When Paul says of himself and his fellow missionaries that they did nothing that people might object to, he was making the point that one preaches in deeds as well as in words. The early Christians in general seem to have been very conscious of their good conduct and their good name. Luke, for example, makes the point that the Jerusalem community was looked up to by all the people (Acts 2:47) and the Pastoral letters of Paul promote the ideal of good citizenship. The danger is that Christians can be such 'good citizens' and blend so neatly the background as to lose all prophetic impact.

Too often the law of talion, 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth', is cited as an example of primitive savagery. On the contrary, it is an enlightened law designed to regulate and moderate retaliation - to 'make the punishment fit the crime' in fact. But here again Jesus revoked the letter of the Torah. Not 'a tooth for a tooth', careful correspondence of injury and compensation, but radical repudiation of any retaliation - 'turn to him the other cheek also'. Jesus dramatically underlines the 'otherness' of the rule of God.