Love and Hate

What is the core of loving God? Hundreds have written, sung, and debated this for centuries. Here's my addition to the subject. It is loving what he loves and hating what he hates.

What does God love? People. People. People. "We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen" (1 John 4:19-20). Yes, we must love our brother. Love the way our Father loves, sacrificially, laying our lives down for one another.

Loving people also means loving him who is not our brother. Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners" (Matthew 9:12-14). No matter how difficult it is for us to believe God really does love wicked, vile, people. He loves them so much he refuses to leave them wicked and vile. If we love God we will also love this way.

Yet it is not enough to love the things God loves, we must also hate the things he hates. You cannot read the Bible without noticing there are A LOT OF THINGS GOD HATES. Things he calls "detestable" and "abominable." The list is too long to enumerate but can be summed up with words such as idolotry, immorality, abuse, and injustice.

We've all heard the saying, "love the sinner, hate the sin." Unfortunately, this saying is somewhat out of favor as being somewhat impossible to do. Yet our Father does both with such passion and zeal, it puts us to shame. I'm sure a mother can love her son while hating the drugs that are destroying his life. She does not feel any sense of hypocrisy for hating his addiction with every fiber of her being. Actually, her hatred is a sign of her love. For we hate that which destroys someone we love.

Yes, there are those who treat people shamefully in the name of hating sin. We are right to reject such an example even as our Lord did. But that does not mean that we are to embrace the converse. Loving people without loving them out of the sin that is destroying them, is love in name only. While the radical middle may seem elusive, it can be found by simply loving God and allowing His Spirit to live his life through us.