True Maturity
Matthew 5:39 You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you, don’t fight back against someone who wants to do harm to you. If they hit you on the right cheek, let them hit the other cheek too.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like it when other people hurt me. Sometimes it’s intentional, other times not. But however it happens, at that point our natural reaction is to plot our revenge.
Here’s how that works. You and I, we’re made in the image of God and as well as being the God of love, He’s the God of justice, which is absolutely what you’d want an all-powerful God to be … amen?
And since you and I are created in His image, we’ve been given an enormous capacity to love, together with a deeply ingrained sense of justice.
But when someone hurts us, let’s be honest … our natural tendency is to throw love out the window and fall back rather heavily on our sense of justice – a double-sided reaction that leads us down the path of revenge. Jesus knew that, which is no doubt why He said this:
Matthew 5:39 You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you, don’t fight back against someone who wants to do harm to you. If they hit you on the right cheek, let them hit the other cheek too.
Hmm. It’s been said that the true marque of maturity is that when someone hurts you, rather than hurting them back, you try to understand them. I think that’s kind of the point that Jesus is making.
Because when it comes to the likes of thee and me in our sinful rebellion against God, He turned the other cheek through the brutal death of Jesus on that Cross to pay the price of our wrongdoing that His justice demanded.
Turn the other cheek.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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