Father Stephen De Young: Verse 27:

“But I say to you who hear:”

Now, notice even though he’s speaking to this big crowd, Jesus is also speaking to specific people within the crowd. First it was aimed at the disciples, now it says, “I say to you who hear”, So who is there who doesn’t hear? He’s not talking about deaf people. He’s healed them, healed them a few verses ago. He’s not talking about deaf people. He’s talking about people like the Pharisees. Why don’t the Pharisees hear what Jesus has to say? Because every time he starts speaking, they’re sitting there going, “Okay, how can we get them? What’s he going to say? How can we trip him up? How’s this wrong? Where can I make an argument?” And so because of that, they can’t hear. They’re not going to hear anything he has to say. They’re not going to understand it because they’re not listening.

But there are people there within that crowd, people who are part of this remnant. We talked before about people who recognize Jesus and people who don’t recognize Jesus. St. Simeon, Anna the Prophetess, even if he’s a baby, they recognize Him immediately. This is the Messiah, this is the Son of God, right? There are people who recognize them, people who don’t. This is the same thing. Jesus is talking to those people who can hear Him, who are going to be willing to hear Him. What does he say to them?

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you. To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who asks of you. And from him who takes away your goods do not ask them back. And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise.

Now, this is the part where normally after we read this, everybody immediately wants to start with the qualifiers, right? “Well, what he means by turning the other cheek isn’t actually if someone hits you, don’t hit them back”. Or… “He’s not really saying, if someone steals something from you, you should just let them have it.” So we have to say he’s not really saying everything he just said. This is a popular passage for that. The other popular passage for that is when he tells the rich young ruler to go and sell everything, he has to give it to the poor. And we immediately say, “Oh, that was just him! Not me, I don’t have to do that!”

But we have to just let this stand when we read the Scriptures. If we approach the Scriptures, part of being one of those people who can hear. If we approach the scriptures with, “I need to find a way to understand this that says that I’m basically doing everything right. If I’m not willing to do it, then I need to find a way to interpret it or I need to find some other verse that says something different where I could say, oh no, see, it’s okay. See, I’ve got my argument all lined up here about why I’m okay, I’m doing everything right.”

If you do that, you will not be able to hear what Jesus is saying to you in the Scriptures. We have to be willing to read the Scriptures and say, “No, Jesus is telling me to do this right now. I’m not able to do it. I can’t find it in myself to do it. I’m going to have to keep working on this. I’m going to have to keep praying that God will help me do this because I’ve got to admit I can’t do it.” This is one of those passages. I get just as angry at people who I feel like have treated me badly as anyone else does. The fact that I and pretty much everyone else I know does that doesn’t make it right. Doesn’t make it right. Especially when Jesus is here telling us the opposite.

I’ve often wondered, now I’m going to get really controversial. I’ve often wondered what would have happened if on 9/11, instead of attacking Afghanistan, we had taken all the money we were going to spend on attacking Afghanistan and air dropped food and clothing and medical supplies on Afghanistan. What would have happened? I have no idea what would have happened because that’s never been done in the history of the world. Never in the history of the world has, especially a nation, done what Jesus is saying we should do here and show love to people who hate you and who are your enemies and who want to destroy you.

Jesus isn’t saying, if someone beats you up, go back and let them beat you up again the next day and the day after that and the day after that and the day after that. What he says is, don’t try and get revenge, right? Don’t try to revenge yourself on them. Don’t try and make them pay for what they’ve done to you. And so, to me, that’s not even a subtle difference. I mean, someone who’s in an abusive relationship needs to get out of that relationship, but they need to get out of that relationship without trying to do harm, get revenge, hurt them back, go inflict pain on them to try and get back at them. But that doesn’t mean you allow yourself to be abused.

Why? Well, because a person abusing you, is that helping their salvation, allowing someone to indulge their wickedness? If we love someone, we want them to find repentance and salvation. And allowing them to continue in their wickedness is not loving them. It’s not loving. And so, yeah, we have to be very clear on what the definition of love is, right? And this isn’t Jesus saying volunteer for abuse. This is Jesus saying don’t try to take revenge. Because what happens is, I mean, we’re right here nearby where the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s happened, right? Where somebody stole a pig. Someone stole a pig. So generations of people had to die. “You stole my pig. I’m going to get revenge on you.” “You showed up at my house with a gun. You ended up shooting my cousin, so now I’m going to come shoot your cousin.” “Oh, you shot my cousin. Now I’m going to go and kill your uncle.” And back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And that’s been going on for the whole history of the world, right? There’s violence, back and forth, back and forth.

