I WILL REPAY
We have all heard it: God is a God of love, but He is also a God of wrath.
It is often presented as the necessary balance to any message about His goodness. Speak of mercy, and someone reminds us of vengeance. Speak of forgiveness, and someone warns that judgment is coming. Before long, people live with the impression that God’s compassion must always be accompanied by the threat of another outpouring of wrath.
But is that an accurate description of our relationship with God under the fulfilled new covenant? Have we taken warnings about a particular covenant judgment and turned them into a endless threat hanging over every generation?
The Scriptures certainly speak of God’s wrath. The question is whether we have understood its covenant setting, its intended audience, and its appointed fulfillment.
To understand the announced vengeance is mine, I will repay, we must begin where the apostles found it.
God’s relationship with Israel included a covenant with clearly stated blessings and consequences. Disobedience would bring the judgments that Israel had been warned about before entering the land.
But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee:
Deuteronomy 28:15
The chapter describes what those curses would involve: famine, warfare, captivity, and the siege of Israel’s cities.
And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.
Deuteronomy 28:52
These were covenant consequences addressed to Israel. Their cities, their land, and the strongholds in which they trusted were explicitly named.
Before Moses died, God instructed him to teach Israel a song that would bear witness against them when they turned away.
Now therefore write ye this song for you, and teach it the children of Israel: put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel.
Deuteronomy 31:19
That song is recorded in Deuteronomy 32. It recounts God’s faithfulness, Israel’s corruption, and the judgment their rebellion would bring. Here we encounter the foundation of the words later quoted by Paul.
To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.
Deuteronomy 32:35
Vengeance and recompense belong within this covenant testimony. The song also speaks of God vindicating His servants.
Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people: for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful unto his land, and to his people.
Deuteronomy 32:43
Keep that expression in mind: He will avenge the blood of His servants. It becomes a thread running through the prophets, the words of Jesus, and the apostolic writings.
Yet throughout Israel’s rebellion, God continued to send messengers. His patience was evident in every appeal to return.
And the LORD God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling place:
2 Chronicles 36:15
Why did He send them? Because He had compassion.
But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against his people, till there was no remedy.
2 Chronicles 36:16
This passage describes the rebellion preceding the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem. It establishes a pattern we must recognize: compassion, repeated warnings, rejection of God’s messengers, and covenant judgment.
Jeremiah likewise exposed the false security of those who trusted in the temple while refusing God’s correction.
Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, are these.
Jeremiah 7:4
Possessing a temple did not exempt them from the covenant’s consequences. Their confidence in the building could not excuse their treatment of the God whose name it bore.
Centuries later, Jesus confronted Jerusalem’s leadership with the same history of rejected messengers. He announced that their persecution would continue against those He sent.
Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city:
Matthew 23:34
Then He announced the reckoning.
That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.
Matthew 23:35
Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.
Matthew 23:36
There is the blood of God’s servants. There is the accountability. And there is the generation.
Jesus then named the city.
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
Matthew 23:37
Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.
Matthew 23:38
Even here, hear His compassion: how often would I have gathered thy children together.
Their approaching desolation followed repeated rejection. In the next chapter, Jesus announced that the temple’s stones would be thrown down. Luke records the unmistakable sign of that approaching catastrophe.
And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.
Luke 21:20
The city was Jerusalem. The sign was surrounding armies. Those in Judea were instructed to flee. Jesus then explained the significance of those events.
For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.
Luke 21:22
The days of vengeance had a covenant history and a first-century setting.
Jesus was bringing the written warnings to their appointed fulfillment. He described great distress in the land, wrath upon this people, death by the sword, captivity, and Jerusalem being trampled by the Gentiles.
This is the setting we must carry into the apostles’ writings.
The first-century church lived during the transition between the inauguration of the new covenant through Christ and the removal of the old covenant order. Hebrews describes that order as approaching its disappearance.
In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.
Hebrews 8:13
During that transition, believers faced extreme persecution. Paul instructed them concerning their response.
Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
Romans 12:19
Paul reached back into the Song of Moses.
Unfortunately, this passage is sometimes treated as permission to restrain our own hands while asking God to strike our enemies for us. We may surrender the act of retaliation while carefully preserving the appetite for it. Personal revenge becomes a prayer request.
But Paul had already instructed these believers:
Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.
Romans 12:14
He followed his statement about vengeance with instructions to feed a hungry enemy and give a thirsty enemy something to drink.
Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:21
Leaving vengeance with God was never permission to make Him the instrument of our personal grudges. The believers were called to practice goodness while trusting God to fulfill His promised judgment.
Paul’s assurance to the Thessalonians makes the circumstances especially clear.
Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you;
2 Thessalonians 1:6
And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels,
2 Thessalonians 1:7
In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ:
2 Thessalonians 1:8
Those troubling them would receive recompense. Those being troubled would receive relief.
These words addressed living congregations enduring actual persecution. Read alongside Jesus’ announcement, they belong to the approaching reckoning and vindication of that generation.
Hebrews draws from the same covenant song taken from Deuteronomy 32 .
For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people.
Hebrews 10:30
The writer joins vengeance and recompense with the declaration that the Lord would judge His people. Both statements come from Deuteronomy 32. The chapter also identifies the urgency of their circumstances.
For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.
Hebrews 10:37
The original readers were living within that little while. The judgment Jesus announced was approaching. Jerusalem’s destruction in AD 70 brought the covenant reckoning into history.
Revelation presents the same appeal for the vindication of God’s servants.
And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
Revelation 6:10
The martyrs were told to rest for a little season. Later, as the bowls are poured out, the reason for the judgment is explicitly stated.
For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy.
Revelation 16:6
The connection reaches back to the Song of Moses and forward through Jesus’ indictment of Jerusalem: the blood of God’s servants was being avenged.
The final bowl brings this declaration:
And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done.
Revelation 16:17
It is done.
We should allow that declaration to carry its weight. The covenant vengeance traced throughout these passages reached its appointed conclusion. Its completion gives us no warrant to threaten a present nation or person with those same impending plagues.
God’s mercy, longsuffering, forgiveness, love, and compassion were evident throughout this history. He sent messengers because He had compassion. Jesus wept over the city that rejected Him. The warnings themselves provided opportunities to repent and escape.
The familiar statement that God is a God of love, but also a God of wrath becomes misleading when it turns a fulfilled covenant judgment into a permanent threat against people today. The wrath in this prophetic story had an identified setting, an approaching fulfillment, and a declared completion.
We live beyond that covenant transition. We must stop taking the judgments announced against that rebellious covenant order and suspending them over every succeeding generation.
Revelation announces the outcome before describing the bowls. Its wording brings our study to its conclusion.
And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvellous, seven angels having the seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God.
Revelation 15:1
The seven last plagues. In them the wrath of God is brought to completion.
The vengeance promised in this covenant story was repaid. Its wrath was fulfilled. There is no remaining portion of those bowls waiting to be poured upon a nation or person today. Those will not happen. It is complete. It is finished. It is done!
