"I will repay"

Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." These words have been misunderstood and twisted, by the human mind's false views of Deity, into a meaning entirely unlike that given to them by the teaching of Christ Jesus, as interpreted by Christian Science. As commonly used, the words conjure up a mental picture of a remorseless, avenging God, and so far from helping any one to forgive an enemy in a truly effective way they serve, when so understood, as an excuse for self-righteousness in the one wronged, while at the same time leaving the wrath an apparently legitimate foothold in the reflection that God will punish the offender more severely than the human being can do. Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 22), "Wrath which is only appeased is not destroyed, but partially indulged." Certainly the assertion that God will bring suffering upon one's enemy is not more conducive to a true sense of forgiveness than the desire to bring suffering upon the enemy one's self. Many a one has doubtless indulged a seemingly righteous wrath which is willing to stand on one side and watch from a safe distance, so to speak, and without personal responsibility, the punishment of the offender.

The Old Testament view of God, the tribal Jehovah, with human limitations and passions, prevents a clear understanding of the text, whereas when a right view of God as incorporeal Love, Truth, and Life is attained, the meaning becomes clear. "God is love," the apostle John tells us, and Love does not send suffering to its idea. "Love and Truth are not at war with God's image and likeness," Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health (p. 19). God's vengeance, therefore, cannot imply suffering as a necessary component, and if suffering is inflicted we may be sure that it is not God who has caused it but the human mind's resistance to the demands of Love. God's vengeance is the forgiveness which consists of the destruction of sin, and the destruction of sin by the substitution of the healing consciousness of Love does not bring suffering but joy. The belief in sin is punished by its own nature, its unlikeness to good, and brings discord simply because it is not in accord with harmony. God, divine Love, takes no conscious vengeance on evil, since there is in reality no evil, but by His presence He obliterates the belief in evil in the human consciousness.

"I will repay" is, therefore, in reality a benediction. God restores to us the true sense of self and of harmony, repays the good, temporarily stolen from us by our false beliefs, takes vengeance upon our enemies, these false beliefs, by dispelling them by His light. So we are told in Romans, "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." In other words, by substituting good for evil in our thoughts about one who has apparently wronged us, we find that God is present with us, and the sense of evil is destroyed, and that is the only enemy we have. The evildoer will receive the just reward for every thought, good or bad, till he learns to choose good always and there is no evil to be destroyed. Mrs. Eddy tells us (Science and Health, p. 419), "Your true course is to destroy the foe, and leave the field to God, Life, Truth, and Love, remembering that God and His ideas alone are real and harmonious." The foe is the belief in evil, and it can be destroyed only by the understanding of God. The outward result is none of our business, and we are not entitled to cherish any wish that is not in accord with the Golden Rule of doing to others as we would have them do to us. In the defense of the right it is always possible to avoid the spirit of enmity and to realize the true meaning of the words, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."