How are we to treat our enemies? The question should make one give pause. Do I have enemies? What does an “enemy” look like in a society in which we are simply free to turn away from or ignore those who grate against us? For most of us, we are not called to face those who have murdered our loved ones, as did many after the Rwandan genocide of the early 1990’s. We must instead look to understand how to face those who have wronged us in both large and small ways.  

Matthew 5:38-48 offers us a new approach to justice. Verse thirty-eight refers to the Old Testament law that prevented escalating retaliation. Instead of partaking in the common practice of paying back wrongdoing with greater retribution, God was calling his people to practice even-handed justice. In Matthew, however, Jesus points out that equal retaliation cannot work because the human heart always turns justice into vengeance. The more we are hurt, the more we justify escalating the wrongs. We are also unable to work out complete justice because there is a perpetrator in us all. The scales will never be even.

This new approach to justice also requires that we stand in battle against this escalating retaliation. The call to turn the other cheek does not mean to stand passively and receive wrongdoing. For a right-handed person to strike another person on their right cheek would require a backhanded slap. This was a cultural sign on disrespect. One would only use a backhanded slap against someone who was considered lesser than. “Turning the other cheek” is a call for the one who is slapping to acknowledge the other as an equal, not as an inferior. This reveals a refusal to compromise what is right, but also a refusal to resort to the cycle of escalating violence. This is not a retaliatory equality, but is instead the restoration of equality.  

In this passage, Jesus also offers a new approach to love. Verses 46-47 reveal that loving those who love you will not confront the evil that plagues our world. It is easy for us to love those who are lovely to us. Love is not love if it merely responds to the beauty and goodness of others. Love is love when it creates a beauty in the midst of ugliness, goodness in the face of hostility.  

Jesus is calling us love our enemies—the unlovely, the wrongdoing, the difficult to love. The following excerpt from “Loving Your Enemies” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. exemplifies what this principle would look like. 
 

“[The command to love your enemies is not] the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, [it is instead] an absolute necessity for our survival … [In the face of oppression] we are tempted to become bitter and to retaliate with a corresponding hate.  But if this happens, the new order we seek will be little more than a duplicate of the old order.  We must in strength and humility meet hate with love … Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend … Of course, this is not practical … [but] My friends, we have followed the so-called practical way for too long a time now, and it has led inexorably to deeper confusion and chaos … [Instead] To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering.  We shall meet your physical force with soul force.  Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you … Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you.  Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer.  One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves.  We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.’” 

Where then do we find the resource to employ this revolutionary type of love? The disciples would surely look back on this teaching of Jesus after the crucifixion and resurrection, and it would take on a completely different meaning for them. They watched as Jesus, and innocent victim, gave his eye and tooth to make retribution for every act of hatred we harbored in our hearts. They watched as he turned his other cheek again and again as we jeered at him, spat upon him, and brutalized him. They watched as Jesus was forced to walk an extra mile carrying not our cloak, but a cross. They watched as Jesus loved his enemies to the end, at the cost of his life. To their amazement, they watched Jesus, with his dying breath, prayed not for justice for his oppressors, but for their forgiveness.  

In Christianity, God does not just command a new kind of justice, he accomplishes it for us first. While we were enemies, Christ died for us. He wore us down with his capacity to suffer. He won freedom, not only for himself, but also for us. By his death, he appealed to our hearts and won us in the process. He won the double victory, and redeemed us, his perpetrator, through his suffering. On the cross, Jesus was both Pain-Bearer and Sin-Bearer.  He suffers with you as a victim and suffers for your perpetrator. That has transformed the world. That is what shapes the Christian view to how we treat our enemies.