Galatians 5.19-21 KJV - 19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 20 idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, 21 envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
In his first letter, John pointed out how those who hate their sisters or brothers are murderers. In their hearts, such people are dead to them. And those who “murder” in this way have nothing to do with eternal life.
Yeah, you know we’ve got a lot of such people all over Christianity. I follow a few of their blogs. They claim they’re all about
Yes,
Philippians 4.8 KJV - Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
—the amount of time they spend digging through the news to find new things to be horrified by, the length of time they spend denouncing these travesties, and the angst and tears and hand-wringing and stress they suffer just thinking about how these evils damage
Yep, these guys aren’t actually avoiding sin. They may not be committing it, nor even be tempted to try it, but their minds are nonetheless stewing in it like shrimp in a gumbo. Because what they’re doing instead is hating it. Hating it with every fiber of their being. In so doing their minds are wholly fixated on whatsoever things are false, dishonest, unfair, impure, ugly, disturbing, useless, and wrong.
Hopefully they’re not doing this 24 hours a day, like pundits who are desperately looking for new content with which they can outrage their
Levels of hatred.
Hatred is one of the most common fleshly works I’ve seen among Christians. Most of us find it very easy to get away with. After all, we’re hating sin, right? We’re hating the devil and all its works. We’re hating wickedness. Shouldn’t we hate wickedness?
So we start off with a little “righteous hatred.” But notice how quickly it devolves into the far-less-righteous kind.
In English and most languages, “hate” means more than one thing. The definition we’re most familiar with is “feel passionate dislike.” Fr’instance, I hate cilantro. (Love Mexican food; hate cilantro. Go figure.) Apparently there’s a gene some humans have which makes cilantro taste bad to us. “Like soap,” is the way it’s described, but it reminds me of no soap I’ve ever used. I can tolerate small amounts, but for whatever reason, too much of it makes me gag. So I hate it. But it’s a passive hate: I don’t bear cilantro itself any ill will. You love it and want to put it in everything? Go right ahead.
Then there’s the active sort of hatred; the definition “wish to fight and destroy.” Fr’instance I hate spousal abuse. I don’t merely feel a passionate dislike: “I would never abuse a wife, but if you wanna smack your husband around, you do you.” No; I want it eliminated. It should be illegal. Others should want it eliminated as well. Abusers should be prosecuted. And they are, largely—though too much abuse goes unreported.
Now, some will take this hatred further. They want to see the elimination of abuse… and the abusers. Not necessarily through rehabilitation: They want abusers to suffer. They want abusers in jail, with the key thrown away, and maybe getting abused themselves by fellow prisoners. (Of course, a lot of people became abusers because they were already abused themselves. But since when is revenge rational?)
Right there we have three definitions of “hate.” Three levels, if you will. Yep, these levels are in the bible too: Passive, active, and vengeful.
The bible also has a level that’s even more passive than the “I just don’t like it” level. We call it contrasting hate. It’s the sort of “hate” we see when the L
Malachi 1.2-3 KJV - 2 I have loved you, saith the L
ORD . Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the LORD : yet I loved Jacob, 3 and I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.
God hated Esau? Wait, doesn’t God love everybody?
Yes he does. But this is contrasting hate: God doesn’t do what we would call hate; he simply has a favorite. Jacob’s his favorite. Esau isn’t. Now if you’re not somebody’s favorite person, the different treatment you get from them might kinda feel like hatred. Jacob’s descendants got some nice land; Esau’s descendants got land too, but it wasn’t so nice. But our culture wouldn’t call this “hatred,” which is why certain translations don’t render Malachi like the
It’s the same kind of contrasting hate we see when Jesus taught his students,
Luke 14.26 KJV - If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
It’s not that you literally hate your family members. You shouldn’t! But Jesus has to be your favorite. We’re meant to love Jesus so much more, we may as well, by comparison, hate everything else. It’s like how $1,000 is a lot of money… but not when we compare it with $1 billion.
How do we know which kind of “hate” the bible means? Same as we do whenever anybody talks about hating something:
And y’know, there are a lot of sick and twisted people out there who don’t really care which one happens. They don’t make fine distinctions in their own dislikes. They passively hate when people don’t cover their mouths when they sneeze… and if the state passed a law tomorrow giving such people the death penalty, they actually wouldn’t mind. They wouldn’t rightly say, “Okay, you’ve gone too far”—they’d allow the state to be evil. Might even turn in a few of their sneezier neighbors.
Those who practice the fleshly work of hatred, have little problem with escalating their personal dislikes into full-on political warfare. Hence there are such things as hate groups which consider themselves Christian—and consider themselves righteous because they hate “evil.” But they produce none of the fruit of love, so they’re far from righteous.
The opposite of love?
Properly,
Ecclesiastes 3.8 KJV - A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
And we’re to hate evil and love good,
But back to logic. The opposite of something is not-something. Therefore the opposite of love is not-love: It’s apathy. If we don’t love something, we don’t automatically hate it; we feel nothing for it, do nothing for it, and don’t care. Hatred, even passive hatred, is a bit more than apathy; it does care. It seeks the riddance, or even destruction, of the things it hates. The opposite of hatred would be not-hatred… and once again, that’s apathy. So while hatred isn’t the opposite of love, it certainly is contrary to love: There’s a spectrum with apathy in the middle, and love goes in one direction, and hatred the other.
This is why we so often see people flip a switch in their minds from love to hatred, or hatred to love. There’s not a great deal of difference between hatred and
Now, actual love—the benevolent, unconditional love
Hating the sin and loving the sinner.
More than likely you’ve heard the common Christian cliché, “Hate the sin; love the sinner.” It’s certainly not from the bible.
Yet Christians say it all the time. We wanna make a distinction between the sin, which we feel needs to be passively (or actively) hated; and the human being, friend or foe, whom Jesus orders us to love.
But here’s the problem: We suck at putting this saying into practice. Ninety percent of Christians’ efforts go into hating the sin. Sometimes more.
Very little effort goes into loving the sinner. Even then, it’s the sort of apathetic, passive “love” which leaves them be. Libertarian love. Which looks nothing like Jesus intends.
So perhaps, till we learn how to love sinners properly, we oughta dump the first part of this cliché. Love the sinner.
After all, we hardly need to remind people to hate sin. Most already do—unless it’s a sin they themselves practice all the time. So ditch the “hate the sin” part, and just focus on loving sinners. Love your enemies. Love your friends, who are also sinners. Love your fellow Christians, who are also sinners. Love everybody. Hate no one.
What do we see in Jesus’s example?
Mark 2.17 KJV - When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
There’s no question in our minds that Jesus hates sin. It’s so contrary to his character, of course he has nothing to do with it. But you might notice how little he actually rails against it: “Do you realize what those people up in Rome are doing? The corruption, the abortions, the orgies, the vices? Oh how I weep for them!” Yeah he did rail against the Pharisees’ hypocrisy the one time,
And he had no qualms about interacting with “enemies,” with sinners, and sharing the gospel with them too. As we likewise should do. If we fixate on sin and sinners, instead of resisting temptation, and concentrate on hate instead of love, it’s gonna corrupt us to our core, and turn us into the same joyless
We gotta love sinners, and become known for how we love, not for which behaviors we object to.
