoting it. Jesus and the Pharisees are looking at the same words on the same page.

But context is important. Exodus 21 is a list of case laws, Leviticus 24 is a legal ruling about a fight in a camp, and Deuteronomy 19 is about judges, witnesses, and what to do when someone lies. So just before "an eye for an eye" in Deuteronomy 19, you read these words: "The judges must make a thorough investigation."

Notice who's in the room where it happens: judges. So this is not a verse you're supposed to carry into the street or into your home; it's a verse for a courtroom. And even in the courtroom, this is not a law to demand retaliation—it is meant to cap retaliation. Like in the ancient world, if you took my eye, I took your family. And then what was expected is that your family would come to mine if I didn't wipe out yours. And that didn't stop for generation after generation after generation.

And into that world, God brings a law that says the punishment can't exceed the crime. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—not a village for an eye. So everyone stands under the same rules, whether you are rich or poor. And these verses don't stand alone in some sort of vacuum, you know. Like, there are other places in Scripture, like in Leviticus, where God says, "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord."

But the religious leaders had taken this verse and taken it out of the courtroom and moved it onto the street. And do you see how that changes the meaning? In the judge's hands, the question is, "What is the most the punishment can be?" And in my hand, it's, "How hard can I hit back?"

I mean, think about how crazy this is: A law given to end personal revenge is now being quoted as permission for personal revenge. The exact thing that it was written to stop is now the thing that is being used to allow it.

Are the Pharisees ignoring scripture? They are not. They would tell you they had the highest view of Scripture. I doubt they're even doing it on purpose. They were the ones trying the hardest to be biblical. They had a verse; they were wrong.

I mean, I was thinking about this this week. Everyone needs to just slow down for a second and think about this: The undercurrent of this whole section is that you can quote the Bible word for word and be wrong about everything. You can quote the verse correctly and carry it into a situation it's not talking about. Have you ever had someone do this to you? Maybe you think, "Have I done this myself?" You have, I'm sure.

And you could feel super confident that you are being biblical because, "Look, I quoted the Bible." Like, you come to some argument and you just read the Bible and you go, "See?" And the person's like, "What?" Like, you can study it, you can memorize it, you can journal about it, and you can wield it and be wrong. Don't assume that the Pharisees aren't passionate about the law. They were. The words were right, the application was wrong, and the wrong application led to doing the exact opposite of what it was for. Is that crazy?

Now, we do this all the time. Some are very harmless. Jeremiah 29:11—a thousand graduation cards, trust me, because I got them all: "I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you." Now, God said that to who? To exiles in Babylon! And the plan was 70 years of staying put. It is a promise of faithfulness for a very long wait, and we make it a promise to have a good job three months after graduation.

The most famous sports verse of all time—everyone knows what it is, right? "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength." It's on cleats, it's on wristbands. Paul wrote it from prison about being content when he was hungry. So a verse that has to do with having nothing has turned into a verse about winning. And those are harmless, right? Like, we see those all the time. We chuckle at them. New believers quote them, and you're like, "That's very sweet of you."

But there are husbands who can quote "wives, submit to your own husbands" while treating their wives the exact opposite of what Ephesians 5 tells them to do. There's the person who can say, "I'm just speaking the truth in love," and they have a lot of truth and no love. There's the person who can walk through the steps of church discipline in Matthew 18, and they're not trying to win anyone back—they're trying to build a case against them.

And the person says, "Well, the Bible says an eye for an eye." They're not actually asking a question; they're asking for permission to do something they want to do. And do you know who quotes the Bible like that better than anyone else? Satan.

In Matthew 4, the devil takes Jesus up to the highest point of the temple and says, "Throw yourself down, for it is written..." and then he quotes Psalm 91:11–12. He quotes it accurately, and Jesus answers him with another verse: "Do not put the Lord your God to the test" (Matthew 4:7). Because the devil had taken a promise that God had made and he turned it into a dare for Jesus. Right words, wrong application, opposite meaning.

And if the devil can quote the Bible to the Son of God, then being able to quote the Bible is not the same as obeying it. We do this all the time.

Here's just like a simple test. I mean, people will be like, "Here are 10 tests to know." You're not going to remember 10; I can't remember 10. Here's one: If you use a verse to give you permission for something the rest of the Bible says "no" to, you've misread the verse. So if you read "an eye for an eye" as personal vengeance, you have misread it to the point where you have to ignore a whole ton of other passages. That's the right verse misapplied. That's really the undercurrent of this whole section.

2. The Right to Get Even Surrendered

All right, I could be on a hobby horse; let's just keep going. The right to get even surrendered—verses 39 to 42. So if "an eye for an eye" belongs to the judge, what am I supposed to do when I'm wronged?

