What follows flows organically from the things I posted in my last entry in this series on how we ought to pray for those who govern us. In my previous entry, I pointed out that to pray the Lord’s Prayer and to cry out, “Come, Lord Jesus!”, necessarily entails an imprecatory aspect. This means that if we are truly God’s people, our desire will be to see his will done on earth as it is in heaven, willingly and joyfully. Thus, we will call upon our Heavenly Father to act even now to pour out his wrath upon evildoers as he extends his redemptive dominion upon the earth.
I closed my last blog entry by directing attention to the apostle Paul’s imprecation in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 16:22), where he declares, “If anyone does not love the Lord, let that person be cursed! Come, Lord!” Such calling upon the Lord God to curse those who repudiate his lordship is not reserved for apostles or prophets. Calling upon God to frustrate the schemes of evildoers, even to destroy the works of wicked people, even to terminate their earthly lives belongs to all of God’s people. So, I now turn to make the case that Scripture, God’s Word, authorizes us to pray what the Apostle Paul prayed with those words.
So, here is the finale of my series, and here I encourage Christians to include imprecations in their prayers for wicked individuals who hold high offices in our local, state, and national governments.
Scripture teaches us that if we truly have hearts after God, as David did, an aspect of our worship will be to cry out to the Lord to curse his and our enemies, but especially those who, in high places, do their wickedness without any fear of punishment or retribution for their high-handed sinning.
God’s hatred of evildoers is not emotional as though arising from impassioned personal vengeance. Rather, God’s hatred of sinners is moral repugnance, a justified vengeance against people who despise his character in their wickedness. Likewise, if we would be like God, which is what godliness is, we must learn how to hate sinners the way God does. That bumper-sticker slogan that one routinely hears–“Hate the sin, but love the sinner”–while sounding right and godly, falls short of apprehending God’s character. It accepts the world’s definitions of “hate” and “love” that are emotionally rooted. God’s hatred and ours also is a moral repugnance, not emotional, rooted in personal vengeance.
God forbids us to retaliate against those who are vengeful to us: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay.” But the Lord God invites us to bring our plaintive cries to him. This graphic illustrates what God forbids and what he welcomes from us, our prayers for him to execute proper and fitting punishment upon his and our enemies. Imprecatory praying properly honors God, to whom alone vengeance belongs, and honors wicked fellow humans who are made in God’s image as we are.
We are to learn how to pray imprecatory prayers by imitating the Scriptures, especially the Psalms. David and the other psalmists conceived of God’s judgment as a civil case with themselves as the plaintiffs, the ones who bring a lawsuit in court. As plaintiffs in God’s court, they raise their plaintive cry, a lament, to God who judges by discriminating the righteous from the wicked. David, the plaintiff, cries out to God for a resounding triumph over his enemies, and with heavy damages, even eternal punishment.
1. Three Strong Imprecatory Psalms. Keep in mind the Lord’s own assessment of David, “a man after his own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22).
a. Psalm 58:1-11.
Do you rulers indeed speak justly?
Do you judge people with equity?
No, in your heart you devise injustice,
and your hands mete out violence on the earth.
Even from birth the wicked go astray;
from the womb they are wayward, spreading lies.
Their venom is like the venom of a snake,
like that of a cobra that has stopped its ears,
that will not heed the tune of the charmer,
however skillful the enchanter may be.
Break the teeth in their mouths, O God;
Lord, tear out the fangs of those lions!
Let them vanish like water that flows away;
when they draw the bow, let their arrows fall short.
May they be like a slug that melts away as it moves along,
like a stillborn child that never sees the sun.
Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns —
whether they be green or dry—the wicked will be swept away.
The righteous will be glad when they are avenged,
when they dip their feet in the blood of the wicked.
Then people will say,
“Surely the righteous still are rewarded;
surely there is a God who judges the earth.”
b. Psalm 69:19-30.
You know how I am scorned, disgraced and shamed;
all my enemies are before you.
Scorn has broken my heart
and has left me helpless;
I looked for sympathy, but there was none,
for comforters, but I found none.
They put gall in my food
and gave me vinegar for my thirst.
May the table set before them become a snare;
may it become retribution and a trap.
May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see,
and their backs be bent forever.
Pour out your wrath on them;
let your fierce anger overtake them.
