“So what, in the situation of personal injury, is the rightness of the kingdom heart?
Here we must once again recall the point about order:
We have already heard…that anger, contempt, and absorbing desire have been dealt with so that our lives are not being run by them. If they occasionally test us still, that is very natural. But they do not control us and leave us unable to reliably and happily carry through with our sober intention to do what is good and avoid what is evil.
This being so, when we are personally injured our world does not suddenly become our injury. We have a larger view of our life and our place in God’s world.
We see God; we see ourselves in his hands.
What are characteristic ways in which one fully alive in and to The Kingdom Among Us may respond to personal affronts, injuries, and impositions?
Jesus mentions four types of kingdom responses:
1. They will ‘turn the other cheek.’ That is, they will remain vulnerable. They will not take their defense into their own hands and do whatever they may regard as necessary to protect themselves…
2. ‘Let him have your shirt.’ They will conscientiously try to help, as is appropriate, those who have won legal cases against them in court. They are, after all, deeply interested in what the other person needs and are prepared to help that person as much as they can.
3. ‘Go with him two miles.’ If a policeman or other responsible official exercises a right to require assistance from them, they will do more than is strictly required of them…
4. ‘Give to him who asks of you.’ They will often give to people who have no prior claim of any kind to what they are asking for. The request itself is the only claim required to move them…
All [fear of legalism] is changed when we realize that these are illustrations of what a certain kind of person, the kingdom person, will characteristically do in such situations. They are not laws of ‘righteous behavior’ for those personally imposed upon or injured…
Though we are not talking about things one must do to ‘be Christian’ or ‘go to heaven when we die,’ we are looking at how people live who stand in the flow of God’s life now. We see the interior rightness of those who are living – as a matter of course, not just in exceptional moments – beyond the rightness of the scribes and Pharisee.”
Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy pgs. 176, 177, 178
Only You, Jesus, and Your Spirit empowering us.