Lesson 37: God’s Sovereignty Disciplines Us, part 2

Romans 12:19-21 - "Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

We never complain about God's leadership, or rebel, or compromise with sin, or whine and complain about God's provision, or give Him half obedience, or commit adultery visually with the eyes, or murder people with our mouth, or lie, or are divisive and flippant about the things of God like communion – do we? Yes, we do. Out of mercy, God does what He has done throughout the Bible – He disciplines us. He allows a few difficulties to come our way and to help us learn, like people in the Bible. We can either keep on sinning and become a danger to ourselves and other people and be disciplined, again and again and again, or we can just simply resist sin, walk in holiness, and avoid all that discipline! Sounds like a good plan to me!

We make another mistake that invites more discipline! We can even get to the point as Christians that we acknowledge that yes, God will discipline us out of love when we get out of line, because we are His children and He loves us; but the moment somebody else does something wrong to us, we pounce on them and smash them with total revenge! We think it is our job to discipline them right then and there on the spot! They deserve it! That is not what our verses above say.


The Bible clearly says when it comes to dealing with somebody else's bad behavior we need to communicate our grievances with one another in love. If we still cannot work it out, then take another brother or sister in the Lord with us to act as a mediator. If that still does not work, then we take it to the church leadership. It is called the Matthew 18 principle. Even then, if we still do not like how things ended up, we back off! Why? Because "Vengeance is Mine says the Lord," not the lawyer and not us! Let God bring the discipline how and when He decides; He sees it all. Trust Him. We just get busy doing what is right in the midst of the all the wrong, and we heap burning coals on their head. Why? Because when we take vengeance into our own hands instead of leaving room for God, we get the discipline.

How many of us have learned the hard way that there really is a reason why the Bible says, "Vengeance is mine says the Lord"? It does not pay to take revenge. We only get disciplined too, because God loves us! He knows us. We are His children. His discipline is always the best because it comes from His love and His understanding of us. He knows how and when to discipline so it will bring us back to Himself, because God is Sovereign.

* How has His discipline in your life made you stronger in Him?