Scripture Daily

Context No. 696 of 4322 · Luke

Context · Reflection

Luke 6:27-31: in context

27“But I tell you who hear: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you. 29To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer also the other; and from him who takes away your cloak, don’t withhold your coat also. 30Give to everyone who asks you, and don’t ask him who takes away your goods to give them back again. 31“As you would like people to do to you, do exactly so to them.

This is from Luke's Sermon on the Plain, and it is the teaching people most admire from a distance and most avoid up close. Jesus states it without cushioning. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. Notice that none of these is passive. He is not asking for a shrug or a thick skin; he is asking for action aimed at the very people doing the harm, four verbs pointed the wrong way down the line of hostility.

Then come the examples, each one raising the cost. If someone strikes one cheek, offer the other. If someone takes your coat, let the shirt go too. Give to everyone who asks, and do not chase down what is taken from you. And he seals it with the line that has outrun its own source, that as you would want to be treated, so you should treat others. What that rule quietly does is take the controls out of the enemy's hands. It refuses to let the way I am treated decide the way I act. My behavior is set by what I would want, not by what was done to me.

Jesus will not let the enemy's treatment of me set the terms of my own conduct. Who is actually deciding how I behave right now, the person who wronged me, or me?

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