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This is probably the most widely misunderstood passage in the Gospels. In none of these commandments is Jesus repudiating the Law, not even in his comment on “an eye for an eye.” He is affirming the Law, but taking it to an even deeper level of compassion.

“Don’t think that my purpose is to destroy the Law; my purpose is not to destroy the Law but to fulfill it. For I tell you that unless your righteousness is deeper than the righteousness of the scribes, you will never enter the kingdom of God.

“You have heard that it was said to our forefathers, You shall not murder and Whoever murders is liable to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who hates his brother will be liable to judgment.

“You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who harbors lust for a woman has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

“You have heard that it was said, You shall not perjure yourselves. But I tell you, don’t take any oaths at all. Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’

“You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I tell you, don’t resist a wicked man. If anyone hits you on one cheek, turn the other cheek to him also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat as well. And if a soldier forces you into service for one mile, go two miles with him. Give to everyone who asks, and don’t refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

“You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor. But I tell you, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the wicked and on the good, and sends rain to the righteous and to the unrighteous.

“For if you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you: don’t even the tax-gatherers do the same? And if you do good only to those who do good to you: don’t even the Gentiles do the same? But love your enemies, and give, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind even to the ungrateful and the wicked. Therefore he merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

the Law: Professor Sanders, in his important chapter “The Law” in Jesus and Judaism, concludes that “there was no substantial conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees with regard to Sabbath, food, and purity laws.”

Far from considering the Law oppressive, as Paul did, Jesus’ attitude toward the Law in the Sermon on the Mount is the attitude we find in James 1:25 (which refers to “the perfect Law, the Law that makes us free”) and in the rapturous praise of Psalm 19:

The Law of YHVH is perfect,

reviving the soul.

The teaching of YHVH is constant,

making wise the simple.

The precepts of YHVH are upright,

rejoicing the heart.

The commandment of YHVH is lucid,

lighting up the eyes.

The word of YHVH is pure,

abiding forever.

The statutes of YHVH are true,

creating justice—

more precious than the finest gold,

sweeter than honey from the comb.

righteousness: Jesus, like other Jewish prophets, doesn’t use this word in a moralistic sense. By a righteous man he means a man whose whole being is illuminated in God’s light, and who therefore naturally acts with justice and compassion.

It is not the love of righteousness in the abstract that makes anyone righteous, but such a love of fair play toward everyone with whom we come into contact, that anything less than the fulfilling, with a clear joy, of our divine relation to him or her, is impossible.

(George MacDonald, Creation in Christ, ed. Roland Hein, Harold Shaw Publishers, 1976, p. 184)

What Jesus presents as his own view is interpretation, not a new law. “Do not kill” means also “do not be angry”; “do not commit adultery” means also “do not look with lust.” …The vocabulary is that of debate over interpretation and does not point towards an “antithesis” to the law.

(E.P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnab, Trinity Press International, 1990, p. 93)

hates his brother: Literally, “is angry with his brother.” Many ancient manuscripts add eikē, “without cause,” but the word was probably “added by copyists in order to soften the rigor of the precept” (Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, United Bible Societies, 1975, p. 13). C.H. Dodd paraphrases: “Anyone who nurses anger against his brother.”

I have translated this phrase “hates his brother” for the sake of clarity. The problem with the precept as Matthew states it (Was it misunderstood by the disciples? Garbled as it passed from Aramaic into Greek?) is not that it is impossibly rigorous, but that it is mistaken. Anger is a natural emotion, a pure energy, which can be selfish and destructive but can also be generous and life-affirming. And because children feel and express it with complete unselfconsciousness, we can see that it is an invited guest in the kingdom of God. Any attempt to suppress it will lead to emotional and spiritual disaster. Blake said, with great insight:

Men are admitted into heaven not because they have curbed and governed their passions or have no passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings. The treasures of heaven are not negations of passion, but realities of intellect, from which all the passions emanate uncurbed in their eternal glory. (“A Vision of the Last Judgment”)

The point of any genuine spiritual work with anger is not to not feel it, but to be fully aware of it as it arises, to express it when that is appropriate, and to let go of it as soon as it passes. It doesn’t necessarily arise from the small self, and can even be an angel in disguise. One of the greatest lessons I ever learned came from remaining face to face (when all my impulses told me to run away) with the justified anger of someone who loved me very much: anger so devastating that it felt like an atomic explosion, and so pure that it had no personality sticking to it.

