Vengeance Is Mine, Which Means Somebody Else Is Holding It

There is a subject in that family and nobody has said it out loud in nine years.

Everybody knows what it is. Everybody navigates it. At gatherings there is a small adjustment that happens when certain topics get near it, and the conversation turns half a degree and goes somewhere else, and it is done so smoothly now that a stranger would never see it.

Two people at that table have not spoken properly since. They are polite. They pass things. At the last funeral they stood four feet apart for an hour and said nothing that was not about the weather or the drive.

And the one who is carrying it hardest was not even the one it was said to. He was fourteen and sitting at the end of the table, and he has thought about it more in nine years than either of the two people involved.

He has never mentioned it to anybody. There is no version of raising it that ends well and he has run all of them.

The psalm about being hurt by somebody close

Before anything else, there is a psalm that exists so that nobody in this position has to think they are alone in it.

For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it: neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then I would have hid myself from him: But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company. (Psalm 55:12-14, King James Version)

Read the middle of it. Then I could have borne it.

He is saying it would have been easier from a stranger. That is not self-pity; it is accurate, and God preserved it.

And look at the last line. Walked unto the house of God in company. This is somebody he went to church with.

What you are carrying is not too small to be in the Bible. Psalm 55 has it in detail, and it is His Spirit who keeps a wound like that from having to be minimized before it can be brought anywhere.

Vengeance is His, which is a transfer and not a deletion

Here is the sentence that changes what forgiveness actually is.

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)

Most people hear that as let it go. It is not that.

It is a transfer of jurisdiction. The matter is not being dropped and it is not being declared fine. It is being moved to somebody whose job it is, who has all the facts, and who is not going to mishandle it.

Which means forgiving is not the same as saying it did not happen. It never was.

You have been holding something you were never the right person to hold. Romans 12:19 says vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord, which moves the custody rather than deleting the record, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than your own generosity who makes the handing over possible.

And Peter describes Jesus doing exactly this:

Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously. (1 Peter 2:23)

Committed himself. That is a word for handing something over for safekeeping. He did not swallow it and He did not settle it. He gave it to somebody with the standing to handle it.

You are not the keeper of this, and the record does not stop existing when you put it down. Romans 12:19 moves the jurisdiction and 1 Peter 2:23 shows Him committing Himself to the One that judgeth righteously, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than your own generosity who makes the handing over possible.

He did it while it was still happening

The clearest instance is the hardest one, and it is worth noticing what He actually says.

Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. (Luke 23:34)

Two things.

He is not at a distance from it. This is not a matter he is looking back on from a comfortable position years later. It is happening while He speaks.

And He does not say I forgive you to the people involved. He addresses the Father and asks Him to. He hands it up rather than across.

That is available to somebody who cannot safely say anything to anybody. The transaction in that verse does not require the other person's participation, or their presence, or their knowledge that anything has occurred.

You are able to do this without a conversation ever happening. Luke 23:34 has it addressed upward rather than across, and it is by the eternal Spirit named in Hebrews 9:14 as His Spirit that He offered Himself in the same hour.

Scripture puts two limits on your side of it

This is where a great deal of teaching goes badly wrong and Paul does not.

If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. (Romans 12:18)

Count the qualifiers. If it be possible. And as much as lieth in you.

Two conditions in one short verse, and both of them are protective. Paul is saying, in Scripture, that it may not be possible, and that your responsibility is bounded by what is actually in your power.

So nothing here is going to tell you to go and have the conversation. Some readers cannot raise this safely and Paul has already made room for that in the text.

And there is no schedule. Nowhere in Scripture is anybody given a deadline for this.

You are not failing at something and you are not late. Romans 12 writes the limits into the instruction itself, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a resolution who does the work at whatever pace it takes.

Why it is worth doing anyway

And there is one reason given, and it is about you rather than about them.

Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled. (Hebrews 12:15)

Springing up. A root does not stay where it is planted. It moves, underground, and comes up in places nobody was watching.

That is the honest reason. Not that the other person deserves it. Not that the thing was acceptable. Because a thing held for nine years by somebody who was fourteen at the time starts to come up in places that have nothing to do with that table.

And Paul says what the pattern is:

And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. (Ephesians 4:32)

Even as. The measure is what was done for you, and that was not deserved either.

You are able to put it down without pretending any of it did not happen. Hebrews 12:15 names what holding it costs the holder and the people around them, and it is His Spirit who takes something out of a person that they cannot get out themselves.