All of us have felt it before--bitterness, or rage. It is inevitable. At one point or another in your life, someone will hurt you. That's the downside to forming relationships. Every person you have a relationship with will hurt you at least once. The worst part is that how much love or trust you invest in someone determines how much pain you feel were they to ever hurt you; the greater the love, the greater the pain.
Some of us have developed complexes due to people who have hurt us in the past. Sometimes, people hurt us so badly that it impacts us for the rest of our lives. We carry it along with all of the other past hurts that weigh us down. They have NO idea how much destruction they have reaped, or how much discord they have sewn in our lives. Sometimes we catch ourselves going back to the moments we were wronged, and the bitterness stirs up in us all over again. We can't seem to let it go. We eventually develop an unhealthy obsession, and letting go becomes difficult because we feel it defines who we are. Sometimes the answer seems clear. Revenge becomes the only option, Surely then our vengeance would be satiated.
In 1914 in the Canadian House of Parliament a member named Mr. Graham was arguing against the death penalty. He quoted the famous verse in Exodus 21:24 that states, "...an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." He then stated, "We can argue all we like, but if capital punishment is being inflicted on some man, we are inclined to say: ‘It serves him right.’ That is not the spirit, I believe, in which legislation is enacted. If in this present age we were to go back to the old time of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ there would be very few honorable gentlemen in this House who would not, metaphorically speaking, be blind and toothless."
Of course this command portrayed also in Leviticus 24:20 and Deuteronomy 19:21 was figurative. It was never meant to be taken literally. God meant that secular justice should be equitable--not excessively harsh nor excessively lenient.
However, in spiritual matters, God reserves the right to vengeance for himself alone. The reason why, is because unlike us, God never takes revenge using impure motives. It is very tempting to try to "play God" and seek to punish people we feel deserve it, but as sinful creatures it is impossible for us to avenge ourselves with pure motives. For this reason we were commanded in Leviticus 19:18 to not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone, but to love our neighbor as ourselves.
If you have been hurt in the past, and I am sure you have, then I urge you to let it go. Even David continued to play the harp for King Saul's enjoyment though he kept trying to impale him with a spear. Saul even viciously pursued David so that David had to flee and hide in caves to survive. Even though David was the innocent party in this matter, David refused to take his own revenge saying to Saul, “May the LORD judge between you and me. And may the LORD avenge the wrongs you have done to me, but my hand will not touch you (1 Samuel 24:12).
David made the right choice, and God did indeed avenge David. God will never stand idly by as one of his children are hurt. He sees you cry yourself to sleep at night. He knows your pain and feels it as if it is his own. Satan can't directly hurt God, but he can hurt God indirectly by hurting the people he loves. God loves you. I encourage you to take time tonight and ask God to search your heart for any bitterness that lingers or grudges that you still hold onto, so that you can present it to him and let it go. Forgiveness isn't for the other person. It's for you.
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