The Law restricted the natural desire for revenge to the limit of a strict equivalent. If a man knocked out your tooth, you could knock out one for him, but not two teeth, nor all he had. Of course retaliation never heals a feud. Jesus proposes to limit revenge still farther and to retaliate only by acts of kindness. That is, in fact, the only way to end a quarrel completely and victoriously. It reestablishes fellowship and kills an enemy. The Law called for love for one’s neighbors; the scribes had added the permission to hate one’s enemies. Jesus raises the standards of good-will. The law of love applies to all. There is nothing great in loving those who love us. Anybody can do that. Heroic love begins where no love comes to meet it. Those who can win that triumph show the true family likeness of God, and are now living in his Kingdom. _What are our personal experiences as to the utility of revenge?_ _What is the difference between the non-resistance which Jesus proposed, and cowardice?_ _Is there such a thing in fact as loving your enemies?_ Study for the Week I The Hebrew religion was an unfinished religion. That is one of the best proofs of its divine inspiration. The prophets had the forward look. Great things were yet to come. As one of the most daring expressed it, the old and hallowed covenant, made by God at the Exodus, would be superseded by a new and higher relation; God would write his law into the hearts of the people; the old drill in outward statutes would disappear, for all men would know God by an inward experience of forgiveness and love (Jeremiah 31:31-34). Jesus not only shared this expectation of a new religious era, but set it in the center of his teaching. Religion to him was not static. He lived in a moving world. A new age was coming, and he would be the initiator of it. “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of God suffereth violence, and men of violence take it by force.” John had been the greatest of the prophets; with him a new swift movement had begun; but something far greater was coming; even the least in the new age would have an advantage over John (Matt. 11:11-19).