WHEN SOMEONE DOES something to offend you personally, how do you respond? Do you snap at them angrily? Do you keep your face expressionless or put on a plastic smile, but seethe inwardly? Do you entertain thoughts of what you could say or do to put them in their place, or dream of some form of payback, however small?

And what, specifically, would it mean to respond as a Christian, as one who wants to live in tune with the kingdom of heaven?

THINK BACK TO the story we looked at earlier from Matthew 18, as we pondered the beatitude about mercy. Peter’s question to Jesus could easily be ours: “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me?” (Matt 18:21, NIV). Peter offered what for him was probably a generous number: surely seven times would be more than enough to be righteous? But Jesus quickly burst that bubble by answering, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (vs. 22) — or even “seventy times seven,” depending on how one translates Matthew’s Greek.

Not surprisingly, Jesus immediately followed that startling statement with a parable about the kingdom of heaven. In that story, a king mercifully forgives an enormous debt, and expects the servant who had been forgiven to be similarly merciful to others in turn.

Peter knew that Jesus wanted him to be merciful, but his question presumed that he had at least some right to get back at the person who offended him. He would not have been alone in that assumption. The Law of Moses, after all, taught that anyone guilty of injuring another or damaging their property had to make exact restitution: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And the Pharisees may have extended that principle even to the interpersonal realm, such that Peter would have been within his rights to expect that anyone who sinned against him would be fairly punished.

Note that Jesus doesn’t tell Peter that he’s wrong to be offended in the first place. Nor does he try to convince Peter that what happened wasn’t really wrong. His point, rather, is that in the kingdom of heaven, the king is merciful, even though he had every right to punish the servant, even though justice would have required the servant to pay the entire debt back.

So when someone sins against us, we don’t have to pretend that we’re not hurt by it or that it isn’t sin. Nor is Jesus saying that in principle we have no right to restitution. But if we hunger for the righteousness of the kingdom of heaven, then we need to follow the king’s lead — which sometimes means extending mercy even when we have the right to see our offender punished.

Listen, therefore, to how Jesus counters the eye-for-eye principle of retaliation:

But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. (Matt 5:39)

Those are difficult, dangerous words. They can be twisted to suggest that victims of injustice should never stand up for their rights. They could be used by oppressors to guilt the oppressed into submission. And we can always come up with extreme scenarios to fend off the possibility of having to take what Jesus says seriously: So, what are you saying, Lord? If my children are being threatened by an axe-wielding maniac, I should just stand by and watch?

No. But let’s bring it back to the realm of reality. What if someone insults you? Do you have the right to insult them back? And if you do have that right, do you actually do it? Questions like these are more in line with the examples Jesus himself gives:

If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. (Matt 5:39-42)

To be slapped on the right cheek, assuming the offender is right-handed, means to be struck with the back of the hand — which is not just an act of anger but a humiliating insult. Instead of retaliating and responding in kind, Jesus says, turn the other cheek; in other words, silently present your left cheek to be struck as well. The risk, of course, is that you may be hit a second time. But put yourself in the shoes of the other person: how might they respond when they see such humble dignity?

Similarly, if someone takes you to court to sue you and take your tunic, the inner garment, Jesus says to go above and beyond and let them have your important outer cloak as well. For a poor person, the cloak would have served as a blanket against the cold; for a rich person, the quality of one’s cloak was a mark of status. To volunteer one’s cloak to an adversary would have been a conspicuously humble act.

And so would going the proverbial second mile. Jesus is referring to how, under the dictates of Roman rule, a soldier of the empire could conscript any nearby civilian to carry his equipment for exactly one mile and no more. That first mile could be done out of obligation and fear. But the second? How would a Roman soldier respond to someone who voluntarily carried their gear twice as far as they had to?

These first three examples suggest situations in which a person may feel wrongly or unfairly treated. After all, in context, Jesus is illustrating how to respond to “evil” people. The fourth example seems different — unless one assumes that the person asking for something from you does it repeatedly and never pays you back. But as with the first three scenarios, Jesus is describing a response of both humility and compassion. Don’t turn your back on people who want something from you, he teaches. If we’re to be people of the kingdom of heaven, our actions must account for the needs of the other and not just our own rights.

IF JESUS WERE to preach the sermon today, he would probably use different illustrations. But the teaching that one should “not resist an evil person” would be difficult and countercultural in any age, in any culture.

But we need to be careful. We cannot treat Jesus’ words as a new and stricter law of righteousness, as if his answer to Peter’s question was that poor Peter simply had the math wrong: “Not seven, Peter. The correct answer is seventy-seven. Now go and do likewise.” Rather, both the parable in Matthew 18 and his teaching here in Matthew 5 are meant to give us a vision of the kingdom of heaven as a realm in which humility and compassion, love and mercy rule the day.

I think here of the speech given by Martin Luther King as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. King envisioned a day in which humanity might “evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation.” And let’s not forget: he advocated non-aggression and non-retaliation in the determined pursuit of justice and equal rights.

Jesus is not teaching his disciples to be doormats. He is not telling them to let evil people have their way. But he does want them to catch a vision for how the kingdom of heaven on earth might look. Martin Luther King, I think, had that vision, a vision of shalom, of peace, of how the world should be. And we can too, if we cultivate a hunger to see God transform the world through those who are willing to be salt and light.