Matthew 5:39
What does Matthew 5:39 mean?
But I tell you, don’t resist him who is evil; but whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also.
The short answer
In Matthew 5:39, Jesus says something that has unsettled readers for two thousand years: "don't resist him who is evil," and if someone strikes you on the right cheek, offer the other one too. On first reading it sounds like a command to be a doormat — to let anyone do anything to you. But that misses what Jesus is actually doing here.
When someone wrongs us, we tend to reach for one of two responses. We can escalate — hit back harder, make them pay with interest. Or we can seek strict fairness — an eye for an eye, no more and no less, which is exactly the older standard Jesus quotes in the verse just before this one. Jesus points past both. Turning the other cheek belongs to a third category altogether: a response that isn't measured against the wrong at all, but comes from somewhere else entirely. The scholar David W. Peters, drawing on Miroslav Volf, describes these three options as revenge (disproportionate), justice (proportionate), and forgiveness — a gift of a wholly different kind.
Notice, too, that Jesus' examples are practical, not theoretical: a slap, a lawsuit over a coat, a soldier's demand to carry a load. These were the ordinary grievances of first-century life. Jesus is teaching his followers how to handle the everyday collisions where pride gets bruised and reputations get contested.
So the verse is less about whether you may ever defend yourself, and more about who gets to write the script. When someone wrongs you, they hand you a role: retaliate, escalate, sue, seethe. Jesus tells his followers to hand the script back. The person who turns the other cheek hasn't surrendered; they've refused to let the evildoer decide what happens next. That is not passivity. It is a startling kind of freedom.
What scholars say
David W. Peters, drawing on Miroslav Volf's distinction between revenge, justice, and forgiveness, frames what kind of response Jesus is calling for in these practical teachings; John Proctor then shows the same instinct at work in Paul's advice to the Corinthians, who would do better to put up with some wrong than to tear each other apart in court.
“As Miroslav Volf writes, when a wrong has been done, there are three responses. There is revenge, the disproportionate response to evil; justice, the proportionate response to evil; and forgiveness, which is a gift of something entirely different. 1 Jesus’ teachings are practical: Do not resist an evildoer. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn your left so he can hit you again. If anyone wants your coat, give him your cloak too. If someone forces you to march one mile, go the second mile (vv. 39–41).”
“Lastly Paul reminds the Corinthians that a courtroom can be a destructive place. Fortunes, careers, and reputations get taken apart. People get hurt. It would be better to put up with some wrong and unfairness than to trade blows with one another in such an unforgiving arena (6:7–8). This teaching resonates with Jesus’ words about “turning the other cheek” and “going the second mile” (Matt. 5:38–42). For Jesus too knew how damaging a court case could be. Those who live by contempt and quarrel, he said, will find it a damaging and costly path (Matt. 5:21–26).”
What it means for you
The next time someone wrongs you — a cutting email, an unfair review, a friend's betrayal — notice the script that gets handed to you along with the wound. It usually says: even the score. Matthew 5:39 invites a different question. Not "how do I win this?" but "what will winning cost — my peace, my community, the relationship itself?"
Absorbing a wrong is not the same as pretending it didn't happen. It means declining to let the injury dictate your next move. In practice, that might look like not firing back the retort you've drafted, or letting a small unfairness go rather than turning a disagreement into a war. Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is refuse the fight on offer.
Matthew 5 in context
Matthew 5 opens the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' extended teaching on life in God's kingdom. It begins with the Beatitudes, then moves through a series of statements shaped as "You have heard that it was said... but I tell you." In each, Jesus takes a familiar standard — on murder, adultery, oaths — and presses beneath the rule to the heart. Verse 39 sits in the section on retaliation (5:38–42), where Jesus quotes the old "eye for eye" principle and answers it, before turning to the still harder command to love one's enemies (5:43–48).