We know that we should not seek to harm those who have
harmed us. If fact, we should forgive
them and do good to them as the Lord gives opportunity. But putting this truth
into practice can be a great challenge when people have faced terrible evil.
I had the incredible privilege of serving the Lord in a
Muslim majority nation for fourteen years.
I call it a privilege in part because I was able to serve alongside of
some incredibly courageous Christians. Here is one short story:
A young lady was
learning how to share her faith with her Muslim neighbors. She wanted to do this but was struggling with
it. She came to my wife and me for counsel.
She told us her story.
Her father had been
serving the Lord in a mixed area of Christians and Muslims when Islamic
extremists moved in and attacked the area.
She was a young girl. After
hiding, her family was fortunate to be rescued by the military (the extremists
had a militia, but were not part of the government). Her family was placed in the back of a military
truck to be driven out of the area to a boat which would take them to relative
safety. The truck had boards enclosing
the back, but the boards were not tightly fitted so that one could look out the
cracks. She looked and saw along the side of the road Christians who had been
slaughtered. What do you say to something like that?
The first step in ministering to someone who shares a
story like that is taking time to share in their deep hurt. But even for a case
this extreme, or rather, especially for cases this extreme, the Bible gives
answers.
Part of the answer (a huge, important part) is that Jesus
set the amazing example for us by forgiving those who crucified Him. He also
offered forgiveness to Paul, who had been involved in persecuting Christians.
The blood of Christ is ENOUGH payment for any sin. Even the most terrible, horrifying sins can
be forgiven because of the cross.
But not everyone will accept the payment Christ
made. In such cases, does the Bible tell
us that pay back is wrong? Yes and
no. It’s wrong for us to personally seek
pay back, but it is not wrong to desire justice, which includes pay back. Paul
was writing to a group of Christians who, like the Christians I served among,
were facing serious persecution. Notice
what he tells them:
2
Thessalonians 1:5 All this is evidence that God's judgment is right, and as a
result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are
suffering.
6 God is just: He
will pay back trouble to those who trouble you
7 and give relief to you who are troubled, and
to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in
blazing fire with his powerful angels.
8 He will punish those who do not know God and
do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
Notice that Paul does not say “don’t worry about justice”. Paul says God is just and will pay back those
who were persecuting the believers. Paul
explains that this will happen when Jesus returns. It’s not wrong to want justice,
to want pay back. But vengeance is not
our job. It’s God's job. God promises to avenge, and uses this promise
to free us from the burden and danger of seeking vengeance ourselves:
Romans
12:17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the
eyes of everyone.
18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on
you, live at peace with everyone.
19 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.
20 On the contrary: "If your enemy is
hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this,
you will heap burning coals on his head."
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome
evil with good.
Believing in God’s promise to avenge does not make us
angry and vengeful. It frees us to
forgive and love. Believing that God is
just empowers us to take risks and love our enemies and do good to them, hoping
that they will be won to Christ, but knowing that some will continue to reject
him and do more evil. We aren’t ignoring
justice; we are trusting God’s promise to be just and repay in the end.
I have seen how this truth is part of what God uses to
set the hearts of Christians, Christians who have seen and suffered terrible
evil, free to minister to others.
This is one reason I’m concerned about wrong views of
Hell. These wrong views of Hell are not
consistent with God’s promise to avenge and to pay back, and thus, they
undermine this important truth.
How Wrong Views of
Hell Can Undermine God’s Promise to Avenge
One popular view of Hell is that it does not really
involve any active punishment from God. This popular view says that God simply
allows those who prefer not to be in His presence to go on existing without
Him. Such an existence is sad and unhappy, but does not involve God actively
punishing anyone. This idea may sound
attractive to some, but it utterly and totally lacks Biblical support. It is
contrary to the repeated and consistent teaching of Scripture. God repeatedly
promises to pay back people according to their sins. The Bible portrays God as
being active in this. Indeed, God is the one who carries out this vengeance.
Sometimes the “mild version” of Hell is combined with the
idea that perhaps the lonely, unhappy inhabitants of Hell can leave whenever
they choose to by finally accepting Christ.
This is a view held by some universalists. They view the purpose of Hell
as being correction and restoration, and they consistently deny any element of vengeance. In doing so, they undermine an important
Biblical truth which helps us to forgive and minister to our enemies.
There is another error regarding Hell which undermines
the truth that Hell involves “payback”.
That is the common and widespread belief that Hell involves eternal
torment. One of the many problems with the eternal torment view is that the
Bible teaches that God will punish the unrighteous “according to what they have
done” (Romans 2:6). Some people have
committed a lot of terrible sins, but no person has caused any other person
torment that lasts longer than billions of years. So why should the payback
involve way more than billions of years of torment? A belief in eternal torment is a distortion
of God’s justice and promise to repay.
There is a further, admittedly more subtle, problem with eternal torment
with regard to God promising to repay.
If unrighteous people really did deserve to be tortured
for eternity then how does God ever fulfill His promise to repay sinners? If the unrighteous “owe” an eternity of
suffering as payment for their sins, then even after a million trillion years of
torment they would have repaid far less than 1/1000th of 1% of the
debt they apparently owe. In this view justice is NEVER complete or fulfilled.
The view which best fits with God’s promise to repay is
annihilationism. God will repay each
person according to their sins. The
final outcome is that they perish (John 3:16), are destroyed by God in both
body and soul (Matthew 10:28), and they are burned to ashes (2 Peter 2:6). This
second death is permanent, it is eternal, and is itself the primary punishment
for sins which is most emphasized throughout Scripture. However, just as death
in this life may be preceded by various amounts of suffering, the “second death”
also will be preceded by some suffering which will be truly just. God will repay.
To read more on this topic, and to see many supporting
scripture references, click on the link below. The linked post focuses on how
the principle of proportional punishment, along with many other lines of
evidence, indicates that the “second death” mentioned in Revelation refers to
final annihilation, not eternal torment:
Hebrews 13:16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others . . .
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