Justice, Retaliation, and the Way of Jesus | Matthew 5:38-42
Brian Hedges | February 8, 2026
All right, let’s turn in Scripture to Matthew 5. We’re going to be reading Matthew 5:38-42.
We live in a culture that is endlessly fascinated with stories of revenge, from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, where Shylock demands his pound of flesh, to pretty much every Clint Eastwood movie or Liam Neeson movie. Pick your genre—western or thriller—but every one of the movies has someone seeking vengeance. There’s even a popular TV show called Revenge. Or one of my favorite films of all time, the best of all the Star Trek films, Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, where the great line in the film is Khan, who says to Kirk, “Don’t you know that revenge is a dish best served cold?”
Now, why are we captivated by these stories of revenge? Sometimes it’s the protagonist of the story that’s seeking for revenge, and sometimes it’s a person who is the subject of someone else’s vengeance. But in either case, why is it that these stories captivate us?
I think it is because there’s something deep in our hearts that longs for justice. Revenge is justice gone wrong, but we long for justice, and that longing is not a sinful longing. It’s a God-given longing. We know that the world is broken, we know that evil should not triumph in the end, we know that wrong should not go unanswered. But sin bends those good desires so that instead of wanting to see justice done, we want to do it ourselves. We don’t just want the wrongs addressed; we want to address them. We want payback. We want control. We want to even the score.
That shows up, of course, in dramatic ways on the big screen; it shows up in much more subtle ways in our hearts and lives. It shows up through cutting words, the well-timed put-down, coldness and withdrawal in our relationships, passive-aggressive silence, the carefully worded email or social media post. All of those are ways of sometimes getting back at someone who has hurt us.
That hunger for justice, which is then twisted into retaliation, is exactly what Jesus addresses in Matthew 5:38-42. Let’s read these words.
“You have heard that it was said, ’An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.”
This is God’s Word.
These are some of the most well-known words of Jesus, and they are demanding words; demanding of us personally, but also demanding of our careful thought as we integrate Jesus’ words with everything the Scripture teaches. What I want us to see this morning is that Jesus forbids personal retaliation quite clearly, and at the same time, Jesus forms us as citizens of his kingdom and ultimately, we’ll see this morning that our longing for justice finds its greatest fulfillment in the gospel, in the cross of Christ, and in the hope of God’s coming kingdom.
I think we could work through the passage in these three points:
1. Personal Retaliation and the Distortion of Justice
2. Kingdom Ethics and the Boundaries of Justice
3. Gospel Fulfillment and the Hope for Justice
1. Personal Retaliation and the Distortion of Justice
This is where I really want to focus on the text itself for a moment and try to understand just what it is that Jesus is saying here. He begins by quoting Scripture. “You have heard that it was said, ’An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’”
This is a clear quotation from the Old Testament. It was an Old Testament law of proportional justice—eye for eye, tooth for tooth. You find it in several passages. For example, Exodus 21:23-25 and Deuteronomy 19:21. This was a judicial principle that in the Old Testament was given with a very specific purpose: to restrain violence, to limit punishment, and to ensure proportional justice. It was given to keep someone from taking too much. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, rather than a life for an eye, or a life for a tooth. In other words, this law was meant to stop escalation, not to encourage it.
But by Jesus’ day, the principle had been distorted, and what had been meant to limit vengeance was now being used to justify it on a personal level. The courtroom rule had become a personal ethic: “If you hurt me, I have the right to hurt you back.”
As we’ve seen throughout these examples in Matthew 5, Jesus here is not rejecting the Old Testament law. He’s not rejecting the Old Testament principle. He is correcting its misuse by the scribes and the Pharisees and within popular culture of his day. That’s why he says, “I came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it,” and, “Unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.” So, Jesus here is correcting a distortion of the principle of justice, justice that has been distorted into personal retaliation.
In what Jesus says in the verses that follow, he’s very clearly speaking at the personal level, and he gives us four examples of how we are to respond to personal insult and injury. And I like the wording here of New Testament scholar Charles Quarles, where he kind of works through these examples carefully.
