It may be God’s will that the most difficult thing he ever calls you to do is to endure being wronged, and to do so in a way that displays Christian character. It may be that the greatest challenge of your life will be to endure injustice with meekness and patience. It may be that God’s specific calling upon you is to suffer wrong and to do so without taking vengeance and without losing the joy of your salvation. But by looking back and looking up and looking forward, you can suffer well.

It’s a verse every Christian believes in until he suffers some great wrong. It’s a verse every Christian affirms until he is called to implement it in his own life. And it’s just then that the words seem to transform from clear to opaque, the application from simple to obscure. In 1 Corinthians 6:7 Paul speaks of lawsuits between believers and says “Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?” It’s better to suffer injustice within the church, he says, than to harm Christ’s cause before the world. It’s better to suffer harm quietly than to express outrage publicly. If you sue a brother and win, the church has already lost.
This is just one application of a much wider principle that is repeated throughout the New Testament, a principle that calls Christians to behave with humility and meekness, even in the face of grave injustice. Christians are not to retaliate when wronged, nor to repay evil with evil, nor to curse those who harm them. Rather, we are to bear patiently through suffering and persecution, we are to endure hardship, we are to entrust ourselves to God. We are to do all of this even—and perhaps especially—when our trials come at the hands of those who profess Christ.
None of this is easy. It is no small thing to suppress our natural instinct for vengeance or to set aside our natural longing for retaliation. It is no small thing to allow ourselves to be wronged and then to meekly suffer the consequences. It may be one of the greatest challenges we are ever called to face. Yet we can be equal to the challenge if we take hold of the grace God offers us.
Read More
Related Posts:

Moses stands as a gleaming example in the dark storms of modern self-aggrandizement, reminding us that to sit at the feet of the Lord—even when spiritual tragedy surrounds us—is good and proper. It is a reminder that the spiritual disasters around us are not, properly speaking, our problem. The battle belongs to the Lord. He may send us down the mountain to be a spiritual leader in critical times (Exodus 32:7), but never before filling us with His grace, peace, and Word. The events or tasks causing that tension in your chest and anxiety in your heart cannot be solved by you. If those things are to be done well, they must be according to the Lord’s plan. 

Christians and non-Christians alike constantly talk about the need for “self-care” these days. I wonder if farmers, working 80 hours a week in 1950s America, thought about “self-care.” That is a rhetorical question. Of course, they did not. The reason, I suspect, is not that hard-working farmers did not need to take care of themselves. Instead, we talk about it today because of new demands in how we live.
We talk so much about it (there are books, YouTube videos, and even people dedicated to this topic), and people of yesteryear did not because times have changed for us. We are in a new place that makes divine demands on all people. Society expects us to be “on” all the time. We must respond to instant messages instantly. We must be aware of tragedy in our city, state, nation, and world. We must keep up with the news, the latest book, the newest post, the latest show, the best restaurant, and what everyone we know is thinking as they stream it live onto social media.
In other words, society expected 1950s farmers to grow crops. Today, on the other hand, society expects us to be God. We have the world’s information in our pockets—we must be omniscient. We can respond to everything everywhere—we must be omnipresent. We have incredible technology that can solve “all” our problems—we must be omnipotent. For an example of the latter point, consider a billboard I recently saw hawking services to people with cancer: “Take control of your cancer! Call us today.” As if dealing with cancer is a matter of “taking control.”
Moses begs to differ. In Exodus 24, Moses went up the mountain of the Lord. When on the mountain, God conversed with Moses from Exodus chapter 25 to 31. In chapter 32, we read that the people begin to commit idolatry—the infamous golden calf “incident.”
Read More
Related Posts:

According to Paul, we should not take matters into our own hands. It’s not that there’s not justice to be served; there very well might be. But it’s not for you or I to administer it because we aren’t capable of doing so in a true and good and noble way. This belongs to the Lord. When we execute our own sense of vengeance, whether big or small, we are expressing our lack of faith that God can and will do it on His own. We are communicating instead that our way is better. But God is just. Justice will be served, and it will be served in a far better and more appropriate way that we could ever deliver it.

Jesus isn’t interested in the minimum. When we have enemies, we might reasonably just try and stay away from them, but Jesus won’t settle for that. He calls us to love them. When we are wondering how many people we reasonably have to love and care for, Jesus won’t settle for that. He calls us to recognize every person in our pathway as a neighbor. When we are wondering just how many of the commands in Scripture reasonably apply to us, Jesus won’t settle for that. He calls us to take up our cross daily and follow Him.
No, Jesus isn’t interested in the minimum of anything. In so many ways, Jesus calls us to the unexpected. Unexpected love, unexpected sacrifice, unexpected loyalty. So it is when we come to the subject of revenge. Here’s how He put it:
You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you (Matt. 5:38-42).
We might reasonably assume that we can give a little payback here and there to those who have wronged us, but here again Jesus pushes us well beyond the minimum. According to Him, not only should we not pay others back for what they’ve done, but we should so forego our need for revenge that we move into generosity. And boy, that’s a hard thing, because we feel that desire down deep in our souls.
We have been treated unfairly, maligned unjustly, and pushed down unkindly, and someone ought to pay for it. How do we deal with that deep down desire for revenge? We fight it with truth – specifically, with truth about who God is. Here are four such truths to snuff out that flickering flame of vengeance in our hearts:
1. God is active.
Saul had been wreaking havoc on the early church. There was a literal trail of bodies in his wake, and he was just getting wound up. But that all changed with a dramatic encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road and the great enemy of the church became her most ardent advocate.
I’m reminded of how, in those first days after his conversion, the early Christians did not know whether to trust him or not. Who could blame them?
Read More