May their place be deserted;
let there be no one to dwell in their tents.
For they persecute those you wound
and talk about the pain of those you hurt.
Charge them with crime upon crime;
do not let them share in your salvation.
May they be blotted out of the book of life
and not be listed with the righteous.
But as for me, afflicted and in pain—
may your salvation, God, protect me.
I will praise God’s name in song
and glorify him with thanksgiving.
c. Psalm 109:1-31.
My God, whom I praise,
do not remain silent,
for people who are wicked and deceitful
have opened their mouths against me;
they have spoken against me with lying tongues.
With words of hatred they surround me;
they attack me without cause.
In return for my friendship they accuse me,
but I am a man of prayer.
They repay me evil for good,
and hatred for my friendship.
Appoint someone evil to oppose my enemy;
let an accuser stand at his right hand.
When he is tried, let him be found guilty,
and may his prayers condemn him.
May his days be few;
may another take his place of leadership.
May his children be fatherless
and his wife a widow.
May his children be wandering beggars;
may they be driven from their ruined homes.
May a creditor seize all he has;
may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.
May no one extend kindness to him
or take pity on his fatherless children.
May his descendants be cut off,
their names blotted out from the next generation.
May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord;
may the sin of his mother never be blotted out.
May their sins always remain before the Lord,
that he may blot out their name from the earth.
For he never thought of doing a kindness,
but hounded to death the poor
and the needy and the brokenhearted.
He loved to pronounce a curse—
may it come back on him.
He found no pleasure in blessing—
may it be far from him.
He wore cursing as his garment;
it entered into his body like water,
into his bones like oil.
May it be like a cloak wrapped about him,
like a belt tied forever around him.
May this be the Lord’s payment to my accusers,
to those who speak evil of me.
But you, Sovereign Lord,
help me for your name’s sake;
out of the goodness of your love, deliver me.
For I am poor and needy,
and my heart is wounded within me.
I fade away like an evening shadow;
I am shaken off like a locust.
My knees give way from fasting;
my body is thin and gaunt.
I am an object of scorn to my accusers;
when they see me, they shake their heads.
Help me, Lord my God;
save me according to your unfailing love.
Let them know that it is your hand,
that you, Lord, have done it.
While they curse, may you bless;
may those who attack me be put to shame,
but may your servant rejoice.
May my accusers be clothed with disgrace
and wrapped in shame as in a cloak.
With my mouth I will greatly extol the Lord;
in the great throng of worshipers I will praise him.
For he stands at the right hand of the needy,
to save their lives from those who would condemn them.
2. Why do Christians not pray for God to curse our and his enemies the way David prays?
It is understandable but unacceptable that many are shocked, astonished, and repulsed that the psalmist, David, prays the following:
Break the teeth in their mouths, O God;
Lord, tear out the fangs of those lions!
Let them vanish like water that flows away;
when they draw the bow, let their arrows fall short.
May they be like a slug that melts away as it moves along,
like a stillborn child that never sees the sun.
Harsh this imprecation is, David prays for the eternal destruction of his and God’s enemies while praying for his own deliverance and eternal salvation.
Pour out your wrath on them;
let your fierce anger overtake them.
May their place be deserted;
let there be no one to dwell in their tents.
For they persecute those you wound
and talk about the pain of those you hurt.
Charge them with crime upon crime;
do not let them share in your salvation.
May they be blotted out of the book of life
and not be listed with the righteous.
But as for me, afflicted and in pain—
may your salvation, God, protect me.
David reiterates the same kind of petitions in Psalm 109. And this is not David’s secret prayer before the Lord. His imprecatory prayers are for all God’s people, the throng of worshipers.
Help me, Lord my God;
save me according to your unfailing love.
Let them know that it is your hand,
that you, Lord, have done it.
While they curse, may you bless;
may those who attack me be put to shame,
but may your servant rejoice.
May my accusers be clothed with disgrace
and wrapped in shame as in a cloak.
With my mouth I will greatly extol the Lord;
in the great throng of worshipers I will praise him.
For he stands at the right hand of the needy,
to save their lives from those who would condemn them.
a. Why are we so loath to invoke God’s curses upon evildoers, whoever and wherever they may be?
