Now we have not really seen the true extent of this divine love until we go one step further. It is true that the love to which we are called is God-love (agapē) and that this is an inscrutable love that exists entirely apart from the possibility of being loved back. But where do we see this love, if indeed, it is God-love? Where is it demonstrated? The answer is that we see it only in Jesus Christ and in Him preeminently at the cross. 

Let me close by making this personal. What is your attitude toward all that I have been saying? Are you still dealing with the questions of your rights and your wrongs? Or are you learning to live the kind of life lived for us by the Lord Jesus? 

Now I want to go on. But before I do, I want to deal with an objection that someone may be raising. You may be saying, "All of what you say is well and good, but isn't it true that there are situations in which this standard need not be followed? In fact, didn't Jesus even refuse to turn His face Himself when He was struck by the high priest? And didn't He say, 'If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why smitest thou me?'" 

We live in a day when most people are intensely conscious of their rights. In such a climate it is not unusual for a believer in Jesus Christ to be asking, "What are my rights as a Christian? Do I have a right to success or wealth? To a home or a family? To a good name? To be respected?" Perhaps you have asked these questions also or others like them. Do you have rights? The verses from the Sermon on the Mount to which we come today answer these questions directly, and they say—striking as it may seem—that there are no rights for Christians. 

The second perversion of the proper use of oaths by the people of Christ's time was worse. It was evasive swearing. People who were afraid to swear by the name of the Lord because they were not telling the full truth began to swear by things. And because mere things were not thought to be as significant as the name of God, this second class of oaths was not considered to be binding. Some persons swore by their own life (1 Sam. 1:26) or their health (Ps. 15:4). Others swore by the king (1 Sam. 17:55). Still others swore, as Jesus indicates, by their head, the earth, heaven, the temple, or Jerusalem (Matt. 5:34–36; cf. 23:16, 22). All such oaths were evasive.