Among many other things, the Scriptures portray God as our avenger. Jeremiah 51:56 describes the Lord as a God of recompense. Simply put, this means that one aspect of God’s character is that he will right all wrongs. Does that characteristic of God strike you as unusual? When I hear the word “avenger,” I think of some caped-crusader, some super-hero, like Superman or Batman. But when I hear the word “avenger,” I don’t usually think of God. When I think of God, I tend to think in one of two extremes: either he’s really, really nice, or he’s really, really mad. And though these are poor caricatures of God, there is some Biblical warrant for these categories. As a transcendent God, he is big and powerful and different and holy, and thus he is a judge who is angry over sin. But he is also an immanent God, one who is close to us and thus kind and loving and caring. But this idea of being an avenger doesn’t seem to fit in either of those two categories.

Or maybe it does. This avenging characteristic of God actually brings both of these two categories together. You see, when God judges sin, he does so for the sake of his people. God is good and kind and loving and caring toward his people when he stands up for them, when he defends them against sin and evil and oppression, when he is angry over the sins committed against them.

But I’m afraid this avenging characteristic of God doesn’t mean much to us because we have grown so accustomed to sin and evil and the fallenness of this world. The headlines have numbed us—another shooting, another corrupt politician, another natural disaster. And in our state of spiritual anesthesia, we convince ourselves that what we are experiencing is what we should be experiencing, that this world is our home. But for the Christian sin is a renegade desire. For the Christian, living in this world ought to feel like living in a foreign country. The psalmist begged God to come and judge evil. (“How long will the wicked be jubilant, O Lord?” – Psalm 94:3) Most of us don’t plead for God to return in judgment, because we enjoy it here too much. Heaven has lost it savor. We’re the third-world-country foreigner who doesn’t want to go home because he’s grown accustomed to the niceties of his current residence.

The answer to all of this is easy. It is suffering. When we suffer, we realize how lightweight the pleasures of this world are, how fragile and fleeting and superficial. Suffering should cause us to long for a God who will avenge the wrongs done to us, and the wrongs of this world. The promises of this world have let us down (again) and all we have left is Jesus. The purpose of suffering, however, is to remind us that Jesus is enough.

I think we need some modern-day spirituals. The slaves of the old South used to sing spirituals while they worked in the fields. Their life was hard. They were oppressed and treated harshly and unfairly. But their songs were not full of anger, but full of hope, a hope for heaven, a hope for the life to come. They sang of the day when their troubles would be over, when the Lord would come as their Savior, Rescuer, Avenger.

You can endure injustice—and make no mistake, there is an injustice to suffering; we were created for the Garden, not for life in a fallen world—if you know that someday all wrongs will be made right.