11th Week in Ord. Time, Monday – 16th June 2025 – 2 Cor 6,1-10; Mt 5,38-42
Example of Faithful Strength
In this extended teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has been redefining for His listeners what it means to be righteous. His audience have been taught by Israel’s religious leaders of the “law of retaliation”, summed up in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This expresses God’s system of justice (Deut 19,21), which was established to limit violence and revenge. The point of “eye for an eye” is meant that punishment is to be proportional to the crime, rather than an ever-increasing cycle of revenge. Jesus is going beyond the letter of the law and declares that it is wrong to seek personal revenge. Further he says, what others mean for abuse and insult, Christians can turn into an example of faithful strength or turn upside down through love. His purpose is twofold. First, to uncover the true heart of God for His people, as revealed in those commandments. Second, to demonstrate that no person can hope to be “good enough” to earn heaven on their own merit (Mt 5,20.48). Here Jesus, in personal terms, sets a more challenging standard. Limiting revenge is not God’s intent for the hearts of His people. Refusing revenge is God’s will and Jesus’ command to His followers (Rom 12,19). This does not mean Christians cannot flee, nor does it mean that blatant violence and evil should be met with total pacifism (Lk 22,36). It simply means that as far as we’re able, Christians are not to “return evil for evil” (Rom 12,20-21).
