Over the centuries, great works of literature and film have grappled with apparent shades of vengeance and justice. The Count of Monte Cristo, for example, explores the moral consequences of seeking to avenge personal wrongs. By appealing to man’s innate sense of justice, stories typically served ‘comeuppance’ to deserving characters. However, traditional plotlines using circumstances to orchestrate poetic justice against ne’er-do-wells have given way to “heroes” pursuing personal vendettas. They undertake quests to extract restitution through playing by their own rules—pursuing what is “right in [their] own eyes” (Judges 21:25; Proverbs 21:2). Playing the role of judge, jury, and executioner—and in some cases, putting Lamech’s “seventy-sevenfold” to shame (Genesis 4:24)—they mete out their own justice, resulting in a hefty, uncomfortably high body count.
Our culture has also elevated retaliation in real life. Digital technology provides innovative ways of ‘getting back’ at others by destroying their reputations. ‘Canceling’ people involves public shaming such as social boycotts (i.e., shunning), cyberbullying, and doxxing (i.e., publishing contact information for harassment purposes). Riots destroying property are deemed justified in the wake of institutional wrongs. Many even celebrate violence or tragedies befalling their sociopolitical enemies.
Christians, by stark contrast, are called to a radical, countercultural response when wronged. Paul instructed:
Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. . . Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:17–21)
Believing counselees (along with ourselves) must be reminded of two key truths about vengeance: 1) the desire to sinfully “right” personal wrongs still resides in our flesh, and 2) it comes in many forms.
The Desire to Get Even
The justification of vengeance can seem so righteous. Personally, when we are the victim, a tit-for-tat response can feel entirely justifiable. This is a distortion of our sense of and longing for fairness that God has endowed to all those created in His image. We may define biblical justice as “the virtue which gives each one his due,”1δικαιοσύνη, dikaiosynē, (Strong’s NT 1343), Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, Bible Hub, https://biblehub.com/greek/1343.htm. and vengeance as “the [personal] infliction of injury, harm, humiliation, or punishment in return for an injury or offense.”2P. Hulsey, “Vengeance,” December 31, 2014, Biblical Counseling Database.
When our desire to be treated well is left unmet due to an offense, our sense of injustice rises. Instead of responding appropriately, we tend to twist justice by assuming the role of enforcer. We make our own calculations to balance our personal scale of justice and execute our revenge accordingly. As always, there is a pay-off. After we extract our pound of flesh, sometimes a sense of satisfaction or vindication can follow. Justice has been dispensed, though this never quenches the roots of bitterness that can fester.
The Many Masks of Vengeance
This leads to our second truth: taking revenge comes in all shapes and sizes. Not all revenge looks like years of brooding and plotting, like the titular protagonist in The Count of Monte Cristo. It can look like a wife, for example, changing her tone to one of slight aloofness after her husband pours cold water on the great idea she’d been working on for a few weeks. That terse response can feel so justified. She had been hurt, whether her husband intentionally meant to or not. Her corresponding decision to withdraw a measure of herself relationally from her husband was her vindictive choice of punishment.
Typically, a counselor may point out several sinful heart attitudes in this situation: lack of forbearance and patience; lack of humility and biblical, unmerited love; lack of wisdom and self-control in restraining her wrong attitude; lack of expressing respect to her husband that pleases the Lord, etc. But we don’t always perceive the element of sinful vengeance. In many counseling situations, counselees are surprised to discover some of their responses to others are—to use the biblical term—vengeful. It often boils down to, “You hurt me, and there’s a price for that.”
Revenge can be as small as inserting a little verbal dig or even dwelling on a “comeback” in our mind: we satisfy ourselves mentally with what we’d never utter aloud. Perhaps the wife was thinking to herself: You think that’s a bad idea?! What about your idea to —? We may not even fully realize our tit-for-tat responses, soon forgetting them after sufficient payment has been collected. But it’s still returning evil for evil. We must not only help our counselees become aware of this sinful behavior but also root it out in our own lives. Here are some ways we can be vengeful toward others:
- Gossiping or damaging someone’s reputation
- Shutting down, refusing to engage, giving the cold shoulder
- Poor or shoddy work, poor attitude
- Sabotaging, undermining
- Cheating, stealing, lying
- Fantasizing about revenge, verbal or otherwise
- Excluding them from your interactions with others
- Self-inflicted harm but blaming them
- Withholding service
- Destroying what they want, pursuing what they hate
- Intentionally provoking them to anger, pushing their buttons
- Turning the tables, attempting to inflict the same offense against them
- Mocking, joking, sarcasm, disrespect
The Put On: Entrusting and Forgiving
Vengeance is fundamentally wrong because it’s not ours to take. Rather, it belongs to God, who sinlessly and perfectly wields it. In fact, “He defines justice by what He does.”3John Macarthur, “The Problem of Evil,” March 17, 2007, Grace to You, https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/GTY161/the-problem-of-evil. He may use earthly agents, but it’s never their personal retaliation. He promises that an “evil man will not go unpunished” (Proverbs 11:21). Every sin is dealt with, whether by future eternal condemnation for the unbeliever, or fully by Christ on the cross for the believer. There’s neither room for, nor anything left for us to seek. He is trustworthy, and we are comforted and liberated, freed up to follow His example when viciously wronged: “[He] kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously” (1 Peter 3:23). “Entrust” means to hand it over; deliver it up; to commit to another.4παραδίδωμι, paradidōmi, Strong’s G3860, Blue Letter Bible, https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g3860/nasb95/mgnt/0-1/. Christ turned the reviling and unjust suffering over to His Father and asked Him to “forgive them; for they [did] not know what they [were] doing” (Luke 23:34).
Vengeance is also characteristic of an unforgiving heart. When we are tempted to take our pound of flesh, we must choose to turn it over to God’s care. Instead, we pardon. We take the hit, as it were. Lou Priolo observed: “When you forgive someone, it costs you something that is tremendously expensive. It costs you the price of the offense that you forgive!”5Lou Priolo, Bitterness: The Root that Pollutes, (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2008), 14. We are free to love, “not tak[ing] into account a wrong suffered” (1 Corinthians 13:5). Through the Holy Spirit’s power, we choose by faith to “consider the sin debt that others incur against us to be paid for, on the basis of God’s grace, tenderness, and mercy in forgiving us in Christ and with the commitment to treat them as though they had never sinned against us.”6Chris Riser, “Love, the More Excellent Way: Love Does Not Take Into Account a Wrong Suffered,” Part 2, January 26, 2025, https://sermons.gracemaryville.org/2025/250126_Love_Pt_11_Pt_2.mp3. Forgiveness—not revenge—is what is truly sweet.
