Matthew 5:38-48 is a mystery passage of epic proportions. Is Jesus suggesting that His followers become perpetual victims incapable of feeling pain? Or, as is His usual mode of instruction, is He pressing us to a higher dimension of Kingdom understanding?
In the middle of all the slapping, suing, slandering mess of modern culture, Jesus has called out for a new kind of human race. So determined is He to have this become a reality, He became the Seed planted in the earth for a birth of a Resurrection Race, a Resurrection Insurrection and a Resurrection Revolution.
His own trial, torture and death penalty became this Message: all forms of insult, offense, abuse, mockery, robbery, injustice, malfeasance, maltreatment, malpractice, malfunction, violation, injury, trauma, and any all effects of any and all wrongdoing are now subject to the Resurrection Revolution! Jesus not only turned His cheek, He supplied every square inch of His body to fully provide a new kind of life for us.
New creation is formed for response to God, not reaction to life. The first breath taken by Adam and Eve was response to God; their eyes flew open and the life’s initiation was full in the face of God. When the last Adam, Christ laid in the tomb, the same breath of God passed through solid rock and, by the Spirit blasted the same life giving air into every molecule of Jesus’ tortured body. From there forward, everything we hope to be is found in response to Him and His Face looking full into ours.
The Revolution has begun; not in clean and pretty church services, but in bloodied streets of sacrificial love. This Revolution crushes the opposition by means of the opposition’s own strength ~ death, in any and all of its hideous forms. Resurrection is an insurrection irrepressible in this world of revenge. It shouts that transcendent love is the final strategy of the Kingdom of God and the greatest unused power of the Church.
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