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. Now she wanted to reach out to her Muslim neighbors (most of which were not extremists), but this memory made it hard for her.
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 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 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 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.
What do you think? Do you agree that final punishment involves "payback"? Which view of Hell (eternal conscious torment, universalism, or annihilationism) seems most harmonious with the Biblical teaching of "payback"?
This is a slightly modified (hopefully improved) version of a post on my blog.
