Not long ago, I saw a clip online of a remorseless man in prison, standing before a judge after murdering his cell-mate. The reason he killed the man was because he found out he was a child abuser. In the mind of the remorseless man, that was all the reason he needed to choke the life out of him. In his own words: “I’m not the judge; God will judge him for what he did, I just set up the appointment.”
Here’s the clip (50 seconds long) if you want to hear it for yourself…
This… is not okay.
It is not for us to expedite God’s judgment. God didn’t ask for our help. He does not leave it to us to kill people in order for Him to judge them for what they did or didn’t do. On the contrary, He leaves it to us to try to convince guilty people to repent and be saved and spared from God’s punishment.
I don’t know what this person did to end up in jail in the first place. It doesn’t matter now. I don’t know if the person he killed in jail was innocent or guilty, or if he was actually guilty of what he said he did. It doesn’t matter. The crimes that were done matter, make no mistake, and we have a system of justice in place (as ordained by God—Romans ch13) to deal with such things, but in the end, it is God that will balance the scales, right wrongs, and make all things as they should be.
It is not for me to play God.
We have a responsibility, but it is not to take the law into our own hands. Instead, the Lord essentially tells us: “The whole world deserves punishment; go save them before I get (punishing) My hands on them” (Acts 17:30-31). We are called to save lives, not take them. Leave vengeance to God to handle in His own time, to His own extent, in His own way.
~Matthew