Revelation 18:6-8

18:6-8 Repay her in the coin with which she paid others; and repay her double for her deeds. Mix her a double draught in the cup in which she mixed her draughts. In proportion to her boasting and her wantonness give her torture and grief, for she says in her heart: "I sit a queen: I am not a widow; grief is something that I will never see." Because of this her plagues will come upon her in one day--pestilence and grief and famine and she will be burned with fire, because the Lord God who judges her is strong.

This passage speaks in terms of punishment. But the instruction to exact vengeance on Rome is not an instruction to men; it is an instruction to the angel, the divine instrument of justice. Vengeance belongs to God, and to God alone. We have here two truths which we must remember.

(i) There is in life a law by which a man sows that which he reaps. Even in the Sermon on the Mount we find an expression of that law: "The measure you give will be the measure you get" ( Matthew 7:2 ). The double punishment and the double reward come from the fact that frequently in Jewish law anyone responsible for loss or damage had to repay it twice over ( Exodus 22:4 ; Exodus 22:7 ; Exodus 22:9 ). "O daughter of Babylon, you devastator!" says the Psalmist, "happy shall he be who requites you with what you have done to us" ( Psalms 137:8 ). "Requite her according to her deeds," says Jeremiah of Babylon, "Do to her according to all that she has done; for she has proudly defied the Lord, the Holy One of Israel" ( Jeremiah 50:29 ). There is no getting away from the fact that punishment follows sin, especially if that sin has involved the cruel treatment of fellowmen.

(ii) We meet here the stern truth that all pride will one day be humiliated. Rome's supreme sin has been pride. It is in Old Testament terms that John speaks. He reproduces the ancient judgment on Babylon:

You said, "I shall be mistress for ever," so that you did not lay

these things to heart or remember their end. Now therefore hear

this, you lover of pleasures, who sit securely, who say in your

heart, "I am, and there is no one besides me; I shall not sit

as a widow or know the loss of children": These two things

shall come to you in a moment, in one day; the loss of children

and widowhood shall come upon you in full measure, in spite of

your many sorceries and the great power of your enchantments.

Nothing rouses such condemnation as pride, Isaiah speaks grimly: "Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with outstretched necks, glancing wantonly with their eyes, mincing along as they go, tinkling with their feet the Lord will smite with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion" ( Isaiah 3:16-17 ). Tyre is condemned because she has said: "I am perfect in beauty" ( Ezekiel 27:3 ).

There is a sin which the Greek called hubris ( Greek #5196 ), which is that arrogance, that comes to feel that it has no need of God. The punishment for that sin is ultimate humiliation.