But if the teaching not to be angry at your brother is mistaken, the teaching not to nurse that anger, not to hate your brother, is certainly correct. Jesus’ point here is that selfish and harmful actions begin in selfish and harmful thoughts. Anyone who is serious about living in the light will have a passionate desire to correct his mistakes at the root.

anyone who harbors lust for a woman: Literally, “anyone who looks at a woman lustfully.” Compare the Tenth Commandment, as stated in Deuteronomy 5:21: “You shall not lust after your neighbor’s wife.”

Again, the problem with the precept as stated in Matthew is not that it is too rigorous, but that it is mistaken. In trying to protect the sanctity of marriage, it makes sexual desire sinful. Thus the cure for adultery becomes as life-threatening as the disease.

Thought leads to action. Just as a disease exists as energy long before it manifests itself in the tissues of the body, so a harmful action exists as a thought long before it is acted out, and in the unconscious mind long before it becomes a thought. Someone who feels strongly tempted to commit adultery has a choice: to indulge the desire, or to realize that it is symptomatic of something lacking in his marriage, and then to address the problem.

Desire for another partner can actually be a sign of health. I have a woman friend who for six months felt intense sexual desire for a certain man she had met; she had no guilt about this feeling and her marriage was strong enough that she could tell her husband as soon as it appeared. Ultimately, after much difficult inner work, both of them began to manifest the kind of sexuality that her desire had pointed her toward.

But thought is only the root of action; it is not action itself. You can’t die of a cancer that hasn’t yet appeared in your body, nor should you be executed for a murder that you have committed only in your mind. If thought were literally action, we would all be behind bars.

These teachings of Jesus should be considered as preventive medicine. He is not trying to create a society of celibates, as the early church was; he is speaking to everyone, to you and me. If a man is sexually aroused by the sight of a lovely woman, that isn’t a sin; in fact, it is an affirmation of life, and rather than “tsk, tsk,” we can say “I’hayim!” Lust, like anger, is pure energy, and can be a creative source even for the spiritual life. Jesus’ point here is that when sexual desire is misdirected and clung to in the mind, it leads to dangerous actions, actions that can cause great misery to a man’s wife and children and to himself.

Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No’: “The mature person values sincerity above all things,” as Confucius’ grandson Tzu-ssu (482-403 B.C.E.) tells us in his wonderful treatise The Central Harmony:

Confucius said, “Sincerity is the way of heaven; arriving at sincerity is the way of man. The sincere person does the right thing without trying, understands the truth without thinking, and acts always in keeping with the Tao.”

Sincerity is the fulfillment of our own nature, and to arrive at it we need only follow our true self. Sincerity is the beginning and end of existence; without it, nothing can endure. Therefore the mature person values sincerity above all things.

Sincerity is not only the fulfillment of our own being; it is also the quality through which all beings are fulfilled. When we fulfill our own being, we become truly human; when we fulfill all beings, we arrive at true understanding. These qualities—humanity and understanding—are inherent in our nature, and by means of them we unite the inner and the outer. Thus, when we act with sincerity, everything we do is right.

We are told that Jesus opposed the concept of “an eye for an eye,” found in the legal code of the Hebrew Bible, substituting the law of love for the law of revenge. This is a travesty of the situation in Pharisaism. The Phraisees…regarded the expression “an eye for an eye” as meaning that in principle any injury perpetrated against one’s fellow man should be compensated for in accordance with the seriousness of the injury. Indeed, the legal code of the Hebrew Bible itself provides for such compensation, when it states that loss of employment and doctor’s bills must be paid for by the person responsible for an injury (Exodus 21:19).

(Hyam Maccoby, The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity, Harper & Row, 1986, p. 39)

don’t resist a wicked man: The career of Gandhi is the best commentary on this verse. As in the previous commandments, Jesus is asking for a deeper level of righteousness here. Not only are we to compensate our neighbor when we injure him; we are to compensate him when he injures us. Not only are we to pay him what is fair; we are to give him what is more than fair: good in return for evil, love in return for hatred.

