God hates whatever harms us . . .

 

After much thought and reading Scripture, I’m fully convinced that the same God who pours His love into us that we might love what He loves, also gives us His strong aversion to the things that He hates. Otherwise, we could not love our enemies nor could we hate those sins that make us feel good.

God’s Word tells me what to love and not love. One example:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. (1 John 2:15)

By this I know that when “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life” pop up in my heart, I’m not walking in the Spirit and need to confess my sin and rely on Jesus as my advocate. The Holy Spirit motivates me to the only cure for sin:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

Worldly sins are often subtle. Consider the ambition of those who said, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” But Jesus replied, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Matthew 7:22–23) They sinned by thinking what they did in Jesus’ name was their righteousness, but they did not have a relationship with Him so their ‘good deeds’ were from a sinful self-righteousness, the pride of life.

While the NT says almost nothing concerning God’s hatred, it is filled with instruction for what I must not do. He gives those commands because He knows the harm that sin does. He loves me, does not want me to experience that harm. In other words, His hatred of sin is motivated by His great love.

That does not mean He protects us from suffering. At times, that happens, but only because the love of God uses suffering to perfect our lives. When I doubt that is true (and my flesh wants comfort), I need to remember that He used suffering to perfect His Son . . . .

But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. (Hebrews 2:9-10)

Suffering is not to be hated — if God allows it, He is using it . . .

For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure . . . . For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps . . . . (1 Peter 2:19-23)

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit . . . . And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. (1 Peter 3:18; 5:10)

God hates sin for what it does to His beloved and to all those created in His image. Sin mars that image, subtle or otherwise, and it will destroy us unless we are saved by the power of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

Once Christ comes in, salvation is secured, but Satan still tries to get God’s people to sin, even by trying to add something we do to secure what we already have. To this, God says:

Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? . . . . Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” . . . . Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” so that in Christ Jesus  . . . we receive the promised Spirit through faith. (Galatians 3:2–14)

PRAY: Jesus, because of You, I hate sin and how it muddies my relationship with You. Thank You for saving me from sin’s penalty and working in me to overcome it — a lifelong battle that will end that day when I stand before You, made perfect by Your saving power.

PONDER: The love of God that hates sin and what it does, thinking of the wonder that He came here to die and set us free from sin’s destructive power.