vengeance

First, I used this graphic to remind you that the audio version of Just Love is available now. Someone shared last week how fun it was to hear Tobie read Chapter 3 about his conversation with the classroom. That it is!

Second, I don’t get to travel as much as I used to, so it makes it all the more special when I do. I want to make sure people in New England have heard that I’ll be coming to the Boston area next weekend (October 2 -4).  I’ll be facilitating casual conversations, helping people process things I’ve said or written that they want to understand better.  On Saturday, October 3, I’ll be in Reading, and on Sunday and Monday, October 4-5, I’ll be in the Sutton/Worcester area. You can get all the details on my Travel Page.)

Now, on to today’s blog:

What does love do when it is wronged?

That was the question at the heart of a most recent Just Love conversation online. It is one thing to talk about love in the abstract, where it sounds beautiful and inviting. It is another thing to ask what love looks like when someone lies about you, betrays you, abuses you, takes advantage of you, or leaves wreckage in the lives of people you care about.

That is where love is tested. And that is where our understanding of God’s justice either becomes a doorway into healing or a justification for our own vengeance.

We explored Matthew 5, Romans 12, and even the often-misunderstood Old Testament phrase, “an eye for an eye.” Most of us have heard that as a call to vengeance, but in its original setting, it was actually a restraint on vengeance. It was meant to keep punishment proportionate—to stop the endless escalation of retaliation that destroys families, communities, and nations.

Jesus takes us even deeper. He doesn’t invite us to a more refined vengeance, but into a love that refuses to answer evil with evil. Paul echoes the same theme in Romans 12: “Do not take revenge… but leave room for God’s wrath.” That doesn’t mean God is itching to punish people. It means justice is safer in his hands than in ours. Human vengeance is almost always distorted by fear, anger, shame, or the need to make someone pay. God’s justice is different. It is redemptive. It seeks to make things right, not simply to even the score.

Love does not mean we pretend evil didn’t happen. It does not mean we allow abuse to continue. It does not mean we ignore wisdom, boundaries, or the safety of those who are vulnerable. Some in our group shared deeply personal stories of betrayal, abuse, family conflict, and the long road toward forgiveness. Those stories reminded us that love is not sentimental, nor is it passive. Sometimes love turns the other cheek. Sometimes love draws a boundary. Sometimes love walks away from a destructive situation. Sometimes love confronts. The difference is not found in a rulebook, but in learning to listen to the Spirit as he reshapes our hearts.

One of the themes that emerged was the difference between transactional love and transformational love. Transactional love keeps score. It asks, “What do you owe me?” or “What must I do to get God to bless me?” Transformational love begins somewhere else entirely. It starts with the love we have already received from God and lets that love change the way we see ourselves, our enemies, and the injustice we suffer.

That’s why forgiveness can never be reduced to a demand. “You have to forgive” has often been used to heap shame on people who are already wounded. Real forgiveness grows best in the soil of being forgiven. The more secure we become in Father’s love, the less we need vengeance to protect us. Forgiveness doesn’t excuse the wrong or erase the need for boundaries. It simply releases our demand to make another person pay and entrusts justice to the only One who can hold it rightly.

This is where the gospel becomes so practical. Love does not call us to be doormats, nor does it permit us to exact revenge. It invites us into a different way of being in the world. Might does not make right. Love does.

And love makes right first in us. When we process our pain through his love, we are better able to see how the Spirit would lead us to respond.

Love frees us from the need to control outcomes, defend our image, or satisfy the rage that injustice awakens in us. It teaches us to respond rather than react. It gives us courage to protect the vulnerable without hatred, to tell the truth without contempt, and to set boundaries without vengeance.

That is not easy. No one in our conversation pretended it was. These are not answers we master in a single class session. They are learned slowly, in the real circumstances of our lives, as we keep bringing our pain, anger, confusion, and desire for justice into the presence of Jesus.

But this much became clear: the justice of God does not grow in the soil of vengeance. It grows in the soil of love.d

And when his love begins to win the battle inside us, we become part of his healing in the world around us.

__________

We will end our first class this Sunday, and later in October, start another one. We are going to make this next one more accessible to people in Australia and Asia. So, we will be starting at 7 pm Pacific Time on Saturday, which will get Tobie up at 4:00 am South African time. But that will put us around mid-day in Asia, depending on your exact location. We are planning to do this on Sunday for people in Australia and Asia, but if Saturday works better for those who want to join us, we could switch. So let me know which would work best for you.

So if you’re interested in being in our next Just Love Conversation, please let me know. We will meet over six sessions and try to get them in before Christmas. If you want to join us, wherever you are in the world, please email me.  We limit these sessions to the first 40 people who sign up.