Why Love and Hate Must Coexist

Skipping the political post, that brings us to this one - about love and hate.

First, let me be clear that I don't really care if you do or don't like using the phrase "hate the sin, love the sinner." I don't mean that in a jerk-ish way; I just mean that it really doesn't make much impact on things if you use the phrase or don't use the phrase. The phrase is not the important thing here; what's important is what it means. What's important is one's attitude toward sin and one's attitude toward people.

Now on to the post itself. First, there is a problem when people start deciding what is and isn't okay based on how they feel about it. Jeremiah 17:9 makes that REALLY clear. Our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked. They shouldn't be listened to. There's also your conscience, which can be tricked into thinking backwards about things as we see in I Corinthians 8. Like I said back Here, the only source worthy of our trust is the Bible because that comes from God Himself.

Therefore, the premise of the entire post is unacceptable. It doesn't hold weight. What matters is what the Bible says. Here are a few verses that describe how God feels about sin.

Proverbs 6:16-19
Psalm 45:7 - Thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness...
Hebrews 1:9 - Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity...

Righteousness is the opposite of sin and God loves righteousness and hates sin. Again and again, God is described as holy (Revelation 4:8), righteous (Psalm 11:7), and pure (I John 3:3) - all things that relate to Him being separated from sin, completely and utterly free of it. God doesn't hate sin just because; God hates sin because sin is the opposite of WHO He Is. And since He is everything that is to be admired, sin must be everything that is to be deplored.

God is holy; God's holiness requires that He hate sin. We are called to be holy as God is holy - I Peter 1:15-16. Therefore, the Hating of sin is not negotiable for a Christian. If we are becoming like Christ, we will be hating sin more and more. Now, just as we aren't perfect and just as we don't love God as wholly as we ought, we also don't hate sin as much as we ought. But the fact remains that we are to be striving to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, etc. And in doing so, we will automatically be HATING sin. (Romans 8 says we're to be "mortifying" or "killing" it. Pretty strong terms.)

By virtue of loving God, we hate sin. You cannot have one without the other. That's why John can state so adamantly in I John 3:6 that if we are abiding in Christ, we AREN'T abiding in sin. This is actually a GREAT tell-tale sign of whether or not you're saved. If you don't hate sin, you don't love God.

How does this work with people? Well, as love for God is what produces hate of sin in us, so love of God is what produces love for people in us. I had a friend when I was working at McDonald's who was a habitual liar. If I hated HER instead of her sin, then I wouldn't have hung out with her; I would have deplored HER and not been able to stand being around her. But that's just silly. If I were to hate HER, I would have to break the second greatest commandment to love my neighbor as myself. I would never witness to her. I wouldn't want her to get saved; I wouldn't want anything good to happen to her ever. If I hated her, it would be the same as killing her.

You know who is a good example of hating the sinner? Jonah. Jonah HATED the people of Nineveh. He disobeyed God because he didn't want the people of Nineveh to receive God's mercy; he didn't want them to repent; he didn't want them to be saved. He wanted them to BURN. He cared more about the plant that gave him some shade then he did about all the people in that city.

We are called to do the most loving thing for people that we can. God did the most loving thing that He could for us in sending Christ to die for us. The most loving thing that we can do is take that message to the world.

In closing, the phrase "hate the sin, love the sinner" is Biblical. Although, personally I prefer to reverse it to change the emphasis. "Love the sinner; hate the sin." Said that way, I think it makes more sense. Rather than perhaps seeming contradictory to itself, hating the sin can be seen as the natural outcome of loving the sinner whose life is in havoc because of sin. Just a thought.