We must therefore dispense with that extreme view of Matt. 5:39 that regards government itself as unjust in its evil-resisting capacities. And we must therefore also disregard that softer version that says government is a necessary evil in which believers may not participate. Christ did not forbid official resistance to and punishment of evil by authorities, nor did he forbid believers to perform that role where it is appropriate, else he would have required men to leave their offices.

A correspondent remonstrates with me concerning certain claims I made in my article “A Time for Discernment.” His tone and words are courteous, as is typical with most correspondents—the world has not gone to pieces on that point. Yet his position, however sincere and gently maintained, is mistaken. For he takes the view of the Quakers that Christ’s statement, “Do not resist the one who is evil” (Matt. 5:39), is an absolute ban upon any resistance to wrongdoers.

On this view a believer must acquiesce to evil and place himself at the mercy of wrongdoers, a class who are conspicuous for lacking that virtue. In its extreme form even government, with its functions of enforcing law and providing for military defense, must be deemed illegitimate. Of the obvious absurdity of that view we need not dwell long. For Scripture elsewhere says:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer (Rom. 13:1-4).

Various soldiers are mentioned in the New Testament, and never are they enjoined to forsake their occupation as sinful, though its raison d’être was to restrain evil. If one says that government is a God-given providence to restrain evil, but that Christians may have no part in it, he contradicts the testimony of the faith of many of these soldiers. Christ praised a centurion for having faith greater than any in Israel (Matt. 8:5-13).[1] When repentant soldiers came to John the Baptist and asked what they should do (Lk. 3:14), he did not require them to forego their position but to keep from evils while performing it. It was the centurion Cornelius who was among the first Gentiles to receive the gospel, and he is named “a devout man who feared God with all his household” (Acts 10:2; comp. 22).

We must therefore dispense with that extreme view of Matt. 5:39 that regards government itself as unjust in its evil-resisting capacities. And we must therefore also disregard that softer version that says government is a necessary evil in which believers may not participate. Christ did not forbid official resistance to and punishment of evil by authorities, nor did he forbid believers to perform that role where it is appropriate, else he would have required men to leave their offices. Elsewhere he had no qualms telling men to undertake life-upturning actions on his account: selling all their possessions (Lk. 18:22), leaving family and familial obligations (9:60-61), denying self and hating one’s own life (23-24). Yet he required no leaving position by soldiers; and little wonder, since his apostle tells us that such a one “is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom. 13:4).

But most of us are not officers of the law, and even those who are have private relations in which they partake that have a different character from their official duties. Christ’s teaching bears a personal character, i.e., is to govern our personal (or private) affairs. In such cases what is required by this commandment? Does it require perfect acquiescence to evil? No. Here’s why.

1. The purpose of Christ’s advent. Earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ said:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished (Matt. 5:17-18).

That law permits resisting criminals in the form of killing nighttime housebreakers (Ex. 22:2-3). It requires a woman to resist rape by crying for help (Deut. 22:24), which presupposes in turn that anyone who came to help was obligated to prevent or end the assault, a process which would necessarily include force (Gen. 19:4-11), or at least the credible threat thereof.

2. The nature of Christ’s examples. Christ spoke of being slapped, sued for clothing, or impressed, not suffering attempted murder. Such things are generally considered inconveniences, not things (like crime) which have an effect upon others. Being slapped is painful, but is conspicuous in that it does not inflict serious or lasting injury, causing only bruising, if any injury. Its intent is rather to shame and pain than to injure, for one who intended injury would use other means like a closed fist (Isa. 58:4; 1 Kgs. 20:37).

Christ forbids a principle that governed how judicial authorities enacted punishment for major offenses under the Mosaic law being applied to interpersonal conflict of a much lower severity, whether by individuals retaliating themselves or by their seeking restitution in court. Apparently, such behavior as slapping was sufficiently common among the Jews that they eventually regularized fines for it, as seen in various quotes from ancient rabbis that many commentators mention (e.g., John Gill’s comments on Matt. 5:39).

Of course, such rabbinical traditions represented going beyond the law and twisting it by making the literal figurative, and by appealing to them believers would be legitimizing this habit of going beyond what was written, a serious offense under the law (Deut. 4:2; 12:32; comp. Prov. 30:6). Christ’s disciples ought rather to see themselves the victims of minor injustices than see the law thus trampled or else retaliate and begin a much larger and long-lasting feud.

3. The other testimony of the Old Testament. When Israel set the law aside and perverted justice, it incurred God’s judgment. That message is writ so large upon the historical books and Prophets that it is hard to think of individual passages to cite in evidence.