First, Jesus speaks of violent insults. Violent insult. This is the slap. “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Now, just note here, this is not a punch in a fight. This is not someone who is seeking to maim or kill or hurt. Jesus is not here talking about a principle of self-defense. A slap in this culture was an insult. It was a public insult. It was an attempt to shame someone else, and Jesus says, “If someone slaps you, turn to him the other cheek.” In other words, do not defend your honor in that moment when your dignity is attacked.
Now, once again, this is startling. This is shocking. Jesus is giving us very concrete examples in order to shock us and show us a different way of living in his kingdom. So here’s the first example.
The second one is the legal attack. “If anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak also.” The tunic, of course, was the most basic garment; the cloak, sometimes a person’s only covering. And Jesus calls his disciples here to something very radical: to hold on to their basic rights loosely and to go above and beyond in seeking to do good to those who do evil to us.
I don’t think this necessarily means that Jesus is prohibiting legal recourse in any and every situation. But what he is clearly forbidding is the spirit of vengeance.
Third example, the abuse of authority. “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two.” As many people have pointed out, Roman soldiers had the legal right to conscript civilians to carry their gear for a mile. Jewish people were under Roman rule. So here would be a case where their authority figure would conscript them to go for a mile, and Jesus says, do more. Go a second mile.
Again, I don’t think Jesus here is condoning the injustice, but he is calling his disciples to something more, a radical kind of service that quietly undercuts the power of injustice.
Then finally, the fourth example, Jesus speaks to acts of generosity. “Give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.”
Once again, I don’t think Jesus is giving here a universal rule that every time someone asks you for anything you have to give it away. If that was the case, then it wouldn’t be hard for someone to ask enough to eventually lead you into poverty. That’s not the point. The point here is that there is to be a posture in our hearts of generosity, a quickness to respond to others, even when that generosity might be misused.
These are far-reaching examples in their application. The Puritan commentator Matthew Henry helpfully put it like this. He said, “The slap represents a wrong done to my body, the coat represents a wrong done to my possessions, the mile a wrong done to my liberty,” and Frederick Bruner adds that the loan represents a wrong done to my generosity.
So, in a very concrete way Jesus is calling us to something. He’s calling us to refuse retaliation and to be people whose hearts are shaped and formed in the ways of peacemaking, generosity, mercy, and love.
I think it’s important as we read the Sermon on the Mount to remember what it is. Jesus here is not giving us a new law. He’s not giving us a new legal code. This is, as I pointed out many times in the series and as Jonathan Pennington points out in his book, this is virtue ethics. Jesus here is forming and shaping people who live a certain kind of way, and he’s giving us concrete examples of what that might look like. He’s giving us a portrait—a snapshot, if you will—of life in the kingdom of God.
Immediately this calls us to something, doesn’t it? And we could say the application is something like this: we have to learn to name a retaliation in its subtle forms in our lives. Most of us are never going to get in a fistfight. Most of us are never going to throw a punch. But we are going to find ways of very subtly retaliating against others in wrongs that are done against us. Again, it’s things like the passive-aggressive text message, or talking behind someone’s back, tearing down their reputation. We find socially acceptable ways to pay people back for the things they’ve done to us, and Jesus calls us to refuse that, to be ruthless in rooting out the spirit of retaliation and vengeance from our lives.
Practically, this also calls us to refuse the moment of escalation, that decisive moment in a tense conversation. This can happen with a spouse, it can happen with a child, it can happen with a co-worker or with a friend—that moment when something is said that kind of irks us, and there’s the temptation to take things up a notch, to escalate in that moment. The equivalent of turning the other cheek, refusing to push back, to pay back, is for us to be careful with our words and to not escalate in those moments.
Personal retaliation and the whole spirit of vengeance is forbidden by Jesus to the disciples of his kingdom. He is instead shaping us to be something different, a different kind of people.
2. Kingdom Ethics and the Boundaries of Justice
So we need to ask, what is that? What does it look like in real life for us to live as kingdom citizens in this world? So point number two, kingdom ethics and the boundaries of justice.
I’m going to spend a little more time on this point—this is the longest part of the sermon—because these verses have been so differently interpreted by different people throughout history, and even today. These verses confront us with the norms of the kingdom of God, and yet we have to learn how to live as citizens of the kingdom, while we are still citizens of earthly kingdoms.
