Q&R: “Vengeance is Mine”? Brad Jersak

QUESTION:

I was wondering if you could comment even briefly on Romans 12:9. It says, “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.”

I totally reject the interpretation that God is going to punish our enemies if we restrain ourselves from retaliating. However, I have heard others voicing this idea. I would love to hear your perspective on this.

RESPONSE:

Great question, though I’m not really known for “brief comments.” Sorry about that!

First, I agree that God’s solution is not to satisfy our felt need for revenge by actually enacting vengeance on our behalf against other people. I suppose a literalist reading of this text would demand that… and since ‘wrath’ literally means ‘violent anger,’ it becomes highly problematic on two levels. (1) Divine vengeance isn’t at all the revelation of God we received through Jesus Christ, particularly in light of the Cross, and (2) if God’s way really was vengeance, God is pretty terrible at it. In fact, God has continually failed to exact vengeance on wicked people in a timely way… I mean, why not just destroy the wicked in the first place? It doesn’t work theologically or practically.

But then how shall we take this text seriously? I’d suggest a layered reading in the following ways:

“Leave it with me”

There were those in Rome who had experienced tremendous persecution, perhaps lost loved ones to martyrdom, and were pondering so wounded and angry that violent revenge seemed like the only path forward. This was Nero’s Rome after all, and the temptation to join an insurgency would have been intense and probably suicidal. They may not have been healed enough to think in terms of forgiveness, so pastorally, what is Paul to say? His two-fold response is: (a) Leave vengeance to God. It’s way above your pay grade. Trust him to make it right, and (2) Your job is to overcome evil with good. Stick to that.

The subtle strategy is that if Paul can keep them in their lane (overcoming evil with good), they may start to see how that’s God’s way, too. That is, responding in the Jesus Way to their enemies will align them with Jesus in a way that leads them toward forgiveness. But it takes a two-step to get there and they must deliberately leave their vengeance fantasies in God’s hands.

“Vengeance is mine…”

Moving from there, might say, “God never repays evil with evil,” so where do we see God’s wrath or vengeance played out?

First, while God is not the direct cause of violent harm, the Bible does acknowledge the reality of natural and supernatural consequences. That is, God consents to our misuse of freedom to perpetrate evil but we also inevitably reap (experience) its intrinsic consequences (Paul calls that the ‘wages of sin’). The Bible describes ‘God’s wrath’ here as consent (literally ‘giving over’) to our bad choices. It is ‘God’s’ only in the sense that (a) our defiance was against God and (b) God may even use the consequences for our salvation.

All of this becomes clear if you use the parable of the lost son as an analogy. The father consented to the son’s misuse of freedom to leave home and live wild. The son then experiences the unpleasant consequences of his wild life (“the wages of sin”). But those consequences motivate him to return to his father’s house. In a strange way, the son who returns home may reflect on his negative experience angrily (as God’s fault) or with gratitude (as part of God’s plan). I see both responses all the time in the recovery community. But let’s be clear that it was sin and not God that actually inflicted any harm to ourselves or others in our disobedience.

Second, while we know from our understanding of the Cross that God does not literally exact vengeance (violent harm) on people, in the drama of redemption, we can speak mythically in terms of Christ’s victory over death (personified as Hades). Now, we know that Hades was a mythological Greek god of the underworld, ruler of the dead, and brother of Zeus and Poseidon. But because Hades also became associated with the place or realm of the dead, the Jewish rabbis who translated the Hebrew into Greek chose to render the Hebrew term Sheol as Hades.

Early Christian preachers then framed Jesus’ death and resurrection as an invasion of Hades (the place)to “bind the strongman” (also Hades) and “plunder his goods” (us). So instead of taking vengeance on people, Christ is seen as defeating and destroying Death itself.  

 “I will repay”   

Finally, the Cross of Christ subverts everything we expected when God says, “I will repay.” Instead of repaying sin with punishment, we find that Jesus responds with radical forgiveness, so that “the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God eternal life.” When we bring darkness, Christ responds with light; when we bring death, Christ responds with life; when we bring hatred, Christ responds with love.

So yes, in Christ, God has repaid our transgressions, but not in an eye-for-an-eye vengeance, but by returning our shame with scandalous grace.

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