Vengeance is Mine

I'm still chewing on Total Forgiveness and as I read on today I had some more thoughts. Often times in our lives when we see injustice, we want retribution immediately, and often times we take it on ourselves to be the judge or punisher if you will.

But that angers God. He said, “Vengeance is mine and mine alone”, we don’t have the authority to be a judge because we are flawed people. Kendall said in his book, What if every time you judged someone an angel of God came down and told the person you were accusing all of your sins? Would we feel so bold to point the finger then?

David was considered to be a man after God’s own heart. Yet even David could not escape the justice of God. He would have to answer for his sin of sleeping with Uriah’s wife and then having him killed so no one would find out about it.

You read in 2 Samuel the harsh punishment that God gives to David through the voice of Nathan the prophet, “The sword will never depart from your house!” Wow what a sentence! You see later on in David’s life his sentence being carried out in 2 Samuel, David’s illegitimate son with Bathsheba dies, later his other sons rise against him, his closest friends die by the sword, one of his sons sleeps with David’s wives on top of a roof in public for all to see.

What I am getting is that God doesn’t need our help in being a judge; he does just fine by himself. Nobody needed to carry out vengeance on behalf of Uriah’s honor. God saw everything and even though he loved David, David needed to be corrected. My conclusion is not very good, but I think I got more glimpses at God’s character and also mine through today’s little bathroom study of Total Forgiveness.