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The principle of retaliation

Matthew 5:38-42:

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:  But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil:  but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

If any many will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away

This principle concerns our response to being wronged.

Evil is not to be resisted

Evil is not to be resisted either actively or passively. It is, of course, possible to passively resist evil. A person may not react in actions or words whilst still reacting in their hearts. Outward retaliation is often suppressed for various reasons (sometimes because the other guy is bigger!) but the wrong reaction is still there. Whilst some thus resist in their hearts and are angry, resentful and bitter, others react outwardly by their words and deeds. However, any of this kind of resistance, either active or passive, is wrong. Simply because love dictates a positive response.

Jesus teaches us that there is a response to be made when evil is done to us.  The answer is not to just grit your teeth, clench your fists and count to ten!   There is further teaching on this point in Romans 12:1721:

“Recompense to no man evil for evil.  Provide things honest in the sight of all men.  If it is possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.   Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine;  I will repay, saith the Lord.

Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him;  if he thirst, give him drink:  for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.

Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.”

The phrase, “provide things honest in the sight of all men” is better translated, “take thought of things honourable in the sight of all men”.  Apart from God and the heavenly host, we are surrounded by many human witnesses and we are to be an example to them of the right way to respond to evil.

Obnoxious Christians

Verse 18 teaches us that we are responsible in as much as it is in our bands, to live at peace with all men. We certainly know that we will not have ready acceptance with the world because we belong to another system  God’s system. This does not mean, however, that we have a licence to go around being obnoxious!   Some people who tended to be obnoxious anyway, having become Christians now go around bugging people whilst using Christianity as the reason for their rejection by the people they bug.

Christians are not supposed to go around being difficult and offensive as such. We do not have some God given right to embarrass and humiliate people. In some cases, Christians have in their zeal to be a “witness” succeeded in alienating people from them and have only caused them offense, embarrassment, and hurt. One of my fellow-students at Bible College, was a classic example of this kind of Christian.   Other students avoided riding with him in buses or streetcars because he would, more often than not, buttonhole the first “unsaved heathen” who happened to sit next to him. He would make sure he gave them the gospel alright, and in such a loud voice and insensitive manner, as to cause great embarrassment to his “victim” as well as to any unfortunate Christian friend who happened to be with him at the time!

Recognise Evil

To get back to the main point of this study, we are certainly to recognise any evil done to us for what it is. When evil has been done God never pretends that it has not. It is not in evading the fact that evil has been done to us that we learn to handle it, rather it is in recognising it for what it is and then responding as we should.

We are to see to it that in our response we do not in fact, multiply the evil that has been done. It is not how you act but how you react that counts. For whereas the action is a considered response, and whilst being technically correct may not be a true indication of our inner condition the reaction is that initial spontaneous response which is far more indicative of the kind of person we really are.

God is the judge

To give place to wrath (Romans 12 v.19) is that deliberate refusal to allow yourself to react in anger when wronged. The reason for leaving the meting out of vengeance to God is that he has taken it upon himself to see that accounts are always settled. He is a vindicating God and we must be very careful not to yield to the temptation to settle our own accounts.

If someone has hurt you, there is no way you can be an impartial judge in the situation. God is impartial for he loves all men equally and so he alone is fit to judge rightly and then execute whatever vengeance may be necessary.

James and John once wanted to call down fire from heaven on a village where they had been rejected, but Jesus rebuked them. Their hurt was not so much at the rejection of their message but the rejection of themselves. They wanted to take vengeance into their own hands because they had been hurt. Jesus made it plain to them that the God who had indeed sent down fire from heaven in judgment on people in times past, was not about to do so because they had been hurt.

Wronging and righting

When a person wrongs you and you “right” him, you are doing something positive to meet his need instead of retaliating and so you give him an opportunity to sense God’s judgment concerning his sin.  Hence the coals of fire of verse 20.  Not fire of retaliation, but fire of conviction and purging.

As soon as you seek to thus positive respond, the “chain reaction” of wrong reactions (he wronged you, so you wrong him back and so on) is broken and the one who wronged you has an opportunity to see his wrong in contrast to your “right”. It is not possible for any of us to be removed out of God’s will other than by our own choice. A wrong reaction on our part can, therefore, take us out of God’s will whilst all the wrong in the world being done to us by another cannot do so. Such a wrong reaction will cause us to be “overcome of evil” (verse 21). That is, we are overcome by the evil which came to us, not because it came but because of our reaction.

