Oaths, Vows, and Vengeance--Matthew 5:33-42

There are a couple of short passages here again that I'm going to try to talk about together.  The first one is about vows and oaths.  This is not telling people to never enter into a covenant with someone else (never promise to do anything(, but instead to never get to the point where you need to "swear to God" or "I swear on my mother's grave" or any of the other meaningless oaths that we know usually mean that the person is lying and has no value for the truth or the person or thing that they they are swearing to or by.  The Pharisees at the time had come up a whole system of ways in which if they swore in a particular way, it was binding, but if they swore in another similar way it was not binding.  Jesus said this entire system was ridiculous and that His people were to be people whose word was their bond and that they simply should need to say "Yes" or "No" and people would believe them.  Anything else that they would need to say is sinful.

Next, Jesus talked about the idea of taking vengeance into your own hands, specifically in a case where someone is suing you in a way that is not proportionate to the crime that value of their loss (think of the millions of dollars that are awarded in damages in some of the "pain and suffering" lawsuits).  Jesus said that it's not up to us to get even and to go along when even when we're being personally taken advantage of because we know God sees all and will eventually set everything right.  It is not our place to avenge perceived injustices against us.  This is not to say that we don't believe in the criminal justice system or the authority of government to punish evildoers (see Romans 13 for that), but that Christians should not have a "vigilante justice" mindset or one of holding grudges and needing to "get even" with people.  This just shows a lack of trust in the justices and judgement of God and that we believe that we need to take things into our own hands because we don't believe He's powerful enough or good enough to handle it Himself, and that's not the kind of message we as believers need to portray.