Sons of the Most High

This is the Sermon on the Plain: Christ has spent the night in prayer on the mountain, chosen the Twelve at dawn, and come down to “a level place” where a great multitude waits — from all Judea and Jerusalem, and from the pagan coast of Tyre and Sidon. He is not speaking to a private circle of the advanced; He is speaking to a mixed crowd of the sick, the harassed, and the curious, and He begins, “But I say to you who hear.” Hearing, in Scripture, is closer to obeying than to overhearing.

And the first command lands in occupied territory. Galilee lived under Roman rule — soldiers who could strike you, requisition your goods, compel your labor; tax collectors who took more than was owed. “Love your enemies” was not an abstraction to this crowd. The enemy had a face, a garrison, and a legal claim on your cloak. Into that world Christ says: love him, do him good, bless him, pray for him.

The blow on the cheek in verse 29 is not primarily about violence — a strike on the cheek was the standard gesture of public insult, contempt made visible. And the two garments are a poor man’s entire wardrobe: the outer cloak that doubled as his blanket at night, and the tunic beneath it. Christ is describing a person who can be shamed and stripped — and who remains free of the whole machinery of retaliation.

vv. 27–31 — the four verbs. Love, do good, bless, pray. Notice the escalation inward: it starts in the will (love), moves to the hands (do good), then the mouth (bless), then the secret place (pray for them). Christ leaves no room in the human person where the enemy may remain an enemy. The Golden Rule in verse 31 then flips the instinct of fairness: not “do to them what they did to you,” nor even “what they might do for you,” but what you wish they would do — treat people out of your hope, not your history.

vv. 32–34 — the “credit” question. Three times: what credit is that to you? The word is charis — grace. Reciprocity is not wicked; it is simply not grace. Even sinners run a fair exchange. The disciple is invited past fairness into something that cannot be explained by what was received — which is exactly why it becomes visible as belonging to God.

v. 35 — the promise in the middle. “And you will be sons of the Most High.” This is the hinge of the whole passage. The commands are not arbitrary tests of endurance; each one is a family trait. God is “kind to the unthankful and evil” — so kindness to the ungrateful is not naïveté; it is resemblance. The reward for loving your enemy is not a prize added afterward; it is becoming the kind of person in whom the Father can be recognized.

vv. 36–38 — the measure. “Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful” — mercy is the summary of the whole portrait. Then the commands run in reverse: judge not, condemn not, forgive, give. The image in verse 38 is from the grain market: the good merchant fills the measure, presses it down, shakes it so it settles, and pours until it overflows into the fold of your garment. That is how God gives — and the unnerving promise is that the measure you use on others is the one that will be used for you.

The Orthodox reading of this passage runs through one word: likeness. Man was made “in the image and likeness” of God — the image given, the likeness to be grown into. What Christ lays out on the plain is not an ethic bolted onto the Gospel but a portrait of the Father, drawn feature by feature: mercy to the ungrateful, kindness to the enemy, the open hand that does not calculate return. To practice these things is not to earn sonship; it is to grow into the likeness that sonship was always for.

This is why the Church has never read “turn the other cheek” as a charter for humiliation. The one who offers the other cheek is not the victim of the exchange but the only free person in it — the man who cannot be made to hate has nothing left that insult can take from him. And it is why almsgiving, in the Church’s preaching, is never mere charity: to give without hope of return is to do, in miniature, what God does every morning for an unthankful world.

The measure of verse 38 is finally read in the light of the Judgment: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Mercy shown is the only measure we are invited to set for ourselves before that day.

Start with one name. Not “enemies” in the abstract — the actual person whose message you dread, whose name tightens your chest. The passage gives you four things to do with that name, in order: will their good, do them one concrete kindness, speak well of them once, and pray for them by name. In practice, prayer usually has to come first, because it is the only one of the four you can do before your feelings change — and the experience of the Church is that the feelings follow the prayer, not the other way around.

Then watch your measures. Most of us keep two: a generous one for ourselves (context, intentions, extenuating circumstances) and an exact one for others (what they did, no more, no less). Verse 38 says quietly that only one measure exists, and you choose it every day. The mercy you extend is the mercy you are storing up to meet.

Take with you: These commands are not a test to pass but a face to grow into. When you are kind to someone who will never thank you, you are not being taken advantage of — you are, for a moment, wearing the family resemblance of the Most High. Be merciful, as your Father is merciful.