So I want to wrestle with this by asking two questions. Number one, what does Jesus call us to as citizens of his kingdom? And then secondly, how do we integrate Jesus’ teaching with the rest of Scripture?
(1) What does Jesus call us to as citizens of his kingdom? I’ve basically already stated it. He calls us to not resist or pay back the one who does evil to us. He calls us to non-retaliation. He calls us, positively, to peacemaking, to mercy.
This is a call to the way of the cross. The way of the kingdom is the way of the cross. It is to live as Jesus lived in the world. It is to imitate him in his humility, in his meekness, in his kindness, his generosity, and his willingness to suffer when personal insult and injury was done to him. That’s what he’s calling us to.
Despite his well-known flaws, I think Martin Luther King, Jr., remains one of the clearest historical examples of someone who took Jesus’ teaching here with seriousness and who sought to live without retaliation. He believed that such a life was disciplined, courageous, obedient in the face of real injustice. And as you know, he explicitly grounded his philosophy in the Sermon on the Mount.
Here’s a key quote from King. He said,
“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
That’s what Jesus’ teaching is here. That is the call for every Christian: to be the kind of person who does not retaliate, who does not return evil for evil, but who returns good for evil.
That’s why these teachings of Jesus are so deeply grounded in the Beatitudes that Jesus began with in the Sermon on the Mount, this portrait of the flourishing life, the good life that belongs to the meek, that belongs to the peacemakers and the sons of God, that belongs to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (which means, at least in part, a hunger and thirst for justice in a world where justice is so often missing). It’s a demanding call to us to be the kinds of people who follow Jesus in the way of the cross as we wait for God’s justice. That’s what Jesus calls us to as citizens of the kingdom.
(2) Second question then: how do we integrate Jesus’ teaching with the rest of Scripture? This is a difficult needle to thread, because faithful Christians, taking Jesus with full seriousness, have come to different conclusions, especially when it comes to issues of Christian involvement in the secular structures of the world. Should a Christian be a law enforcement officer? Should a Christian serve in the military? Can a Christian go to war? Do the words of Jesus lead us to pacifism?
So on one hand, the Anabaptist tradition, which I think deserves serious engagement here, has consistently insisted that Jesus means exactly what he says and that Christians should be willing to suffer anything rather than inflict violence in any way shape or form. And so the Anabaptist tradition has said that Christians should refuse military service or other civic involvement that would violate their conscience, their understanding of Jesus’ teaching. If you want to read a thoughtful articulation of that position today, read Scott McKnight in his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are Christians who have cautioned that pacifism, while seeming noble, can cloak motives that are less than noble. In this example, you might consider C.S. Lewis, who wrote a very thoughtful essay, “Why I Am Not a Pacifist.” Lewis insists that Jesus’ command here absolutely forbids personal retaliation. Certainly Jesus forbids us to do anything on the personal level, but Jesus here is not speaking to issues of government, is not giving us a universal moral rule that applies in all the systems of the world, an imperfect world. And he encourages us to be very careful, thoughtful, examining our moral positions.
There’s a tension here between those two perspectives, and it helps us to see that obedience to Jesus calls us to personal discernment, searching of the Scriptures, and searching of our own conscience.
My view is that a canonical reading of Scripture, listening to the whole Bible together, shows that Jesus is not rejecting civil government as such. He’s not rejecting courts, or law enforcement, or even the tragic necessity of war in some circumstances, even though he is pointing us to a kingdom that in its consummation will rid us of the need of all those things. But there is an acknowledgment in Scripture that God has ordained human authority for at least the purpose of restraining evil.
I agree with another scholar that I’ve not quoted here before, Charles Talbert, who argues that there may be occasions when love for one’s neighbor trumps one’s commitment to nonviolence. There may be times when, in order to defend the innocent, or the helpless, or the needy, even the Christian has to fight back. It’s always tragic. It’s always something he would do reluctantly, but sometimes necessary.
The New Testament holds these two things together. Romans 12:17, “Repay no one evil for evil.” Paul here is very clearly quoting the words of Jesus. But then in the next chapter, Romans 13, Paul says “the governing authorities are God’s servants for your good.”
