In the Hollywood epic, The Avengers, Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, quips, "Because if we can't protect the Earth, you can be damned well sure we'll avenge it!"
The Avengers is a story about mismatched heroes banding together to fight against the forces of evil. In the first film directed by Josh Whedon, this team battles aliens bent on destroying earth. The next one seems to be about a robot bent on wrecking havoc on earth. The enemies are multifarious. The task is the same. Protect the earth.
But are these acts of “avenging”? Tony Stark’s first allusion to the team name explains it best. The Avengers are there to protect the earth. But if they can’t do it, they will avenge it. In other words, they will live up to their name the day they fail to protect the earth!
Honestly, this has no bearing on how great these Marvel films are. I only bring it up to help us consider what it means to “avenge.”
"...because the Lord is an avenger in all these things..." (1 Thessalonions 4:6)The Greek adjective Paul uses in this verse is ekdikos, which can also be translated: justice giver or punisher. In this way, Paul is reminding us that God will respond to offences against him, not with passivity or mercy, but punishment. And the implication is that he is just and righteous in doing so.
God requires us to be holy, not impure (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5). And he will act to bring about swift justice if his standards are not met. That is just a reality that we, as his creatures, must deal with.
Perhaps, the idea of a holy, just and avenging God is not appealing to us nowadays because we are not as angry about our sin as we should be. It’s easy to understand why avenging the earth against evil aliens and diabolical robots is a good thing. Those sinister forces blatantly ignore the rights and freedoms of human beings. In other words, our rights and freedoms! We more easily approve of vengeance when we are the ones being violated.
But that is a ego-centric view. We as Christians are called to God-centeredness.
God is the one who has been truly violated. Through our sin, our rejection of him, our rebellion against him, we are rightly condemnable. But “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). There is hope in the gospel precisely because Christ makes us holy and pure (1 Corinthians 5:21); and through Christ's holiness, we are not condemned (Romans 8:1).
So when we stand before the Great Avenger, we will not be the punished. That is God's promise to us. Therefore, let us live as Paul exhorts us to live: “Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more” (1 Thessalonians 4:1).
