“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. Matthew 5:38–42 NOTE: The following is a re-publish of an entire post written by Santo Calarco on Facebook in a series of posts he did on rethinking Isaiah 53 . This was the final post of that series in the form of an epilogue of sorts. I think the contents are so important that I want to capture the whole post here and not just a link to it in case the Facebook post somehow ever gets lost. When, how and why did the idea of retribution re-enter the church in the West? It really began to rear its head towards the 4th Century. Before we look at this let
As the people of God, we must hold to apostolic tradition (2 Thessalonians 2:15, 3:6) but reject human tradition (Colossians 2:8). Jesus criticized the religious leaders of His day for making void the word of God for the sake of their tradition (Matthew 15:6). And He said they did this in many ways (Mark 7:13b). We are not immune to this error today. This blog exists to test (1 Thessalonians 5:21) our modern Christian traditions against Scripture to discern where we might have done the same.