Turning the Other Cheek

“Turning the other cheek” belongs to the Sermon on the Mount, where Christ takes up the ancient law to bring it to its fulfilment. By this word he calls to renounce personal vengeance and to overcome evil with good. It is among the most quoted sayings of the Gospel, and among the most distorted: it is often read as the order to endure everything without reacting, when it aims at the heart that refuses to return evil for evil.

Eye for eye

The word starts from the ancient law, which Christ quotes before carrying it further: “You have heard that it was said: Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. But I say to you, do not resist the evildoer; if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, offer him the other also.” Matthew 5:38-39 The original rule came from Moses: “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” Exodus 21:24 It is usually heard as a harsh law, hungry for reprisal. It was a measure of restraint: in a world where men killed for an offence, it forbade the penalty to exceed the wrong, an eye for an eye and no more. The law of retaliation curbed vengeance by making it proportionate. Where the law limited the riposte, Christ asks that it be given up.

The right cheek

The detail of the right cheek makes the sense precise. When two men face each other, a slap of the right hand, given with the open palm, lands on the other's left cheek; to reach his right cheek, one must strike him with the back of the hand. That backhanded blow was the gesture of contempt, the hand a master raised against a servant: an insult, more than a blow to wound. The word therefore aims at the affront and the humiliation, where the injury touches honour more than the body.

To turn the other cheek is to offer the left: to give oneself to a second blow instead of returning the first. The disciple shows himself ready to bear the affront once more rather than send it back. There lies the point: not to enter the spiral of offence. The one who returns the insult he received revives the quarrel and lets himself be led by the one who struck him; the one who turns the other cheek breaks that chain and stays free, master of his response instead of obeying his aggressor.

The sense of the word

This word reaches the heart first. It asks the disciple to renounce avenging himself, to accept suffering a wrong rather than returning it, not to take justice into his own hands. It does not for all that abolish justice: authority keeps the duty to punish crime and to protect the innocent, and no one is bound to hand a weak man over to the blows of a violent one in the name of gentleness. Turning the other cheek concerns the way one answers an offence received in one's own person, not the abandonment of those one has the charge to defend.

The example of Christ

Christ himself shows how to understand it. At his trial, when a guard strikes him on the face, he neither keeps silent nor turns the other cheek to the letter, but answers with dignity: “If I have spoken wrongly, show what I said that was wrong; but if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?” John 18:23 He does not return the blow, and he does not leave the injustice without answer either: he names it, without avenging it. Scripture will say of him that, insulted, he did not return the insult: “Ill-treated, he did not threaten, but entrusted himself to him who judges justly.” 1 Peter 2:23 Turning the other cheek is measured on him: to bear the offence without sending it back, while standing upright in the truth.

Leaving vengeance to God

To renounce avenging oneself does not give the wrong over to oblivion: the disciple hands it to God, the only judge just enough to set it right. “Do not avenge yourselves; it is written: Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” Romans 12:19 He does not resign himself to evil, he fights it with the opposite weapons: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Romans 12:21 Good set against evil breaks the chain that vengeance would keep going.

To be children of the Father

The end of this word is likeness to God. A few lines further on, Christ widens the commandment as far as the enemy: “Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you.” Matthew 5:44 And he gives the reason: to act thus makes one like the Father, who does good without separating the good from the wicked. “That you may be children of your Father who is in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the wicked and on the good.” Matthew 5:45 The one who does not return evil imitates God's patience toward sinners, and draws near to the measure he sets them: “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48