This attitude is admirable if it comes from true non-attachment, as in the following story about the Zen poet Ryōkan:

Ryōkan lived in a small hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief broke in, only to find that there was nothing in the hut worth stealing.

When Ryōkan returned, he found the thief and said, “You’ve probably come a long way, and you shouldn’t return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.”

Shamefaced, the thief took the clothes and left.

Ryōkan sat down naked and looked up at the sky. “Poor fellow,” he said, “I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”

(Adapted from Paul Reps, ed., Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1957, p. 27)

There is a similar story about Ramana Maharshi. When thieves broke into the ashram in 1924, his devotees wanted to resist, but Maharshi said, “They have their dharma [role], we have ours. It is for us to bear and forbear. Let us not interfere with them.” As the monks field out of the building, the thieves beat them with sticks. Maharshi advised the others to put ointment on their bruises.

Maharshi laughed and said, “I too have received some puja,” punning on a word that can mean either “worship” or “blows.”

When the devotee saw the weal on Maharshi’s left thigh, he got angry, picked up an iron bar, and asked permission to go back inside the ashram. Maharshi said, “We are sadhus [renunciates]. We shouldn’t give up our dharma. If you go and hit them, some may die, and that will be a matter for which people will rightly blame not them but us. They are only misguided men, blinded by ignorance. Let us do what is right. If your teeth suddenly bite your tongue, will you knock them out as punishment?”

On the other hand, the refusal to resist may be a disservice to the aggressor, as the refusal to say No is a disservice to a child. If someone violates our limits and we don’t tell him, we may be in some sense collaborating in the violation. So standing up to him and saying, “No, this isn’t right; you can’t have my coat; I won’t go one mile; I won’t support your being a beggar; I won’t let you go back on your promise,” may be the best way of teaching him, and the greatest act of love.

Nothing could be more abruptly (one is tempted to say “violently”) demanding than this and similar suggestions of responses to violent challenges…. [I say] this on the basis of having studied the nonviolent tactics of one of Jesus’ modern followers, Mahatma Gandhi. Nonviolent behavior must often be shocking in order to shake up the violent opponent’s seemingly so normal attitude, to make him feel that his apparently undebatable and spotless advantage in aggressive initiative is being taken away from him and that he is being forced to overdo his own action absurdly. For human violence almost never feels all that “natural,” even to the aggressor himself—neither the violence toward children nor that against loved persons nor even that evoked by declared enemies.

Erik H. Erikson, “The Galilean Sayings and the Sense of ‘I,’” The Yale Review 70, spring 1981, p. 357)

love your enemies: Anyone who has heard the Dalai Lama speak about his enemies the Chinese will understand the depth and exhilaration in this precept when it is truly lived.

As a free spokesman for my captive countrymen and-women, I feel it is my duty to speak out on their behalf. I speak not with a feeling of anger or hatred toward those who are responsible for the immense suffering of our people and the destruction of our land, homes, and culture. They too are human beings who struggle to find happiness and deserve our compassion. I speak to inform you of the sad situation in my country today and the aspirations of my people, because in our struggle for freedom, truth is the only weapon we possess.

(“The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture” in A policy of Kindness: An Anthology of Writings by and about the Dalai Lama, Snow Lion Publications, 1990, p. 16)

Here there is not a trace of difference between the teaching of Jesus and the teaching of the Buddha.

