In Romans 12:19, Paul says we are not to avenge (enact punitive justice) ourselves. However, the reason we do this is not because as Christians we think vengeance itself is wrong. To the contrary! Again, justice, by definition, is just (good). (In fact, used with the a- prefix, this root is used to form the word “unrighteousness” in Roman 1:18 and elsewhere.) Rather, the reason we ought not enact vengeance for ourselves is that it doesn’t belong to us. God alone is judge, not us (Rom 12:19, citing Deut 32:35; see also Rom 14 where Paul, under different circumstances but in proximate context, emphasizes that God alone is judge).

In fact, the logic of Paul’s instruction here seems to be, you don’t need to enact vengeance, not because vengeance itself is bad and you are wrong to want it to happen, but precisely because you know it will happen. You don’t need to do it, because God will (Rom 12:19). In other words, the foundation for Paul’s commands throughout Romans 12:14-21—to bless in response to curse, not to repay evil with evil, to overcome evil with good, etc.—is this fact that we can trust that God will punish evil, so we don’t have to (in fact, we shouldn’t, since it’s not our prerogative). So likewise, Peter says that Jesus didn’t return reviling or threats (1 Peter 1:21-23), but “continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (v.23). Again, it’s not the absence of vengeance, but believing in its guarantee—God will “judge justly”—that enables his people to leave vengeance to God.

Nonetheless, this doesn’t mean we are indifferent to vengeance in this life or that it should never happen. To the contrary! As Paul continues in Rom 13:1-7, he describes the state as a “deacon” (often translated “servant” or “minister”) of God. In what sense? It is “an avenger [same root as “avenge” and “vengeance” in 12:19] who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom 13:4, ESV emphasis added). In other words, vengeance is God’s (12:19). But God also authorizes human means, like certain institutions in this life, to deliver that justice and protect victims—even here and now, at least to some degree (I like the word “provisional” here: provisional justice, as opposed to eschatological and ultimate justice).

I think the proximity in Paul’s use of ἐκδίκησις and ἐκδικέω (in Rom 12:19 and Rom 13:4) then is intentional. Remember, chapter divisions aren’t original, and unfortunately here that big “13” can make us feel a stronger shift in topic than is likely the case.

Those with responsibility, therefore, should never appeal to God’s final (eschatological) justice to excuse their own inaction and failure to intervene when it’s within their prerogative to enact justice. To do so is to disobey one’s God’s given responsibility to function as his vengeance-enacting servant; it is to play the role of Pilate who sought to wash his hands of responsibility (Matt 27:24).

In short, all of this explains why the same Paul who tells us not to avenge ourselves (Rom 12:19), for instance, nonetheless has a place for praying imprecatory prayers such as this one: “Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will repay him according to his deeds” (2 Tim 4:14 ESV). Again, by definition, it’s not wrong (unjust) to want justice.

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Miroslav Volf is a highly-esteemed Yale theologian from Croatia who lived through the Balkan violence. In his award winning book, Exclusion and Embrace, he talks about the nature of reconciliation and forgiveness, largely born out of his own horrific life experience. He writes,

“My thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many Christians, especially theologians in the West. To the person who is inclined to dismiss it, I suggest imagining that you are delivering a lecture in a war zone (which is where a paper that underlies this chapter was originally delivered). Among your listeners are people whose cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned and leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit. The topic of the lecture: a Christian attitude toward violence. The thesis: we should not retaliate since God is perfect noncoercive love. Soon you would discover that it takes the quiet of a suburban home-protected by police and military force!-for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God’s refusal to judge. In a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die.”¹

He goes on to explain,

“Without entrusting oneself to the God who judges justly, it will hardly be possible to follow the crucified Messiah and refuse to retaliate when abused. The certainty of God’s just judgment at the end of history is the presupposition for the renunciation of violence in the middle of it. The divine system of judgment is not the flip side of the human reign of terror, but a necessary correlate of human nonviolence. Since the search for truth and the practice of justice cannot be given up, the only way in which nonviolence and forgiveness will be possible in a world of violence is through displacement or transference of violence, not through its complete relinquishment. …

One could object that it is not worthy of God to wield the sword. Is God not love, long-suffering, and all-powerful love? A counter-question could go something like this: Is it not a bit too arrogant to presume that our contemporary sensibilities about what is compatible with God’s love are so much healthier than those of the people of God throughout the whole history of Judaism and Christianity? Recalling my arguments about the self-immunization of the evildoers, one could further argue that in a world of violence it would not be worthy of God not to wield the sword; if God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make the final end to violence God would not be worthy of our worship.”²

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We live in a world characterized by an unbearable amount of injustice. In Ecclesiastes, the Qohelet rightly cries,

“Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness. … Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.” (Ecc 3:16; 4:1–3 ESV)

If we are honest, this world—this life, our lives—are dominated by evil, suffering, and abuse. Humans are terrible to each other. Mistreatment abounds. Agony is not an anomaly.

Yet the reason we can sustain this sort of brutal honesty about the ways things really are (when others will want to sugar coat it)—the reason we can keep our eyes peeled open to evil when others want to close theirs—is our conviction in an even more solid reality than the evil itself: the final justice of God. From the Christian standpoint, the eschatological (the final reality) isn’t unrelated to the present, but exists with such certainty that its reality invades the present with its meaning. That’s the virtue of hope: living in light of that future that is sure to be.

In fact, I would personally go mad (insane) without it, if the injustice of this world simply was and never met its answer. And here I think Christianity demonstrates its immense explanatory power as the “true myth” (to use C.S. Lewis’ phrase from Surprised by Joy) that makes sense of the world: the Christian message resonates with what we deep down know to be true. We were created for a world of justice. As C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, originally delivered as broadcasts in England during the horrors of WW2, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”³ Despite the fact that our world consistently fails to yield justice, there’s still something in us that expects it. We can’t shake our programming.

Notes

1. Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, Revised and Updated: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2019), 299-300. ↩︎
2. Ibid., 298-299. ↩︎
3. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 136–137 ↩︎