Offer no resistance to the one who is evil…and when someone strikes you on your cheek, turn the other one as well. “The new standard higher than the old” is how the New Jerusalem Bible subtitles this section of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. It is a section that present’s Jesus’ “new teaching,” a teaching that is nonetheless both a continuation and fulfillment of the existing [Mosaic] teaching (Jesus came not to abolish but to fulfill the law). Jesus himself becomes the personification of this new teaching and fulfillment of the law. In Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict states that Jesus is the fulfillment because he brings a renewed law, the law of freedom. It is in the context of this freedom [from the law] that Jesus offers the series of antitheses to the existing law found in this section: “You have heard it said…But I say to you.”
When Jesus says “You have heard it said…,” he is essentially telling his hearers that what I am telling you is not new to you. You know it already. However, I want you to hear and understand it in a new way. I want you to perfect your understanding of the law. This new law of freedom that Jesus was enacting was to be seen in the way the people acted: “Offer no resistance to the evil…and when he/she strikes you on one cheek, turn the other as well.” Adherents of this new law of freedom were to act differently in perfection of the existing law. This requirement to turn the other cheek is done in freedom of the law, for the existing law allowed one to seek revenge (cf. Exodus 21:23-25: a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye). Whereas Jesus’ instruction should not be understood as condoning of evil and injustices, by not bowing to the pressure to exact revenge, followers of the new teaching are to show by their lives that the existing law can be perfected.