The cry for vengeance rises often from a heart wounded by injustice, yet consider well the day of vengeance of our God. That day fell upon Christ at Calvary, where all the waves and billows of divine wrath passed over His innocent head. Vengeance with its iron rod bruised the harmless Lamb of God, and there it is finished. If you are in Him, you have no further vengeance to dread, nor any need to call it down upon others. The legal claims are fully met, Jesus paid the dreadful debt. To ask God now for vengeance as though it were not already accomplished is to misunderstand the cross. Rather, commit your cause to Him who judges righteously, and leave your foes in His hands. The honor of a Christian is to obey in detail, not forgetting any point of duty, even when wronged.
As for angels, they are ministering spirits sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation, yet they move at the command of their Lord, not at our summons. You cannot command your guardian angel as though he were a servant at your beck; that belongs to superstition, not faith. The promise is sure: He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. But observe well, the protection is for those who walk in His ways. The way of error, the path of self-will, the road of unbelief, these are not the appointed ways where angelic keeping is guaranteed. Grapple the truths of God to your soul as with hooks of steel. Walk in childlike trust upon providential guidance, daring not to lean upon your own understanding. Then, in rough ways and smooth, He will guard you with His celestial hosts.
Do not look so much to the angel as to the Angel of the Covenant, the Lord Jesus Himself. He came down when no bright cherubim could suffice; He is the messenger of the covenant, the brightness of His Father’s glory. It is He who has delivered your soul from death, your eyes from tears, your feet from falling. The angels gaze upon Him with wonder, and they learn from His Church the manifold wisdom of God. You are their schoolbook, if you are in Christ. When they see you sustained in trial, keeping faith in darkness, they wonder and adore. Even Job, stripped of all, and baffling the enemy by patient endurance, showed the honor of divine grace. If you conquer in your hour of grief, the arch-enemy will fly confounded.
The divine sovereignty you must learn to recognize and admire. He exalts the low tree and dries up the green. All your activities and belongings are under His eye. Nothing befalls you but what He permits, and He permits trial because He knows His grace has made you able to bear it. Never charge upon the Lord a failure of love, for that is to sin with a vengeance indeed. Instead, pray for angelic keeping, ask the Lord to guard you, but trust yourself entirely to Him. The present generation may be godless, but the hand of God is in everything. That same hand will scatter all foes in His own time and way, if you walk humbly and abide under the shadow of the Almighty. Commence the angelic life even here, giving yourself to devout things, studying Christ with the angels, knowing the complete security that is yours. The door to it is at Christ’s cross, go there where angels gaze with wonder, and you gaze with repentance. Then you shall know peace in your heart, not because foes are destroyed, but because your heart is reconciled to God, and the last enemy, even Death, has been destroyed for you in Christ.