The medieval church pictured love as a four-petaled flower on a single stem: love of God, love of self, love of neighbor, love of enemy. The same sap runs through every petal. Doriani notes that Jesus’ radical command in verse 44 is not a new petal grafted onto...
Read this verse flat and you will be bankrupt by Tuesday. Augustine, with characteristic precision, said it best: “The text says give to everyone who asks. It does not say give everything to everyone who asks.” J. Adams, in his blunt counseling style, adds...
If the slap exposed our honor, the lawsuit and the forced mile expose our love of legal and political fairness. The tunic was the inner garment, and a creditor could legally claim it for debt. The cloak, however, was protected by Exodus 22:26-27 because it doubled as...
Geoffrey Chaucer, the medieval poet, defined wrath like this: “Wrath is a wicked will to be avenged in word or deed.” Anger and wrath are not the same animal. Anger can be a holy response to evil; God himself is slow to anger but capable of it. Wrath is...
When we hear “an eye for an eye,” we tend to picture vigilantes hacking each other to pieces. Most commentators, Doriani and Morris among them, point out the opposite. The lex talionis was a courtroom restraint, a guardrail against runaway vengeance....
