Does God ever hate? Does He ever hate a person? These are legitimate questions. Philosophers ask them. Theologians ask them. Soldiers ask them. Everyone who’s ever felt crushed and abandoned by Him asks them.
All who read the Bible find the answer.
Psalm 11:5 says, “The Lord examines the righteous, but the wicked and those who love violence his soul hates.” Psalm 5:5-6 declares, “The arrogant cannot stand in your presence; you hate all who do wrong. You destroy those who tell lies; bloodthirsty and deceitful men the Lord abhors.” Proverbs informs us, “There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.”
Reading that, one must conclude that yes, God does hate. One might even be tempted to conclude that God hates some people. Yet what God is saying is not that He created some people so that He might despise them, but that what those people do sets them up as His enemies. Our sin is part of us, and unless and until we repent we are inseparable from their sin, so the unrepentant go the way of their sin. That is, they ultimately go to the same place as their sin was always determined to go – to the same place all God’s enemies go – to complete and utter destruction.
This then shows us the great mercy of the cross of Christ. For at that junction point, we find forgiveness for our sins – not because God overlooks our sin when we turn to the cross, but because at that point He separates those who call on Him from their sin; The sin He leaves on the cross, the person He made in His image He raises from the dead at the last day. As the Word affirms; “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.”
It is true that God hates the wicked and those who love violence, and even hates all who do wrong. Yet God does not rush to do harm to them. God’s hatred is nothing like our hatred. We hate unto violence and destruction. God hates unto redemption and restoration. He hates sin and yet died to restore the person. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Unfortunately we cannot see the difference between a person and their sin. So if we permit ourselves to hate a sinner, we will hate the person that God still loves – the person Christ died for, the person for whom God did literally all He can to redeem from their sin. God knows that, so He knows that the only way for us to manifest His character when we are faced with a person who is sinful is to love them anyway. Thus we hear Jesus telling us, “I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Amen.
Jesus did not simply define neighbor as friend, our group or someone who treats us nicely. We are to love the man who does something mean and nasty to us, the man who deliberately sabotages us.
Francis A. Schaeffer
APPLICATION: Intentionality
Today, deliberately find what you can do to bring the blessing of God to those you do not like.