What Jesus is saying is that that needs to stop, but it needs to stop with us, who claim to be his followers, it needs to stop with us. We’re going to claim to be followers of Jesus because a whole lot of people did a whole lot of bad things to Jesus. And he not only didn’t take revenge on one of them, he prayed for them, we will see later in St. Luke’s Gospel, because that’s where it is. While they were murdering Him, he prayed for the people murdering Him, that they would be forgiven. Because again, he’s God, according to Isaiah, God takes no delight in the death of a wicked man, but rather than he would turn and live, that’s what God wants. He wants people to repent.

And so, the mindset that Jesus is teaching us here is that our goal is not to defeat our enemies, to destroy our enemies. Our goal is for our enemies to repent and become our friends. For that relationship to be restored. And the only way for that to happen is for us to love them while they’re still our enemies, which is the point St. Paul is going to make again in Romans when he says, at just the right time, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He didn’t wait till we got our act together. He didn’t wait till we decided we wanted to be his friends. He died for us while we were still sinning, while we were still rebelling against God, while we were still his enemies. He showed the most extreme example of love in the history of the world to us. So that’s what Jesus is teaching us here. We need to love people, and by loving them, turn our enemies into our friends, help our enemies find salvation, too.

So he continues:

“But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.

And here he brings in the idea of mercy. Because all of us, when we stand before God’s judgment seat, me especially, are going to be asking for a lot of mercy from the court at that point. We’re not going to have a lot of excuses left for the things we’ve done. We’ve got to hope that when he judges me, he’s going to be merciful. If I want Him to be merciful, then how should I be? I need to be merciful.

And notice, “You’ll be sons of the Most High”. Why does he talk about sonship here, us becoming children of God? Well, because the son is the image of the father. If I showed you a picture of my dad, you’d say what? Everyone says, whoever has seen a picture of my dad, “You look just like him”. The older I get, the more I look just like him. Because the son is the image of the father. That goes all the way back to Genesis. Remember Eve, bore Adam a son in his own image, right?

And so if we’re sons of God, what does that mean in terms of us and God? We’re going to be in his image, we’re going to be like Him, we’re going to look like Him. We’re going to be the way he is and the way he is that we can attest to it because we’ve been ungrateful and we’ve been sinful and we’ve rebelled against Him and we’ve sinned against Him, He’s been merciful with us, he’s been gracious with us. So if we’re going to be his children, then we need to be the same way, the same way that he is.

So then he expands from there:

“Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.”

So the first sentence there is taken out of context, and is one of the most abused pieces of the Bible, at least in our modern culture. I don’t know if that was true in the past, but in our modern American culture, at least, the “Judge not lest ye be judged” is abused. And the way it’s usually abused is it’s taken again out of this context. It used to mean, “Well, you’re not allowed to make any distinctions about anything ever.” If someone’s doing something evil and wicked and sinful, and you go to them and try and say, “Listen, man, you’re on the wrong track”, even if you do it lovingly, and even if you really are intending, “Man, I’m trying to help you. I want you to get your life back on track, get this straightened out, come back to Christ”, you’re liable to get hit with, “Why are you judging me?”

Now, when we take this in context, “Condemn not and you shall not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven.” That kind of changes what that means, right? Because what kind of judgment is Jesus talking about? What’s he comparing it to? He says, you will not be judged. He’s talking about the Last Judgment. So at the Last Judgment, when we all stand before Christ and he’s saying, calling us to put ourselves in the place of, okay, when you’re standing there before God and you have to answer for what you’ve done in your life, do you want to be condemned? I’ll go ahead and say, no, we don’t want to be condemned. So then when we’re dealing with other people, should we be condemning them? When we see them sinning, should we be coming to them and saying, “You’re wicked, you’re a sinner, get out”? Because remember the Pharisees’ reaction to him hanging around with Matthew, who is a tax collector?

Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners? Those people are sinners, they already condemned them. Had no desire to see them repent. Had no desire, just sinners. “We’re righteous, they’re sinners”, right? So the Pharisees have already, in their mind, separated out the sheep and the goats, and they’re pretty sure they’re sheep, and those other people are goats. And then the contrast of that is forgiven. You will be forgiven. So what does not judging mean? Not judging means not condemning, but forgiving instead, and this is part and parcel of not getting revenge. Because for me to go out and get revenge, I already have to have condemned the person I’m going to go get revenge on. “This person stole from me. This person lied to me. This person hurt me. And now I’m going to condemn them, and I’m going to go punish them. I’ve handed down the verdict. They’re guilty, and I’m going to go punish them for it.” That’s what Christ is telling us not to do. He’s saying, “You want to be forgiven when you stand before God and ask for his mercy and say, please forgive me, I have no excuse for these things.” You want him to say, “You’re forgiven,” right? Not “You’re condemned, And here’s the punishment.”

So, this is talking about the grace that we show one another when we deal with one another. It’s not saying that we should never tell someone they’re doing something wrong. Quite the opposite, because we can’t win them over, we can’t bring them through repentance without telling them they’re doing something wrong. The flip side of that is we have to be willing to hear that we’re doing something wrong. We need to not abuse this verse.

Interlocutor: I think the best way to show somebody else something is to just show them what they’re doing wrong, whether by words or illustration.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah. We need to be clear about it, but then we also have to be willing to hear it when someone comes to us and says, “What you’re doing here…”, and us not throwing, “Who are you to judge me? Who are you to criticize me?” Because if you won’t hear it, if you can’t be corrected, if you can’t repent, then you can’t find forgiveness yourself. If you sit and deny… and St. John’s going to say this in First John, “If we say, we have not sinned, we deceive ourselves”, You look and yourself and say “I’m not a sinner, I’m fine” Well, then you can’t be forgiven because you won’t even admit that you need forgiveness and you won’t ask for it, right?

So now he tells them a parable in order to sort of illustrate the point he’s making:

And He spoke a parable to them: “Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into the ditch? A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher. And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the plank that is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is in your brother’s eye.”

So some of these examples are kind of comical, right? But he’s making the point about condemning and about the fact that we need to also be willing to receive correction, not just give correction. Because if I’m blind, meaning, if I’m not repenting of my own sins, if I’m not struggling with sins myself, how can I lead someone else to repentance? Right? Because if a blind person is trying to lead around another blind person, it’s not going to go well, right? You need somebody who can see to lead the blind person. The same way, the disciple is not greater than his teachers. If I’m still learning, if I’m a student in a class, I can’t start trying to teach the teacher. Because I haven’t learned myself. But once I’ve learned myself, that’s why he says, “The one who’s perfectly trained”, if I learn myself, then I can teach others. The way the fathers say this is, “You can’t give what you haven’t received”, you have to receive it first before you can give it to somebody else.

And then this sort of comical example of, there’s a person walking around with a plank of wood sticking out of their eye, and he’s going up to another guy who’s got a little bit of dust in his eye and be like, “Hey, man, you’ve got…” you’re trying to help him out, right? So the idea of all three of these images is if we’re going to do any judging, we start with ourselves, where am I doing wrong? We work on it. We repent. And then as we repent and we experience God’s grace and God’s forgiveness, that will allow us and help us to forgive others and to help them along the same path.

“For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

So what’s the point he’s making here? We tend to think about the things we do actually take as sort of disassociated from us, in that we’ll say, “Well, yeah, okay, I did that, but, I mean, I had very good reasons, and yeah maybe if I had to do over again, I’d do something different.” But we treat it like the thing we did doesn’t really reflect on us. One of the things you’ll hear in the media a lot today, a person shouldn’t be judged by just one thing they did. This is usually when someone says something really horrible, now a few years have passed and they want to be famous again, right? So they show up, “Oh, he shouldn’t be judged by that one thing.” That one thing that he did, as if it had no connection to who he was.

