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....
Step back this morning and look at the whole passage as one piece. Jesus calls his disciples to a standard so high that it should crush us. Let your yes be yes. Let your no be no. The very existence of contracts, witnesses, and notaries is, as Dale put it on Sunday, a...
After Jesus dismantles every escape route, he gives the kingdom standard in a single sentence: let what you say be simply yes or no. Osborne notes that the construction here is meant to be striking. Yes, yes. No, no. Nothing more. The Pharisees asked which oath...