In this example, too, Jesus is deepening and making explicit a commandment that already appears in the Jewish Bible. This is such an important point that I would like to quote Professor Sanders at length:

The Jewish Scripture, and consequently most of its interpreters, fixed on specific points in the treatment of enemies. These are the two principal biblical passages:

If you meet your enemy’s ox or his ass going astray, you shall bring it back to him. If you see the ass of one who hates you lying under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it, you shall help him to lift it up. (Exodus 23:4-5)

If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; for you will heap coals of fire on his head [i.e., you will produce in him the pain of contrition—S.M.], and the Lord will reward you. (Proverbs 25:21-22)

Josephus, summarizing and slightly expanding Jewish law, wrote that enemies should be given a decent burial (Antiquities 4.265; cf. Deuteronomy 21:22, which refers to condemned criminals). He also noted that Jews are required to give the necessities (shelter, food and fire) to all who ask and to “show consideration even to declared enemies.” In his legislation Moses

does not allow us to burn up their [the enemies’] country, or to cut down their fruit trees, and forbids even the spoiling of fallen combatants; he has taken measures to prevent outrage to prisoners of war, especially women…. [He] bade us even in an enemy’s country to spare and not to kill the beasts employed in labor. (Against Apion 2.211-212)

For the most part, this passage simply summarizes the commandments of Exodus and Proverbs, as well as Deuteronomy 20:19 and 21:10-14, but Josephus has attributed further regulations to Moses: not to despoil corpses nor to kill the enemies’ beasts of labor, and to offer one’s needy enemy fire as well as bread and water.

Constructively, these commandments can be summarized as “love your enemy,” and one can claim no more than that the wording attributed to Jesus is unique. “Love” in biblical usage, both in the New Testament and the Old, refers not so much to an interior emotion as to outward actions. One “loves” someone by treating her or him in the right way. Leviticus 19:18, “love your neighbor as yourself,” is a summary of commandments in 19:9-17, which require leaving food in the field for the poor, not stealing, not oppressing one’s neighbor or cheating one’s servant, and so on. The person who acts in these ways “loves” the neighbor.

(Studying the Synoptic Gospels, p. 319)

There are two striking postbiblical Jewish parallels. The first appears in the Aboth de Rabbi Nathan: “Who is the mightiest of the mighty? He who makes his enemy his friend”; the second, in the sayings of the eighteenth-century Hasidic rabbi Yehiel Mikhal of Zlotchov: “Pray for your enemies that everything may be well with them. More than all other prayers, this is truly the service of God.”

for he makes his sun rise: One of the most beautiful and distinctive sayings of Jesus.

Jesus…did not feel the need of making up artificial illustrations for the truths He wished to teach. He found them readymade by the Maker of man and nature…. Since nature and super-nature are of one order, you can take any part of that order and find in it illumination for other parts. Thus the falling of rain is a religious thing, for it is God who makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust; the death of a sparrow can be contemplated without despairing of the goodness of nature, because the bird is “not forgotten by your Father”; and the love of God is present in the natural affection of a father for his scapegrace son. This sense of the divineness of the natural order is the major premise of all the parables.

(Dodd, Parables of the Kingdom, p.10)

sends rain to the righteous and to the unrighteous: Philo speaks this central truth with a different emphasis:

God loves to give, and freely bestows good things on all people, even the imperfect, inviting them to participate in virtue and to love it, and at the same time manifesting his super-abundant wealth, which is more than enough for as many as wish to profit from it. He shows this in nature as well. For when he sends rain on the ocean, and causes springs to gush in the most desolate wastelands, and makes sterile soil blossom with grass and flowers, what is he showing but the extravagance of his wealth and goodness? That is why every soul he created has the seed of goodness in it.

your reward will be great: The ninth-century Sufi Master Abu Yazid al-Bistami said, “A single atom of the sweetness of wisdom in a man’s heart is better than a thousand pavilions in Paradise.” (This and all further sayings of Abu Yazid al-Bistami come from Reynold A. Nicholson, Translations of Eastern Poetry and Prose, Cambridge University Press, 1922.)

Therefore be merciful: This is Luke’s version. Matthew 5:48 reads, “Therefore be teleioi [perfect, whole, complete], just as your heavenly Father is teleios.” In either version, the saying alludes to Leviticus 19:2: “You should be holy, for I, YHVH your God, am holy.”

The first step in becoming perfect is to accept your imperfection, just as the first step in becoming merciful is to treat yourself with mercy.

sources: Matthew 5:17; Matthew 5:20-22; Matthew 5:27f.; Matthew 5:33f.; Matthew 5:37ff.; Matthew 5:43; Luke 6:27, Matthew 5:45; Matthew 5:46f., Luke 6:32f.; Luke 6:35f.