So this is application-heavy. Jesus says, "I tell you, do not resist an evil person" (verse 39). Now, I don't think he's saying that an evil person should not be confronted. I don't think he's saying, you know, the police should go home and the courts should close. I think that this is personal: someone has wronged you. And Jesus says in that moment, don't hit back.

Which now raises the question: Well, what the heck am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to be a doormat? Do I let people run over me? I want to follow Jesus—what does this mean? Do I let them run over my family in the name of Jesus? An intruder comes into my house and I say, "Here, hurt everybody"?

Jesus gives four scenes. Everyone who is listening to him has lived at least one of them. And in every scene, a follower of Jesus has a right, and Jesus says lay it down.

The first right is your dignity: "If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other cheek also." Notice it says "right cheek." And that's important because most of you—all the good people—are right-handed, right? I was born left-handed, and they made me switch, and that's messed me up forever! Okay, now you know. When you're being slapped on the right cheek, you're not being slapped by the left hand; you're being slapped by the backhand of a right hand. That's not a punch; that's an insult. In the first century, it's what you do to someone you consider less than you.

So this is not a verse about being mugged; this is about being humiliated. And every instinct in your body is, "I'm going to make sure they never do that again." And Jesus says let it land. Don't answer in kind. "You hit me on the right? You missed; here's the other side."

For us, it's things like the eye-roll that you get when you go home for Thanksgiving because you mentioned Jesus. It's the coworker who has turned you into a punchline at work. It's the roommate who's just mean to you. I wonder if you could just take it without drafting a comeback in your head and ruminating on it for weeks, without going online to tell everyone your rights were violated. You know, I think Jesus would say to you—he does say in Matthew 5—rejoice and be glad. Let them think what they want.

The second is the right to your possessions: "And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well." So the shirt is your tunic, the inner garment; someone's taking you to court. And then it says the coat. And every Jewish person would have had a red flag go off, because in the law, in Exodus 22, it says if someone has given you their coat as a pledge, you have to give it back to them by sundown because that's the only thing they sleep in. So the law guaranteed you keep your coat. And Jesus says give him that, too!

The very thing that the law protects, just give him that. In other words, be okay to lose. Be okay to lose. Doesn't that just grate against your desire to not lose?

The third is the right to your time and energy: "If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles." Now, every person who heard this in the first century knew what this was. A Roman soldier could grab any civilian and say, "Carry my pack for one mile." And then at the end of the mile, the law said they had to let him go. So every Jew hates this because it's just a reminder they are occupied by somebody. And Jesus says when they force you to go one mile, just keep going.

And the point of this passage isn't like, "Okay, now I've done two, now I'm done." That's a loophole out of this! For us, it's the person that we resent. It's the boss who says, "I need you to do something," at 4:50 when you're walking out the door. It's the parent—kids, you think, "Man, they are being so unfair," and you just say, "I will do not only what is required; I will go the second mile."

The fourth one is the right to your money: "Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you." So no conditions: not if they deserve it, not "do you think they'll give it back to you?" The person who asks, the person who wants to borrow—you're open-handed.

Now, you step back from those and you realize it's not just a list of what you shouldn't do. It doesn't say when they slap you, just stand there; it says offer them the other side. It does not say if they sue you, give them the shirt; it says also give them the coat. It's a passage on generosity towards people who are wronging you.

And you know, this is not some beautiful classroom discussion for the church that they just kind of admired and thought about theoretically. It is literally the game plan of the first 300 years of the church. They didn't have an army, they didn't have a vote, they didn't have protection, they didn't have legal rights. So what did they do?

Well, around AD 150, a philosopher named Justin wrote the Apology (a defense of Christianity) to the emperor to try to explain who the Christians were so they would stop killing them. And he quotes this verse, actually: The Christians are the people who let you strike the other cheek. They are the people who love each other. He talks about how they are people that once hated each other and killed each other, and now they live together and pray for their enemies. That is his argument to the empire to leave them alone. And you know what the empire did? They beheaded him.

Ten years later, a generation later, Tertullian records what the pagans are saying about Christians—not the accusations, but the things that they cannot explain. And the line in his writing that the pagans are saying is, "See how they love one another." That's the observation! Not "see how right they are," not "see how well they defend their rights," but "see how they love one another."

And then, you know what happened? The plague. In the middle of the third century, sickness is coming through cities. And in Alexandria, the bishop Dionysius writes down what happens: The pagans are all fleeing, and they push their sick into the streets; they're abandoned by their own families. That's what you had to do—it's the plague, no one wants to die. And Dionysius said the Christians took all the sick unto themselves and loved their neighbors.

