If a man has injured another, he is liable on five counts—for injury, for pain, for healing, for loss of time and for indignity suffered. In regard to injury, the injured man is looked on as a slave to be sold in the market place. His value before and after the injury was assessed, and the man responsible for the injury had to pay the difference. He was responsible for the loss in value of the man injured. In regard to pain, it was estimated how much money a man would accept to be willing to undergo the pain of the injury inflicted, and the man responsible for the injury had to pay that sum. In regard to healing, the injurer had to pay all the expenses of the necessary medical attention, until a complete cure had been effected. In regard to loss of time, the injurer had to pay compensation for the wages lost while the injured man was unable to work, and he had also to pay compensation if the injured man had held a well-paid position and was now, in consequence of the injury, fit for less well-rewarded work. In regard to indignity, the injurer had to pay damages for the humiliation and indignity which the injury had inflicted. In actual practice, the type of compensation which the lex talionis laid down is strangely modern.

For the sake of God’s righteousness, as well as for the sake of human justice, believers are obligated not only to uphold the law themselves but to insist that others do so as well. To report crime is an act of compassion, righteousness, and godly obedience as well as an act of civil responsibility. To belittle, excuse, or hide the wrongdoing of others is not an act of love but an act of wickedness, because it undermines civil justice and divine righteousness.

The word used for to compel is the verb aggareuein, and aggareuein is a word with a history. It comes from the noun aggareus, which is a Persian word meaning a courier. The Persians had an amazing postal system. Each road was divided into stages lasting one day. At each stage there was food for the courier, and water and fodder for the horses, and fresh horses for the road. But, if by any chance there was anything lacking, any private person could be pressed, that is, compelled into giving food, lodging, horses and assistance, and even into carrying the message himself for a stage. The word for such compulsion was aggareuein.

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who was for thirty years the great pastor of Westminster Chapel in London, preceded that ministry with eleven years in a place called Sandfields in Wales. His wife Bethan tells the story of the remarkable conversion of a man named Mark McCann. McCann was the meanest man in town, and he loved to fight. Although he was sixty years old, he was not known to have ever lost a scuffle. When he would go to a fair, he would always take two friends with him because when he got into a fight he would go so out of his mind that he would kill the other person if his friends did not restrain him. One time his wife fixed his dinner, and the dog got into it while McCann was washing his hands. He took a bread knife, took the dog into the kitchen, and cut his head off. Then that man met Jesus. He was barely literate, and as Bethan Lloyd-Jones tells the story, when he first saw the name of Jesus in Welsh in the Bible, he wept and kissed the name. He was completely changed from a vengeful, hateful, “these-are-my-rights,” Lex Talionis, law-of-the-jungle sort of man to a man who was loving and kind.