Those aren’t contradictions. Those are complementary perspectives that remind us that while personal retaliation and vengeance is always forbidden for the Christian, there are structures and systems, imperfect as they are, in the world that we have to live with, and we have to some degree inhabit while we wait for the fullness of Christ’s kingdom.
So let me suggest two applications here, and then try to bring it home with a couple of illustrations.
(1) First application: we have to learn to distinguish responsibility from revenge. There is a distinction between those two things. Sometimes we have a responsibility to oppose that which is evil, and it’s different from taking revenge.
Let me say this very clearly without any equivocation: for those who are victims of a crime, it is right and necessary to report abuse, to seek protection, to pursue accountability. Jesus’ teaching does not mean don’t report the abuser. Jesus’ teaching does not mean let the wrongdoing continue.
Biblical teaching gives us plenty of examples of appealing to lawful authorities in situations where basic rights have been violated. You see this even with the apostle Paul in the book of Acts. When he is unjustly persecuted, he will claim his rights as a Roman citizen, and he will make an appeal to Caesar.
There are times when it is exactly the right thing to do, to report or to oppose that wrongdoing which has harmed you or very likely will harm someone else. We never do that in a way that seeks to savor and relish the punishment of a wrongdoer, we never do it in a way that dehumanizes the offenders or that takes justice into our own hands. We refuse personal retaliation, even while we entrust justice to God and to the imperfect systems and structures that God has put in place.
(2) That means that we must learn to live faithfully within those imperfect systems, and sometimes that may mean that Christians are called to serve in those systems. And again, I think each Christian has to wrestle with this on the personal level.
Let me give you two examples, both of which I have found inspiring. These are historical examples, but there are also wonderful films made of these two figures. These are two characters, two figures in history who fought in World War II and World War I.
The first figure is Desmond Doss. If you’ve ever seen the movie Hacksaw Ridge, Desmond Doss was portrayed by Andrew Garfield. He was a Christian. He was a Seventh-day Adventist who refused to carry a weapon in World War II, and yet he insisted on serving his country. He did not want to kill, but he wanted to serve. And there was not an ounce of cowardice in this man, and he proved that by the end when he served as a medic, and he would run into enemy fire again and again and again to rescue those who were wounded and take them back to safety. This is an amazing story. This is one of my favorite, if not my very favorite, of all war films. If you haven’t seen it and you can handle the realistic violence, I’d recommend it to you.
The second figure is Alvin C. York, portrayed in a much older film, an easier film to watch, portrayed by Gary Cooper. He initially objected to war when he was drafted for World War I because of the biblical teaching not to kill. He was a Christian; he took very seriously the teaching, “You shall not kill.” He knew that to go to war would involve killing, and so he was a conscientious objector.
But he wrestled and prayed through Scripture, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, render to God the things that are God’s.” And he eventually concluded that it was his civic duty to serve, not to take life, but in order to protect life. And he became something of a war hero in World War I. But his obedience was costly and anguished as he wrestled with his conscience on these issues.
Brothers and sisters, we have to do similar things in our own lives as we think through our involvement in the imperfect, fallen systems of the world and seek to be involved in a way that honors the teaching of Jesus and the whole teaching of Scripture. We do that while we keep our trust anchored in the gospel fulfillment and the hope for justice. We see this, of course, in the cross.
3. Gospel Fulfillment and the Hope for Justice
So point number three, briefly. Jesus gives us a difficult command here, but it’s not just a command that Jesus gives, it is also a path that Jesus himself walks.
Listen to the prophecy of Isaiah of the suffering servant.
“I gave my back to those who strike,
and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard;
I hid not my face
from disgrace and spitting.”
I mean, Jesus literally turned the other cheek in every way possible.
We see it in Matthew’s Gospel—Matthew, who presents Jesus again and again as this suffering servant of Isaiah. And when we get to the passion narrative in Matthew 26 we read, “Then they spit in his face and struck him, and some slapped him, saying, ’Prophesy to us, you Christ! Who is it that struck you?’” Jesus did not retaliate.
When Jesus was cursed, he did not curse in return. He blessed. He prayed for his persecutors. Peter says, 1 Peter 2:23, “When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but committed himself to him who judges justly.”
There’s the key. This is how Jesus lived that way, this is how we are to live this way in the world. We commit ourselves to him who judges justly. We don’t take justice into our own hands, but we trust that there is a good and a just God, and we entrust ourselves to him.
