Who would offer me vengeance against my enemies? Who would set me free? There are a few conditions for someone to avenge me. First, the avenger must be more powerful than the opposition. Second, the avenger must love the oppressed. Third, the oppressed must be deserving. Did you know that God is our avenger?
To be avenged, we must be loved. God’s love for us is well documented. It is described as unconditional, everlasting and powerful. 1 John 3:1 explains that God calls us his children. Who among us does not love our child so much that we would avenge them?
If someone is to avenge me they must be powerful. God is powerful. So powerful, he handily establishes his own worlds. He stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing. He binds up the waters in his thick clouds, and the cloud is not split open under them. He covers the face of the full moon and spreads over it his cloud. He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness. Job 26:7-10 (ESV)
If I expect to be avenged, I need to be deserving. This is a problem. I am not deserving. I am not innocent. None of us are. Its been that way since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. The Lord doesn’t avenge the guilty, he eliminates them. Remember Noah? Genesis 6:5 (ESV) The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. That same fate would await us if not for Jesus Christ. You know the story. He died for us. In his death, he took all of our sins upon himself. He is our avenger. We have been set free. We are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. Romans 3:24-25
When we finally recognize the love that God has for us and we get a glimpse of his unimaginable power and we realize that we are now worthy to be called his children, there is only one response. Worship.
Who rises up for me against the wicked?
Who stands up for me against evildoers?
If the Lord had not been my help,
my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.
When I thought, “My foot slips,”
your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up.
When the cares of my heart are many,
your consolations cheer my soul.
Can wicked rulers be allied with you,
those who frame injustice by statute?
They band together against the life of the righteous
and condemn the innocent to death.
But the Lord has become my stronghold,
and my God the rock of my refuge.
He will bring back on them their iniquity
and wipe them out for their wickedness;
the Lord our God will wipe them out. Psalm 94:16-23