Turn the Other Cheek…Seriously?
Welcome to Peniel CrossRoads, where we embrace Jesus’s heart and together live out the call to biblical unity!
Have you ever considered how peaceable the world would be if people lived out the Sermon on the Mount? (See Matthew Chapters 5-7.) Even people who do not follow Jesus and think he is completely naïve all agree that, if the world could do what Jesus taught, wars would end, and poverty might be eradicated.
I suppose the first time I really lived out the Sermon on the Mount was in seventh grade. I grew up in church, so I was taught the Bible from my earliest days. But I really experienced the truth, wisdom, and power of Jesus’s words when I put them into practice as a 13-year-old.
For some reason, another student thought I would make a great punching bag during gym class. (Why do bullies always come out in gym class?) I felt I was already too old to handle the problem by tattling on him to the teachers. So, I simply endured whatever he gave out.
Near the end of the first semester, we were getting our final grades for gym class. As I recall, the coach had us run around the basketball court in one minute. If a student made it around two times, he got a C and if he ran three times, then a B. But if you could make it all the way around four times, you would get an A. I had already run two laps for my C, and as I sat there, I watched my bully run his laps. I naturally counted: one, two, three, four laps! Not bad.
As the whistle blew, and the running stopped, the coach started calling out grades. He shouted to my bully, “Three laps; that’s a B.” But I knew I had counted four laps, so I shouted out, “No, Coach. He did four.” Coach nodded without argument and said, “Ok, that’s an A.”
It is not hard to imagine what happened afterwards. The guy never hit me again. In fact, he started to stick up for me!
I will never forget that time I lived out the words I had only read before. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also…. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:38-39, 44-45, emphasis added)
These lines correspond with what Jesus said earlier in the same sermon. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (Matthew 5:9)
When we bless those who curse us—when we turn the other cheek—then we are acting the way God’s children should. We are acting as our Father in heaven has treated us, the One who “so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
What difficult situations do you recognize as an opportunity to love those who persecute you? How might the love and glory of God be made manifest in our obeying Jesus’s words on the Mount?
Lord, grant us the power to obey Your words and to follow Your example, to the glory of Your Name!!! In Jesus’s Name, Amen.