Let us not be deceived. It is not because we have become too godly and too devout to let our mouths call upon God to curse our enemies. It is because we are not godly enough. It is because we are not yet enough like God. We are not sufficiently godly. It is because we do not yet sufficiently hold in our hearts God’s abhorrence of wickedness and of those who do wickedness.
b. Many Christians, even Christian pastors, teachers, and scholars insist that we must never petition God to curse evildoers. But why?
Is it because Christians today are too godly to pray as David did? No!
It is because Christians today have a false sense of what godliness entails. They think that calling upon the Lord to curse his and our enemies is sub-Christian, that it is ungodly.
In truth, the reason Christians do not call upon the Lord to curse his enemies and ours is that we are not sufficiently godly.
3. As we Christians become increasingly conformed to the image of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is to become godly, we will progressively think, act, and speaking like God so that what glorifies God will be what we desire and for what we pray.
J. W. Beardslee, a Christian minister from the nineteenth century, gets it right when he affirms that “as the soul comes to stand where God stands, as it becomes progressively conformed to the image of its Creator (Col. 3:10), it will feel as God feels and speak as God speaks. Thus, not only will there be a deep abhorrence of sin, but there will also be a righteous indignation against the willful and persistent wrongdoer” (cited by John Day, Crying for Justice, 125; read this book).
Therefore, when you hear a mature fellow Christian invoke God’s curses against evildoers do not presume that the Christian who urgently prays such imprecation is vile and wicked and full of evil, overcome with wrath, and eaten up with bitterness and mean-spiritedness. Godly grandmothers and grandfathers appeal to the Lord God to pour out his wrath upon all who participate in and promote aborticide—including support personnel, physicians and nurses, politicians, presidents, and members of Congress—formulate their prayers not from ungodliness but from godliness. It is because God’s grace has worked mightily to transform us into his likeness that we can pray with clean hearts for our God to frustrate evildoers, to prevent them from carrying out their wicked objectives. Yes, we invoke God’s wrath and curses upon evildoers not because we stand against God’s grace and mercy. Instead, we pray imprecations upon evildoers, and especially upon evildoers in high places of authority over us, because God has shed his grace and mercy abroad in our hearts. For, like David, our hearts beat in harmony with the heart of God.
If the Lord would say of us, as he says of David, “you are people after my own heart,” then we, too, will be petitioning the Lord to blight the schemes of evil fellow humans, to curse the devices of wicked leaders, to bring an end to the governance and dominion of evil humans who mock God, who devise evil, who do injustice, who confiscate the goods of those they govern, who refuse to prosecute evildoers and criminals, who, instead of commending those who do good instead prosecute the innocent.
Thus, if we do imitate God and invoke imprecations against evildoers, it is not because we are vile and wicked and full of evil, overcome with wrath, and eaten up with bitterness, with vitriol, and with mean-spiritedness. It is because God’s grace has worked mightily to transform us into his likeness. Thus, we invoke God’s wrath and curses upon evildoers not because we stand against his grace and mercy. Rather, we pray imprecations upon evildoers because God has shed his grace and mercy abroad in our hearts.
Concerning President Biden, Vice President Harris, and numerous others in high offices, I pray David’s words.
Appoint someone evil to oppose my enemy;
let an accuser stand at his right hand.
When he is tried, let him be found guilty,
and may his prayers condemn him.
May his days be few;
may another take his place of leadership.
As I have prayed for all previous presidents and others in governing offices, so I pray for President Biden. I pray that the Lord will bring President Biden to his knees in sorrowful and mournful repentance as he turns to the Lord Jesus Christ for redemption from his astonishingly wicked and vile ways, his boastful bragging, his lying, his suppression of the truth, his wicked policies, his destructive executive orders. I also pray that the Lord will frustrate every evil design and intention that President Biden embraces and intends to inflict upon America’s citizens and upon the inhabitants of the world. Yes, I pray that the Lord will transform President Biden’s heart to repent, but if not, I pray that the Lord will remove bring his Presidency to utter ruin and replace his Presidency with a president of integrity, decency, honor, and dignified character, even if that person is not a Christian. Nonetheless, I pray that the next President of the United States of America will become a Christian and do what is right and just and God-honoring. Oh, and yes, I prayed similar things concerning previous presidents, including President Trump.