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Home Matthew 5:38-42 NRSVue

Matthew 5:38-42 NRSVue

38“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39But I say to you: Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also, 40and if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give your coat as well, 41and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. 42Give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (NRSVUE)

“Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.”

Reflection on Matthew 5:38-42

Inspiration from 2025-06-16 Daily Prayer

The human race has made slow progress in its understanding of the ways of God. In the primitive understanding of God’s people, it was okay for God to get angry and vengeful. But God, who never changes, did not do that. Here, Jesus clearly reveals to us that our God is a God of mercy and love for all. And Jesus calls us to ‘be merciful, as your Heavenly Father is merciful’ (Luke 6:36).

Further reflection

This is a hard one: to offer the wicked no resistance, but turn the other cheek. Where will it leave us? I think of Belloc’s couplet: /Pale Ebeneezer thought it wrong to fight, But Battling Bill who killed him thought it right./

What do you mean by it, Lord? I watched when your face was slapped before the high priest Caiaphas. You answered calmly: /If I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?/ Your resistance was moral, not physical or violent. That calls for greater courage and strength than taking up arms: Gandhi, not Cromwell.

I try to listen to these words of Jesus not as law-giving, perhaps not even as a sermon, but as a message that is given for my freedom. Jesus wants me to be free of limits that I may have set upon myself by imagining others wrongly. I pray that attitudes and actions may change by my acting in the freedom that Jesus gives.

I often look to God for what I want and often receive what I need. I think of how I might be generous to those who look to me.

Jesus calls us to look beyond the limit of the law. We need to be generous and imaginative if we are to rise beyond the restrictions that life presents.