It is not that which a person does to us but that which we do back which may hurt us and take us out of God’s will. If you keep yourself clean from a wrong reaction, you make the way for the one who has wronged you to do the right thing and you avoid being contaminated by his wrong. No wrong reaction on our part can be excused on the basis of “what he did to me”. We stand or fall by what we do back to him. Just as we cannot get away with the excuse “the devil made me do it” we cannot blame others however evil they have been toward us, for our wrong reaction.

Evil is always overcome by good

Cursing and blessing

There was a time when I and others in my church were ministering to a young man who had been heavily involved in witchcraft and satanism.  One of his close friends who was similarly involved, became very angry and informed him that he was putting a curse on us. The young man rang me very concerned and agitated for he well knew that such curses were real and powerful. In desperation, he said, “we’ll have to put a counter-curse on him !  As this was the only way he knew to deal with curses.

I then explained to him that light always overcomes darkness, good always overcomes evil and that blessing always overcomes a curse. “That’s beautiful,” he said in amazement. We then prayed together and blessed his friend in the name of Jesus.

You see, we did not have to fight the curse we overcame it.

Resentment and bitterness

Proverbs 24:29 says,

“Say not, I will do so to him as he hath done to me:  I will render to the man according to his work”.

Many people carry resentment and bitterness in their lives for years. They refuse to relinquish their wrong feelings about the “someone who did something wrong to them in the past” Resentment is an unforgiving attitude against another. It is in fact, tantamount to cursing the person, but as with all curses the greater ultimate harm is done to the one who does the cursing. Resentment and bitterness are killing things  killing to the one who carries them in his heart.

This is again underlined in 1 Peter 3:9,

“Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing;  but contrariwise blessing:  knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing.”

If a millionaire were to offer you assistance, you would most likely expect that assistance to be in the form of cash because that is his greatest resource. Likewise, if we, having been made inheritors of a blessing, are to pass anything on to people it must be a blessing  for that is our greatest resource.

If we throw back at evildoers that which they have thrown at us, we display that we are as they are. The temptation to deal out “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is a real one. Yet the blessing we give must be from the heart and not a “God bless you” said between clenched teeth.

There will be times when it will seem that by everything that is right we have been wronged and that we, therefore, have every right and every reason to react in retaliation and resentment. And yet all we have to offer is a blessing.  It is our privilege to bless when we are wronged and only God’s children have that privilege.

Suffering wrongfully

1 Peter 2:19-25,

“For this is thank-worthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently?  but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.   For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth.

Who when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not;  but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:  Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness:  by whose stripes ye were healed.

For ye were as sheep going astray;  but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.”

We may think it bad enough to suffer rightfully  to get what we deserve  let alone wrongfully! Yet here we read that God finds very acceptable our right response to wrong treatment. There is no glory in bravely and patiently enduring your just desserts. Our “conscience toward God”  our desire to please God above all coupled with our willingness to see him as being in control of every situation is to be the motivating force for rightly handling wrong treatment. No man has ever been so greatly wronged as was Jesus for no man has ever been so right as he was.

Yet being so totally right, he was terribly wronged and in his reaction to being wronged he set for us an example of right response to wrong treatment. He showed us how to handle evil when it comes against us. He could have reviled, he could have fought, he could have enlisted the aid of hundreds of angels to rescue him and destroy his captors, but he chose not to. What we were (verse 25) is no longer to influence what we are for we have no learned God’s way.

God makes it possible

There will be times when it will seem virtually impossible for you to respond rightly yet remember that if, in obedience to God, you set out to do that which it seems you cannot do, he will provide the grace and strength for you to do it.

Tony Kostas

Tony Kostas was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1941, where at the age of seventeen, he committed his life to Jesus at a Billy Graham Crusade. In 1967 he founded the Melbourne Outreach Crusade, a non-denominational evangelistic outreach. This later grew into Outreach International, which is now a worldwide body of believers, who share a God-given calling and are committed to live in love with Him and with one another.

Tony’s life is a true expression of all that God has revealed to him throughout the years, in its purity and focus on loving God. His passion is for God to have the desire of His hears: a people who truly represent Him because they are His and His alone.