One of the most horrid examples of this perversion of justice came when a certain Levite and his host acquiesced to the evil deeds of the men of Gibeah (Jdg. 19-21). Rather than resist the wicked, they offered up a defenseless woman to their predation. This heartbreaking story at the end of Judges is given to show us the wickedness to which the Israelites had fallen (21:25). If we were to take the view of some that all passive and active resistance to wrongdoing is forbidden, then we must say that the Levite in view did no wrong, but did rather what was required in giving up his concubine to be raped to death. Indeed, by such an interpretation he ought to have gone forth a victim himself (19:22), lest he be guilty of resistance.

In that example we see the crux of the problem with making “do not resist the one who is evil” into an absolute command for all situations. To take it literally would mean requiring your children to be kidnapped, your wife to be raped, and your body to be destroyed in murder if an evildoer proposed those things. Yet it was such acquiescing to evil that brought Israel to an evil state: “Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked” (Prov. 25:26). The Levite should have resisted, and his failure to do so marks him out as one of the most disgraceful wretches to appear, not only in Scripture, but, indeed, in any literature or history. And yet the absolutists about Matthew 5:39 would have us emulate him!

4. New Testament example. Christ did not turn the other cheek when slapped in front of Caiaphas, but remonstrated with his persecutor (Jn. 18:22-23). Paul did likewise (Acts 23:2-5), though in his zeal he stumbled, at least in his own conscience, and felt need to repent the strength and choice of his words in response (v. 5). Elsewhere, Christ expelled the money lenders by force when they did the evil of making God’s house a den of robbers (Jn. 2:14-17), undoubtedly an appropriate exercise of official resistance to wrongdoing that attached to his kingly office. Granting that might only prove that Christ’s office includes resistance to evil, it seems apparent from Paul’s words in 2 Cor. 11:20-21 that he would not have endured it if a false teacher had presumed to make a habit of physically abusing him or the other believers (“you bear it if someone makes slaves of you, or devours you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or strikes you in the face. To my shame, I must say, we were too weak for that!”). (Comp. 13:2: “I warned those who sinned before and all the others, and I warn them now while absent, as I did when present on my second visit, that if I come again I will not spare them.”) Nor does John seem to have been of a mind to endure such or similar evil (3 Jn 1:9-10).
5. The matter of civic duty. In matters of heinous crime, one acts as a citizen, not a private individual, and thereby does his neighbor good by resistance to grievous offenders. Above I established that we are commanded by God to obey earthly authorities. And those authorities regard a man not only in his capacity as a private individual, but as having certain definite rights and duties as regards the state and society as a whole. Consider this statement from a judge in 1800s England:

Mr. Justice Willes was asked: “if I look into my drawing-room, and see a burglar packing up the cock, and he cannot see me, what ought I to do?” Willes replied, as nearly as may be, “My advice to you, which I give as a man, as a lawyer, and as an English judge, is as follows: In the supposed circumstance this is what you have a right to do, and I am by no means sure that it is not your duty to do it. Take a double-barrelled gun, carefully load both barrels, and then, without attracting the burglar’s attention, aim steadily at his heart and shoot him dead.”[2]

Granting that was the England of a previous generation – and oh how that nation has fallen in these matters! – still, it represents the principles of the common law, upon which our own land’s laws are built, and which is in force yet still. Under the common law one had a duty to restrain a felon if a hue and cry was raised, and could be held criminally liable if he failed to hinder his flight.[3] What was previously duty is now, in this cowardly and selfish age, reduced rather to a right than a strict duty in most cases; yet still the principle holds, that in matters of public justice and safety a man is a citizen who ought to act for the good of the commonwealth, not merely a private man. Just as a man may be deemed negligent who fails to provide for his offspring or allows them to fall into harm by thoughtless disregard, so also must we deem a man to be morally negligent who offers no resistance to a murderer or public enemy, who is emboldened thereby.

All this is to put Christ’s teaching in the right place. In the matters he lists his command here – to not only forego retaliation or defense but willingly endure further wrong – is radical indeed. But we must regard it as being limited to certain minor matters and not others, with other duties obligating us in larger matters of life and public justice.[4]

Tom Hervey is a member of Friendship Presbyterian Church in Laurens County, SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation, and helped modernize Volume I of James Hervey’s classic dialogue on evangelical faith, Theron and Aspasio, available now at Monergism

[1] The element of greatness in the centurion’s faith in v. 10 is seen more clearly in translations like the NASB (“I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel”) or NKJV (“I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!”) than the ESV.

[2] P. 409, FN. 45 of the PDF version of A.V. Dicey’s Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, available from Online Library of Liberty here.

[3] Ibid., p. 288

[4] Reformed Ethics, Vol II., p. 368 by Herman Bavinck