The literal and the figurative application of this precept are each of them so important that it would be difficult to assign to either a claim upon us more momentous than the other. The moral duty of an equitable adjustment with one who has anything against us, and the spiritual duty of making timely peace with God in respect of anything of which conscience condemns us, are of equal obligation.
I. In giving the principal prominency in this passage to the spiritual meaning we must be careful not to impugn the more secular and homely obligation legible upon the very surface of the words. Nay, we are bound distinctly to declare that they convey to us not only the recommendation, but the peremptory command of Christ, that we be swift in settling disagreements of whatever kind; true and just in all our commercial dealings; and in social differences and estrangements of another kind seeking the blessedness of peacemakers.
II. Our Saviour employs in the text a transaction of secular familiar life, as a parabolic and impressive method of propounding a most solemn spiritual admonition. He presents to the mind's eye two men, between whom there is a difference. It is obvious that the person addressed is supposed to be in the wrong, and that he knows himself to be in the wrong, and that his adversary has justice on his side. The adversary, the plaintiff, must win the day; unless some timely compromise and adjustment with him can be brought about, the judge must deliver the defaulter over to the officials of the law. How, then, to make agreement with the adversary? By prompt repentance of all that has been amiss. By that kind of repentance which recoils from sin, not only because it is dangerous, but because it is committed against the promptings of conscience, against a heavenly Father. To such a lively repentance as this must be added faith in Christ, not forgetting that faith in Christ means acceptance of Christ's whole Gospel, not of part of it; not its atoning promises only, but its vigorous calls for exertion; not its future crown only, but if needs be its present cross.
W. H. Brookfield, Sermons,p. 58.
References: Matthew 5:25; Matthew 5:26. C. Kingsley, All Saints' Day and Other Sermons,p. 247. Matthew 5:26. G. Macdonald, Unspoken Sermons,2nd series, p. 118. Matthew 5:27-32. J. Oswald Dykes, The Laws of the Kingdom,p. 45; The Manifesto of the King,p. 245.Matthew 5:28. Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 103.