The point Jesus is making is that’s not how it works. It’s not how it works. The things we do and the things we say are things that grow out of who we are. You don’t go to a bramble bush to get grapes, right? Grapes aren’t going to grow on a thorn bush. Thorns are going to grow on a thorn bush. And you’re not going to go and make a bunch of figs from a thorn bush either. If you want figs, you go to a fig tree. The fig tree, if it starts sprouting thorns, you know, something’s gone sideways. Maybe it’s not a fig tree after all. So there’s this direct connection. And this is why repentance is so important. Repentance is not just, “Okay, yeah, I did this bad thing, sorry. Okay, no harm, no foul”.

The things that we do and the things we say are like symptoms of a disease. They’re symptoms of a disease. There’s something going on inside of us that’s expressing itself. And so it’s not just a question of getting rid of the symptoms. In fact, one of the worst things you could do if somebody’s sick is get rid of all the symptoms without curing the disease, because then they don’t know they’re sick and you don’t have any way to find out what the sickness is because you’ve gotten rid of all the symptoms, so they have nothing to tell you, right? So we need to look at the things we do and not try to disassociate them from ourselves. We need to take ownership of them, right? Say, “You know what? I did this because I have a problem with anger. I get angry, and when I get angry, I lose control of what I say or what I’m doing. And I say things that I regret later, say things I shouldn’t say, and I feel bad about it later. But it’s a pattern. And I need to work on this, I need to repent of this, I need to be healed, God needs to heal me from this”. Or, “I’m kind of a coward. And so when I feel like there’s some kind of confrontation going to happen or something, or I’ve done something wrong, I lie and I try and cover it up and get out of it because I’m scared to face the consequences.”

We need to admit that, say “I need God to heal me from this”, not just, “Oh, I’m sorry, I lied again. OK, well, confessed it. We’re all good now.” Because that doesn’t heal us, that doesn’t change us, right? So, when Jesus is saying we need to repent first before we lead others, this is the kind of repentance he’s talking about. He’s talking about real repentance, where we try to change who we are into who God created us to be instead of what we’ve become. That’s an ongoing process. It’s not as easy as just coming up with a list of rules I broke and saying, “Okay, well now tear up the list, start fresh, come up with a new list next week.”

This is real repentance and real healing and restoration and transformation of who we are and growing as Christians.

He continues:

“But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say?”

This is one of those rough verses for me, right? Because if I’m honest, I come here and I lead prayers, I lead services and I say “Lord, Lord,” an awful lot. I talk about the Lord Jesus Christ. I talk about what he’s done for us. I sit here and I tell you, I teach you about the Father. Here’s what Jesus is telling us to do. And then I walk out the door and I don’t do most of it.

So I take one consolation in being a hypocrite, at least if you’re a hypocrite, you have a standard you’re not meeting, as opposed to no standard at all. But that’s sort of my only consolation. But this is true to some extent for all of us. And Jesus is saying this not to just condemn us again, right? Because Jesus isn’t about condemning, Jesus is telling us this to bring about repentance. We say all the right things, especially when we’re in church, maybe not so much when we’re not, but at least when we’re in church, we try to say all the right things and be on our best behavior, right? But unless there’s some kind of integrity there to the way we’re living the rest of our lives, then we need to repent and we need to work on this repentance and transformation so that the real us, when we’re at home alone by ourselves and no one sees what we’re doing, matches the person who we are when we’re at church.

“Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock. But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently; and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great.”

Well, this makes it plain, right? And this idea is going to be returned to again and again throughout the New Testament. St. Paul’s going to say at the beginning of Romans, it’s not the hearers of the law, but the doers of the law, who are justified. Because he had Pharisees, of which he formerly was one of, saying, “Oh, we’re the chosen people, God gave us the Torah, right? We’re all good, we’re God’s people.” And St. Paul’s saying, “Yeah, but did you actually do what’s in the Torah?” Because if not, then just having received it isn’t going to do you any good. St. James is going to tell us this. But again, in the New Testament is this idea that it’s not just here we need to do. We need to put this into practice. We need to actually become not just be called children of God, but become children of God, become people who are like God in loving the way God loves, showing mercy the way God shows mercy, and giving forgiveness the way God forgives even people like me who don’t deserve it. So since we hit the end of the chapter, time wise and everything, it’s probably a good place to stop for this evening.