BibleProject Guide
Oaths, Retaliation, and Enemy Love
About
Conflict with others is unavoidable. Even with friends and family, maintaining peace can be a struggle. And it's even more difficult with our enemies—those who oppose us. Enemy Roman forces occupied Israel during Jesus' day. So in his teaching, Jesus gives his followers a radical vision for seeking peace in the midst of this conflict and repairing even the most difficult relationships.
In this guide, you can explore Jesus’ teaching about truth-telling, creative nonviolence, and enemy love alongside related videos, podcast episodes, and more.
Oaths and Honesty
Jesus believes that the covenant laws given to ancient Israel can reveal part of God's wisdom for relationships, so he quotes from the law before explaining the deeper wisdom:
At its core, an oath is a promise or commitment. To make an oath sound stronger, people would often swear by God, or by Heaven, or by Earth. For example, imagine that one neighbor borrows money from another, promising to pay it back. To strengthen the promise, the neighbor says, “I swear to God that I'll pay you back.” By swearing, the promise sounds unbreakable, and it fits well with established biblical law.
On the surface, swearing an oath by God or something else seems like a great way to make a promise sound powerful. But Jesus says that when we simply tell the truth, we don't need to swear by anything else. Our word is strong enough.
After all, imagine the consequences when someone swears an oath “by God” and then fails to keep it, or when someone uses grandiose oath-making to trick others into trusting them. Jesus says to avoid the whole practice.
So should we never make a promise to anyone? Not quite. Jesus’ point is that when we do make a promise, we shouldn’t use God's reputation as a tool to manipulate others. Jesus goes on to say:
Honesty and integrity are the beginning of peacemaking, and we can acknowledge our own responsibility to these virtues when dealing with conflict. But what if someone else starts the conflict? Jesus explores this challenge in the next case study.
- Right relating or “righteousness”
- Making oaths, honesty, and truth-telling
- Revenge, retaliation, and creative nonviolence
- Love for enemies
Retaliation and Creative Nonviolence
Jesus starts this next case study by quoting from the Torah.
This famous line, known as the law of retaliation, is found in a few places.
To modern readers, the law of retaliation might sound like a license for revenge that allows us to hurt someone who first hurt us. But it’s less about a license to harm and more about limiting how much harm can be done. Essentially, the punishment needs to fit the crime. If someone takes our eye out, we don’t get to take both of theirs—it’s limited to one. But while the law curbs the escalation of harmful retaliation, it doesn’t create peace between parties. Jesus’ aim is peacemaking, so he takes the wisdom of this law to a new level.
So should we not retaliate at all? That seems to be what Jesus has in mind—to become people who value love and peace more than getting even. But won’t harm flourish if people aren’t held accountable for evil actions? It doesn’t seem right to just stand by and do nothing.
Looking closer, however, we find that Jesus doesn't say to do nothing. Rather, he advocates for creative and nonviolent responses that open the door for real peace. Jesus gives three examples from his own time and place. First, he says:
In the ancient Greco-Roman world, a right cheek slap with the back of the hand was a symbolic way to dominate and humiliate someone. When humiliated, our instinct is to fight back, but Jesus says retaliation won’t solve the problem. Instead, he encourages people to stand their ground and offer their left cheek as well. Now the attacker must strike with an open right hand, which is symbolic of striking an equal. So in this context, to “turn the other cheek” is both a humble and assertive invitation for an aggressor to treat us as a mutual human being.
Next Jesus says:
In ancient Israel, taking a poor person’s coat was against the law because the coat often served as a blanket for staying warm at night.
While they may not ask for the coat, an uncaring person could find a way around these laws by demanding someone’s shirt as payment. So Jesus offers a creative response: hand over the shirt and offer the coat as well. But why would a person do that? Wouldn't that leave them exposed? Yes. And that’s the point—Jesus is being provocative here. The goal is to shock everyone by exposing injustice through costly generosity.
In the third example, Jesus says:
In Jesus’ day, Roman soldiers could force any citizen of the empire to carry packs and other gear for them up to one mile—a humiliating and sometimes dangerous experience. So Jesus says to carry that load not just one mile but two. The first mile is required by law, allowing the soldier to treat the carrier like a pack animal, but that second mile is a gift. This is a chance for the person to assert their dignity and humanity in their choice to treat the soldier with generous kindness. Jesus is teaching that this kind of attitude will be what brings long-term healing to the entire world.
Love Your Enemies
It may sound crazy, but Jesus is saying that bold generosity can subvert the power games of our world and even turn enemies into friends. And that leads to the last law that Jesus quotes.
When he says “Love your neighbor,” Jesus is quoting an ancient biblical law.
But then, Jesus references a popular line that many Israelites added to the biblical law, “But you can hate your enemy.” Jesus counters this by telling his followers:
Is Jesus going a bit too far here? Peace with our enemies is one thing, but how can we love them? Jesus seems to think that true peace is only possible when we treat every human as if they have ultimate value, which means that even our enemies are fellow images of God.
But how are we supposed to love someone who hates us? It's hard enough to love the people that love us. Love for friends and family is a good thing, but for Jesus, this is only the starting point. He challenges his followers to share that same love outside their circles of comfort, and he holds up God’s indiscriminate, generous love as the model. Jesus says:
The call is to become peacemakers who invite others into our community and mend broken relationships at every level. This is a radical way to live. And when Jesus says to “be complete, just as your heavenly Father is complete,” (Matt. 5:48), he’s speaking of the completeness that imitates God’s generosity to both friends and enemies. Because for Jesus, creative love is the only pathway to real peace.
Videos
Watch the fifth episode of the Sermon on the Mount series and the related Visual Commentary and Insight videos.
Podcasts
Listen to these episodes from our Sermon on the Mount podcast series.
More Resources
Find BibleProject articles as well as books recommended by our scholar team.
