Right to Revenge?

||Rhema for the Week||

“not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing.”
I Peter‬ ‭3‬:‭9‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

The pains we feel as victims of offences drive us as human to repay the offender with an equal—or perhaps a higher— magnitude of pain. That is the most human reaction to the pain caused by others: it is how we show that what was done to us did hurt. When we are denied of revenge, it feels like we’ve been tied up and deprived of expressing the hurt we feel.

Christ Jesus calls us into a whole new Kingdom, with different code of conduct in such situations. We are to revoke that right of revenge because pain does not give a free pass to do evil in any way. No matter how justified you think you are, evil is still evil even if it’s a retaliation —don’t say “even God knows it hurts.”

Just as Viktor Frankl puts it in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, “…no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.” Bear in mind that God is just enough to recompense and also merciful enough to forgive, it is the reason we are still here.

Remember, paying good with evil is demonic, paying good with good is human, but paying evil with good Christ-like.

Further reading: Rom 12:17-21, Matt 5:38-39, 1 Thess 5:15, Proverbs 20:22