Beyond Retribution
Rethinking Justice, Resistance, and Love in Matthew 5:38-42
You heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you: don’t use violence to resist evil! Instead, when someone hits you on the right cheek, turn the other one towards him. When someone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your cloak, too. And when someone forces you to go one mile, go a second one with him. Give to anyone who asks you, and don’t refuse someone who wants to borrow from you. Matthew 5:38–42
This week’s saying is a challenging one. The statements Jesus makes hit us at our core. Are we really meant to give everything people ask to borrow from us? This was certainly a challenge we had to learn to navigate in Kenya. Living in a village, there were so many needs around us daily. It was not uncommon for ten different people to come to our home in a single day, each with some unmet need. Yet we could not provide for all their needs while also caring for our own family. How do we manage this tension? How do we live this out?
This passage seems to bring us to a point where different Christian streams of thought begin to diverge. Different theologians interpret this teaching in distinct ways, and while earlier in the Sermon the divisions may have seemed small, here the divide becomes more pronounced—making them harder to cross.
Again, as we read this passage, we must keep in mind the previous movements of the Sermon. Jesus has been offering difficult teachings, and He expects His followers to live them out—not on their own strength, but through His.
One perspective tends to limit the scope of this passage. This view is represented by pastors such as Martin Lloyd-Jones. His interpretation is more constrained than others. He writes, “The first main principle is that this teaching is not for nations or for the world. Indeed, we can go further and say that this teaching has nothing whatever to do with a man who is not a Christian.”[1]
Lloyd-Jones takes an individualistic approach to this passage and to the Sermon as a whole. He further writes, “This has nothing to do with nations or so-called Christian pacifism… That was the whole tragedy of Tolstoy.”[2] In this statement, he is referencing Leo Tolstoy and his strong pacifist reading of this text. Lloyd-Jones believes this teaching applies only to the individual and only within personal relationships. It therefore does not affect the soldier fighting for his country.[3]
This position, often supported by conservative theologians, tends to interpret this passage—and the Sermon more broadly—as addressing the individual’s personal relationship with God. It is not seen as applying to governments, laws, or war.
This is where I find myself in disagreement with Lloyd-Jones and similar perspectives. They are reading the Sermon through an individualistic lens, but Jesus lived, taught, and ministered within a deeply communal worldview. To impose a modern Western individualism onto this text does not make good sense. Yes, we as individuals must choose to follow Christ—but we do so within a community.
Jesus must be speaking beyond mere individual action. Each of these commands—turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, give your cloak, give to those who ask—involves another person. This is inherently relational and communal. I do not believe the ethic Jesus is teaching here is simply private; it is meant to be public.
This does not mean governments themselves “turn the other cheek,” but it should shape how followers of Jesus who serve within governments make decisions. Their allegiance to Christ must come before their allegiance to the state.
On the other side of the theological divide is a perspective represented by Tolstoy and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For Bonhoeffer, the church is meant to be an alternative community, not a political instrument. He writes, “The right way to requite evil, according to Jesus, is not to resist it. This saying of Christ removes the Church from the sphere of politics and law. The Church is not to be a national community like the old Israel, but a community of believers without political or national ties.”[4]
Bonhoeffer’s reading moves beyond the individual to the corporate body. As a collective, the church is to embody these ethics together.
What I find particularly interesting about both Tolstoy and Bonhoeffer is that their theology emerges in times of war. They are not writing from places of peace, but from deeply contested and painful contexts. When I read contemporary theology from Palestinian Christians, I encounter similar themes. It is important for us to recognize that these theological positions often emerge from dark and difficult spaces. Their perspectives offer a necessary voice—especially for those of us living in relative peace.
Bonhoeffer critiques the conservative perspective directly: “The Reformers… distinguished between personal sufferings and those incurred by Christians in performance of duty…maintaining that the precept of non-violence applies to the first but not to the second…. the Reformers justified war and other legal sanctions against evil… {Jesus} says nothing about that.”[5]
Now, returning to Matthew’s Gospel, we see that Jesus is teaching His followers how to live within His kingdom. We are called to choose love over retribution. A Jonathan Pennington writes, “Jesus’s command to love one’s enemies is unique and new in claiming… It is the high point of God’s demands upon his people.”[6]
God is elevating our response. When we live this way, we demonstrate a life that runs counter to the kingdom of the world and aligns instead with the kingdom of heaven. Jesus is not merely issuing prohibitions; He is forming a people into something new and better. We move beyond retribution toward embodied love.
Scot McKnight argues that Jesus is creating an alternative community—one that stands against the patterns of the world.[7] Jesus reinterprets the law, exposing its distortions and reshaping it in alignment with the kingdom. “Jesus’ followers’ dwell in an alternative society that protests systemic injustice and embodies an alternative love-shaped justice.”[8]
Similarly, Stanley Hauerwas suggests that Jesus is helping us imagine an entirely new way of being. Turning the other cheek is not passive—it is disruptive. It is a form of resistance. It is like a child who laughs when being spanked, rendering the punishment ineffective. To go a second mile with a Roman soldier would have been a creative act that exposed the injustice of the system. Hauerwas writes that we are meant “to see our lives in a radically new way.”[9]
Personally, I find myself living in the tension. I am drawn toward the pacifist vision more than the traditional Reformed position, especially as I consider the communal nature of Jesus’ teaching. At the same time, I recognize the complexity of systems like government and justice.
So I end with this question:
Are these challenging words of Jesus meant simply to shape individual behavior?
Or is Jesus forming a community of witnesses who will embody His kingdom together?
[1] David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (1959; 3rd ed., W.B. Eerdmans, 2001), 243.
[2] Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 244.
[3] Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 244.
[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 3rd ed. (Touchstone, 1995), 141.
[5] Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 143.
[6] Jonathan T. Pennington, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary, Paperback edition (Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2018), 201.
[7] Scot McKnight, Sermon on the Mount, ed. Tremper Longman, The Story of God Bible Commentary (Zondervan, 2016), 123.
[8] McKnight, Sermon on the Mount, 125.
[9] Stanley Hauerwas, Jesus Changes Everything: A New World Made Possible, Plough Spiritual Guides (Plough, 2025), 39.