The cross and the resurrection, the cross and the empty tomb, are the great answers of the gospel to the problem of injustice in the world. The cross, because at the cross Jesus takes injustice onto himself. He lets violence and evil do its worst to him, and he defeats it, not by mirroring it, but by absorbing it into his own body. In the resurrection, we have the hope that evil is overcome through the life of Jesus and through the coming kingdom of God.
That means that we can respond to injustice in our own lives in a couple of ways.
(1) First of all, entrust your story to God. I know that some of you have suffered injury and insults, mistreatment, malignment, abuse, maybe persecution; and I know that you have not seen justice fully met. If God were not both good and just, your story might end in despair. But the gospel tells us that he is both good and he is just. The gospel shows us that God has not forgotten us, that God has not forgotten our suffering, but he has entered into that suffering and that he will see to it that righteousness prevails.
That means, friends, that you and I do not have to control the outcomes in our lives. Instead, we can entrust ourselves to God, who judges justly. We do not have to balance the scales of justice ourselves; instead, we believe the promise, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
(2) Secondly, we are called to follow Jesus in the way of the cross. The way of the cross is the way of suffering. It is the way of non-retaliation. It is the way of love. And that becomes possible for us only as we keep our eyes closely on Jesus; when we watch him, we follow him, we learn to keep in step with him, and when we wait for the ultimate hope of justice in our world.
Here is the hope, Revelation 11:15. There is coming a day when “the kingdom of the world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”
You and I are already, if we’re Christians, we’re already citizens of the coming kingdom. We’re under the reign of God. But we live in a world that is not fully and visibly and demonstrably under the reign of God yet. That’s why we pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done.” We’re praying for the day when his kingdom will be fully present, and when the kingdom of this world, fallen as it is right now, will someday be fully aligned, submitted to, and under the reign of God forever and ever.
That’s our hope. And when that day comes, justice will reign, peace will reign. It will only be a world characterized by goodness, justice, and peace. But right now, we’re in the posture of waiting, waiting for that kingdom, and following Jesus in the way of the cross. That’s why we sing these words:
“Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave and follow thee;
Destitute, despis'd, forsaken,
Thou from hence my all shall be.
“Let the world despise and leave me;
They have left my Savior, too;
Human hearts and looks deceive me;
Thou art not, like them, untrue;
O while thou dost smile upon me,
God of wisdom, love, and might,
Foes may hate, and friends disown me;
Show thy face, and all is bright!”
There’s a comfort that we find as we follow Jesus in the way of the cross.
Jesus calls us to turn the other cheek, to refuse retaliation, and to wait for justice. We do that not in our own strength, we do it in faith as we trust in him. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for God’s justice, for they will be satisfied.
Let’s pray.
Father, these are hard words, in some ways, because they call us to deny ourselves and to follow Jesus in a way that requires humility and meekness, a way that calls us to a kind of love for others that we do not have in and of ourselves. But as we think of Jesus and his example, as we think of the gospel and all that it promises to us, and as we remember that as citizens of your kingdom we are also the recipients of your Spirit, we can receive these words this morning with hope that we can live as citizens of your kingdom in the here and now; that we can follow in this way of the cross, that you can fill our hearts with love, that you can help us to be peacemakers in this broken world, and in doing so to be ambassadors of Christ.
So we ask for that now. We ask for that grace, we ask for the help of your Spirit. We ask you, Lord, to search out our hearts this morning for the least hint of retaliation, of a spirit of vengeance, and rid our hearts of that, Lord. Help us remember how greatly you have shown mercy to us, how much you have forgiven us, and how through the blood of the cross you have brought us to peace, peace with you. Then, Lord, help us to extend that same mercy, that same forgiveness, that same peace to those who treat us wrongly.
We ask you to draw near to us as we come to the Lord’s table this morning, and just as we expect your word to be a means of grace to strengthen, inform, and shape our hearts and our minds, we pray that the table would be that as well; that as we taste and see your goodness at the table, we would once again be amazed at the dying love of Jesus, what he has suffered for us, and would therefore seek to follow him in faithfulness. So draw near to us in these moments as we seek you. We pray this in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
