No Strings Attached!
- Jun 13, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 21, 2024
One of the marks of our Christian life has to be a no strings attached faith!
Jesus is our example of living such a life. He yielded His life to the control of His Father: “not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). He encourages us to do the same in our passage today.
“All once gained now counted loss; Spent and worthless now, compared to this; Knowing You, Jesus.” Christian life is always about agape love.
This is undeserved, sacrificial, no strings attached, self-giving love. Such a powerful love that’s stronger than revenge, or retaliation. This is where we are today.
John Stott said, “Nowhere is the challenge of the Sermon greater”.
Limiting Revenge And Loving Enemies
Jesus shows us how to live a no strings attached grace life beyond the scaffolding of law, and how to live as His children reflecting God’s love in our everyday relationships.
Jesus begins verse 38 with, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” This is known as the law of retaliation, or the law of revenge. Find this in Deuteronomy 19:21. However, today it’s Don’t get mad, get even! What Jesus speaks of in this passage is not the need to win at all costs, but the need to demonstrate grace and forgiveness. Like all of the previous laws that Jesus has referred to, the law wasn’t being used to protect criminals but give license to the victim. An “eye for an eye” was permission to retaliate. We’re called to move beyond this and embrace grace! So, Jesus is saying live respectfully - limit revenge.
What retaliation means has been summed up by Dallas Willard:
“When we are personally injured our world does not suddenly become our injury. We have a larger view of our life and our place in God’s world. We see God; we see ourselves in his hands. We see our injurer as more than that one who was imposed on us or hurt us. We recognise his humanity, his pitiful limitations (shared with us), and we also see him under God.”
Jesus further explains, “if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also”. To be slapped with the back of the hand on the right cheek was a gross insult; it implied that the person hit was inferior. So our natural instinct is to hit back.
Actually, Jesus suggests you find a more creative way forward, reflecting the love of God. By offering the other cheek, you’re saying: ‘Hit me again but this time, treat me as an equal, not as an inferior’.
Jesus further explains what He means! He gives a couple of illustrations in verses 41 -42. Apparently, it was legal for a Jew to sue another and take his tunic. But here Jesus says, don’t just give him your tunic - but give your cloak as well (no strings attached). The tunic was an inner garment and the cloak was the outer garment. Jesus says give more than what’s required. Regarding the second illustration, in ancient Rome a soldier could force a Jew to carry baggage a mile. Jesus says, go with them beyond what they require, do a second mile. It’s about going the extra mile!
Love Others Regardless of Reciprocation (vs 43-48)
The love we have been given in Christ is amazing and nothing compares!
“Oh the deep, deep love of Jesus- vast, unending boundless free; rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me!”
We come to the central statement of this entire passage, which is “love your enemies.” Jesus takes the calculation of revenge out of the equation altogether, and instead calls for enemy love - no strings attached love!
Jesus offers no wriggle room, no get out clause, no ‘love people as long as they’re like you’, no ‘love those who agree with you’ – NO! Jesus says in verse 44: “Love your enemies pray for those who persecute you.”
John Stott calls this the “highest point of the Sermon on the Mount.”
“Total love which Christ calls us to show towards one who is evil and our enemies… Nowhere is the distinctness of the Christian counter-culture more obvious. Nowhere is our need of the power of the Holy Spirit (whose first fruit is love) more compelling.”
Don’t get bogged down in the detail and lose sight of the principle. Christ compels you and I to love beyond the circumstances, beyond the strings. Christ compels you and I to love regardless of the circumstances – 2 Corinthians 5:14-15: “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”
Christ says love your enemies in response to the false teaching of the Pharisees and Scribes that He recites in verse 43. You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.”
The phrase ‘love your neighbour’ is a quote from Leviticus 19:18: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
What makes Leviticus 19:18 so interesting is that the verse emphasises love over vengeance. In other words, the actual verse the Pharisees used to support their lovelessness actually encourages love. The Pharisees and Scribes considered only fellow Jews to be ‘neighbours.’ Therefore, anyone who wasn’t a Jew could be considered an enemy and hated.
More than we would like to admit, we do things with “strings attached”. Far too often we show love to someone because we expect to get love back. Jesus teaches us a very different approach in our text today.
Love with no strings attached!
Martin Luther King: "Love is the most durable power in the world. This creative force, so beautifully exemplified in the life of our Christ, is the most potent instrument available in mankind’s quest for peace and security.”
Think!
“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”
This is how Jesus has loved us: “while we’re sinners” (Rom 5:8). Ask Jesus to help you, as you work towards becoming more like Him with a no strings attached life, that’s gracious, forgiving, and loving even of enemies. Perhaps ask Jesus to speak to you of someone you need to forgive so that you can love fully and completely.
Jesus even gives us a picture of God’s grace in verse 45. God is so gracious, He makes the sun rise on the evil and the good, and the rain to fall on the righteous and unrighteous. And it’s with that graciousness and kindness that we demonstrate we’re sons or daughters of God. If you know God’s grace, then you and I should be instruments of God’s grace.
‘Grace’ gives the undeserved to the undeserving.
Anne Lamott: “I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”
These verses describe what the people of God are to be like.
Then - Jesus is calling a people to be perfect. Matthew 5:48 — “be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect”— this concludes the entire section. As if loving your enemy isn’t enough, Jesus ends with a call for us to be “perfect”. Jesus isn’t calling us to a state of sinless perfection in this life. But we should resist sin, and give ourselves to the truth of Christ. We should seek to be more like Christ, because as a Christian we’ve been given the righteousness of Christ, so, live the ‘no strings attached life!’
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