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Proverbs 24:18 NIV

By June 24, 2023No Comments

“or the Lord will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from them.”

In todays social environment the truth of this verse can be hard for us to imagine. We believe those who do wrong to another deserve to pay for it, sometimes we even pull for them to overpay for it. There is some kind of deviant satisfaction in seeing someone “get what’s coming to then”, in the negative sense of that phrase. I, like all of us, have been wronged by someone who intended to hurt me. My knee jerk reaction was almost always to see God cause them to suffer the same kind of pain. Here Solomon tells us that when we pull for that to happen and celebrate when it does God will turn that punishment off of them and onto us. What?!? How is that fair. At least that tended to be my first reaction. Here is the deeper truth. God loves us and wants to conform us to the image of His Son. Vengeance, getting even, retribution – none of these describe the Jesus whose image we are being conformed into. As a matter of fact it is just the opposite. For us to feel vindicated and have any satisfaction because of another’s suffering or loss is about as far from the Christlike character of Jesus as we could get. God is more interested in our growth and change than He is in another’s defeats. Today live a life of grace and forgiveness in the style of Jesus. #BeTheEdge

“For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” Jesus

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