Cyprian, who was in Carthage, told the churches that there was nothing remarkable about caring for their own people, so he sent them out to nurse the very people who had been persecuting them. And if you read historians, all historians say that one of the main reasons that the church grew in this time was the fact that they cared for people during the plagues. In other words, it was not some sort of philosophical argument that won the day; it was people who watched Christians give up their rights and care for people dying in the plague, and then watched the Christians die next to them when they could have just left.

Now, I should pause because I think—actually, I'm 100% sure—the nuance police is chasing you down in your head right now. Like, there are Christians who read "do not resist an evil person" and say a Christian should never use force against any evil. They say, you know, the sword belongs to the state—that's what Romans 13 says—and that's the authority to punish. And they conclude no follower of Jesus should ever be a police officer or a soldier, or ever have any kind of position that would require force. And there are a lot of Christians in history who have believed it, and we should listen to them. They feel like an oddity probably to this group, but in history, there's quite a lot of them.

Yet, when the New Testament talks about soldiers, you don't hear a call for them to quit; you hear a call for integrity and to be content with their pay. I don't think Jesus is saying, "Women, if you're being abused, you should just take it and stay." I don't think he's saying you shouldn't ever call the police if evil is happening. Calling the police is not revenge; calling the police is being safe. It's handing something over to the authorities God has appointed for that.

And the same goes for "give to the one who asks." I mean, what do you do with the person who's on 19th Street every week whose story you have good reason to doubt? Every year, this one family comes through Bozeman with their sick daughter posters. Everyone knows it; it's on Facebook. They just go town to town, and their daughter's sitting there—she's not sick. What does obedience to this verse mean?

I mean, the Apostle Paul later says the one who is unwilling to work shall not eat. So what do you do? Sometimes love means giving something that they're asking for; sometimes it means not. Nobody actually believes, nobody actually lives as if "give to the one who asks" means there's never a circumstance where you would say no.

But I say that knowing that almost no one in this room is in danger of becoming a pacifist, and almost no one in this room is in danger of giving too much. Our danger is the other way. We hear "give to the one who asks," and within three seconds, you've got a list of exceptions in your head. And they're real! But you've got to be careful not to use those exceptions as a way out of obeying what Jesus is probably calling you to do.

And so you can ask yourself: Would I rather fight than give? What is it within me that reaches for a comeback instead of turning the cheek? What is it, when someone takes something from me, that makes me reach for the phone number of a lawyer? When someone needs my time and money, what reaches for an excuse instead of an open hand?

Like, even granting every exception you can think of, why does your heart run to the exceptions right away? James, Jesus' half-brother, says, "What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you?" The fight inside of you to not turn the other cheek is not about an insult, and it's not about a shirt. There's something going on underneath you that drives those exceptions to what Jesus is teaching.

Let me unearth three of them for you:

The first one is this: There is a persona that you have built. You have spent years—I'll just make it first person: I have spent years constructing this version of me as competent, respected. "My parents should know that I've taught my kids the ABCs, even though they can't do it every time they come over. I am not to be trifled with." The backhand across the cheek then threatens that whole persona. And if I let that stand, maybe that's who I am. And so I then defend my image, because the image is where I keep my worth. There's a pastor who said if you can't handle criticism and you can't be wronged without lashing out, it shows that you're not a strong self—you're actually pretty fragile. If you have a self that has to be defended, that is not secure.

I mean, how amazing—let's be honest—how amazing would your life be if someone came up to you and said, "Did you hear what they said? How are you going to respond?" and you said, "Let them talk. Who cares?" Imagine if your whole life was like that! You hear insulting things about you, and it just bounces off. No ruminating in your head, no imaginary conversations, just... okay.

The second one: There's a belief when you don't want to turn the other cheek that "if I do not look out for me, no one will." That is really unbelief. That is saying God does not see.

And then there is this third one—why you fight this. The word is "mine." Mine! Remember the seagulls in Nemo? "Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!" My stuff, my time, my money, my reputation. "And the person asking for something has not earned anything, so why should they have anything? They did not earn it; I earned it." So the reason you hold your coat is because you think it's yours.

And so the fight, the refusal, the defense, and the excuse—they're not really about the other person. They're about you. They're about protecting something inside of you. That is why to turn the other cheek is so hard.

You know, the Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians because Christians are suing each other over property. And Paul says something almost no one in the church would want to hear: "The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already" (1 Corinthians 6:7). "Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?" Here's 1 Corinthians 6 for you: Why not lose?

What is it within you that can't lose? Not because the wrong isn't wrong—it's wrong! But because your worth is not determined by winning. That's where Jesus then meets you. The only way you can live this way is if you know there's someone else keeping an account, and that someone else has paid for this.

