Learn To Properly Pray Imprecatory Prayers For Justice

For as easy as it is, most of us don’t do it enough - that is, to pray for justice, asking God in very general and abstract terms that He will make wrongs right. When we do pray such prayers, our focus is often properly centered on the victims of injustice and oppression, that their suffering would end and that they would be restored.

But it’s much more difficult to properly pray against the other half of the equation: those perpetrating the injustice - people whom the Bible simply refers to as “the wicked.” Although the Bible gives plenty of examples of how to structure these kinds of prayers, these imprecations, as they’re often called, comprise some of its most difficult passages.

Psalm 3:7 is one of the Bible’s best known - and most shocking! - imprecatory prayers:
 

      Arise, LORD! 

         Deliver me, my God! 

         Strike all my enemies on the jaw; 

         break the teeth of the wicked.
 

This probably won’t be the passage you reference on your Christmas card this year. But this verse, and a myriad of verses just like it, are just as much God’s holy, inspired and inerrant Word as any of the Gospel’s most comforting proclamations. So as people committed to the LORD’s justice and mercy, we need to know how to properly pray imprecatory prayers, like David does so often in the Psalms.

There's a very fine - but distinct - line between holy imprecations and sinful spite. So often our desire for God to squash our enemies flows out of our narcissism: since somebody hurt us or somebody we love, we want them to get what they have coming, and who better to deliver that justice than the LORD God Almighty. But Jesus upended this selfish tendency, commanding us to "love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us" (Matt. 5:44). 

So why does David (and others) seem to get away with praying for the destruction of his enemies - inspired by the Holy Spirit to do so, no less? It's because the Bible's imprecatory prayers don't flow out of personal envy, spite or hatred. David calls God to “rebuke the nations and destroy the wicked” not just because they hurt David, or even Israel, but because they “forget God” (Psalm 9:5, 17). David doesn’t just ask God for revenge, he asks God to demonstrate His holy justice, which requires that God exercise vengeance against those who stand against Him and His people.

By God’s amazing grace, you and I pray imprecations in the light of the gospel. Our prayer must no longer simply be that God would slay His enemies, but that His enemies (which we once were) would come to know that Christ died so that they too may be reconciled to God (Romans 5:8, 10). 

Sadly, too often the wicked continue in their rebellion against God and reject His gracious offer of reconciliation. So learn to aggressively pray Biblical, imprecatory prayers for the LORD’s justice to arise against them.