The Justice of the Kingdom (Matthew 5:38-48)

This past week we looked at another hard passage in the Gospel of Matthew (there have been a lot of them lately!) where Jesus tells us not to retaliate when wronged or taken advantage of; nor to hate those people who deserve to be hated (at least in our opinion). This is so unnatural! We want to get back at people, get even with them, or sometimes we just want the ability to get over it. We don't handle being wronged very well. And Jesus words here in Matthew 5:38-48 don't seem to be making it any easier.

My friend T.M. Moore has written about these verses, "This is a tall order, indeed. But if we are called to love our enemies, who always abuse us, how much more must we continue to love our friends who sometimes fail us, though we know they continue in love for God? We take comfort in knowing that Jesus perseveres in loving us, though we fail and betray Him often. He has called us to love one another as He loves us, so we can do no other. When the world sees this kind of love among the members of Christ's Body, it will have reason to believe that something truly new and mysterious is at work in our midst."

And so, as we're seeing with much of Matthew, it's hard to be in the Kingdom! However, the King's words are quite timely as we will be coming to His table this Sunday! See you then, Dr. Dave