3. The Right to Get Even Paid For

And so this is point three: the right to get even paid for. You know, several hundred years before Jesus is up on the Sermon on the Mount giving these words, Isaiah wrote down what the servant of the Lord would say. This is Isaiah 50:6: "I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting."

You know, when we summarize the gospel—which is the core message of the Christian faith, and if you're new and you're like, "What is all this stuff?", here it is—we summarize the core, the very essence of everything, as: Christ was crucified, died, was buried, and rose from the dead, as stated in the Apostles' Creed. And that's true, but it skips some stuff before the cross.

Religious leaders are spitting on him. They blindfold him, they hit him in the face: "Prophesy, Messiah!" Then the Romans take their turn, and they twist a crown of thorns on his head and press it down. They put a royal robe on his back after they've ripped the skin off. They put a reed in his hand as a scepter, and they kneel down before him and say, "Hail, King of the Jews!"

Now hold that up to Matthew 5:

The cheek: They struck his face again and again.

The shirt and the coat: John's gospel says the soldiers took his outer garments and his tunic, and they gambled for them at his feet. This is the craziest scene in the entire New Testament, I think. They are one foot away from the crucified Messiah and they're playing a game. They're one foot away from the most important event in history, and they're throwing dice. There's religion for you.

The mile: They forced Simon of Cyrene to carry the cross. That's how it happened! The Roman soldiers said, "You carry it one mile."

Give to the one who asks: The thief on the cross turns to Jesus and says, "Remember me." And Jesus says, "I will remember you, and today you will be with me in paradise."

So Jesus doesn't just preach Matthew 5; he lives Matthew 5 on his worst day. And he didn't have to! In the garden, Peter pulls out a sword, right? Remember this story? What does Jesus say? "Put that away! Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?"

Jesus is not some sort of soft man, right? He flipped tables in the temple. He stood in front of the religious leaders and said, "Woe to you!" He's not soft on evil. He announces justice, he denounces injustice, he defends other people. What he did not do once is avenge himself.

Every bit of hatred aimed at him was not deserved. And just think about this: The men spitting in his face had their lungs held together by the One they were spitting on! If anyone in history had the right to get even, it was certainly him.

And Peter is close enough to see some of this. Years later, he must have remembered it, because he explains it in 1 Peter 2. What does he say? "When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly." Isn't that Matthew 5? Isn't that the teaching of Jesus in a nutshell?

Earlier, I said we want to get even because we fear that if we don't, no one else will—the wrong will just kind of disappear. And God's answer to that fear is right here. I mean, what does Paul write? "Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' says the Lord" (Romans 12:19). He says that to the people in Rome who, under Nero, will be used as lamps for his garden and as sport in the Coliseum! Every wrong ever done will be answered. God is a better bookkeeper and judge than you are. Let it go.

But on the cross is not only where Jesus absorbed what was done to him; it is where he absorbed what I did to him. And this is the difference. I've spent the whole sermon talking about this as if you're in the third person—like you're on the receiving end. Stand on the other side for a moment and know that you are the offender in somebody's story somewhere. You probably know the person. And know that those offenses are not just against that person; they're against God. And it's all on the books, too.

And I remind you of that because the person who knows the cost God paid Himself on their behalf knows that their account is cleared by such a long distance that they can just let this stuff go. So you can refuse to retaliate, but you're not being a doormat. You are choosing in that moment the most Christlike thing to do that is available to you as a human being.

I don't know if you remember Rachel Denhollander. She was speaking on behalf of multiple assault victims in 2018—a college gymnast. And she asked the court for the maximum sentence for the person who abused all these girls, Larry Nassar. And in the same statement where she asked for that, she told him, "God loved you so sacrificially that he has paid the penalty for your sin that Jesus did not commit." And she offered that grace to him. So she prayed two things: that he would feel the full weight of justice, and that he might find repentance and God's forgiveness—which he needed even more than Rachel's forgiveness.

Justice pursued, vengeance surrendered—all in one statement. She's not anyone's doormat. You and I justify our anger by repeating what was done to us, by nurturing that in our hands. What if, instead, you just say, "I have been genuinely wronged, and that person deserves justice, but I will not retaliate. I will bless instead of curse"?

So I'm telling you, in the application of these verses: You can put the case down. You can delete the draft. You can stop rehearsing the speech in the shower. When their name comes up this week, you can pray for them. Jesus is not asking you to become a person who feels nothing—you feel this! He's asking you to become a person who just opens their hands and gives it back.

So: the right verse misapplied, the right to get even surrendered, the right to get even paid for. And when you realize what God has done for you in Christ at great cost to Himself, you can surrender your rights that seem so crazy in this passage and realize Christ gave it to the Father, and three days later, the Father vindicated him. And one day, the Father will vindicate you.

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