turn the other cheek and "Don't judge me!"

so my husband put together small daily devotionals for our church as they were reading through the Bible last year. today's was amazing. one of today's passages was from Luke 6:27-49. it is the famous passage where Jesus tells us to love our enemies, turn the other cheek, and not judge. i love that passage (even though it's convicting every. single. time.) and had a hay-day underlining all over the place in the giant study Bible my husband gave me when I started reading through the Bible. (p.s. i'm ashamed to say, i'm sooo behind!) as i finished the passage, i turned to Tim's notes and found them too amazing not to share. while these are pretty basic and fundamental truths that we all know as Christians, i have often heard the phrase, "Don't judge me!" thrown about and having it explained in this way really helped me to understand what these words actually mean for me in my walk.

"In Luke 6 Jesus is laying out how Christians are to treat others. We are called to bless our enemy and to never have a spirit of criticism towards others. To explain the first part (how to bless and love our enemy), Jesus gives the example of "turning the other cheek." First, Jesus describes the worst kind of slap, a backhanded slap to the face. That would be a humiliating insult in that culture (and ours as well). Jesus says our response is to "turn the other cheek." In other words, followers of Jesus are not to be retaliators. This is not arguing for pacifism (there are times when you have to retaliate), but saying that in our lives, as people insult and curse us, we are to respond in love and submission, not in a spirit to get back at them.

Secondly, Jesus says that we are not to have a spirit of criticism towards others. This is the most often quoted verse in the Bible, "Do not judge!" But Jesus cannot be saying we can never judge other people because elsewhere He tells us to be "wise as serpents but innocent as doves" (we need to be wise and not gullible, which means we have to judge others' motives when we deal with other people). What Jesus is saying in "Do not judge" becomes clear in the second verse. Jesus is saying that how we treat people is a reflection of what we think of God. If God has forgiven us, then when others fail, we should be quick to forgive them. When we fail other people, we want to explain ourselves, to give the circumstantial reasons for why we did what we did (even if it was wrong and we are sorry). Jesus is saying that we should treat others with the same spirit. God has forgiven us and overlooked our stupidity, so therefore we should not judge others harshly, since God has not treated us in that light."

isn't that just about the most freeing idea?

sometimes, theology is awesome.