Some of us wrestle with Jesus being the one who will be faithful and true to keep justice, but some of us long for justice. Your background and experience determine it. Some Christians wrestle with a God of justice and love a God of forgiveness, and other Christians wrestle with a God of forgiveness and longing for a God of justice. It depends on your life experience.

Miroslav Volf, a Yale professor who grew up in Croatia and has witnessed many people oppressed, writes about the longing for justice that people who have been oppressed have, and how the only way we can tell people who have been oppressed not to seek vengeance in this life is if they believe that God will one day settle the score and bring justice. Here’s what Volf has to say:

It takes the quiet of a suburb for the birth of the thesis that human non-violence is a result of a God who refuses to judge in a scorched land soaked in the blood of the innocent, the idea will invariably die, like other pleasant cat activities of the liberal mind. If God were not angry at injustice, and deception, and did not make a final end of violence, that God would not be worthy of our worship.

– Miroslav Volf

As a result, he is faithful and true to return and put an end to all evil; he is faithful and true to be the final judge. For those of us who have grappled with a vengeful God, this is what Volf is saying. It’s probably because you grew up in a quiet suburb with a white picket fence and never had to deal with injustice. But if you’ve lived under oppression, you long for this image of Jesus, for Jesus who’s going to come and fix all things and settle the score and make things right, and it’s only this image of Jesus that then we can say to people, you don’t need to enact violence and vengeance here, because we have a God who will one day make all things right he is faithful in truth.