if you “hate the sin and love the sinner,” but never practicalize what God’s love fully means as it relates to the sinner, you are missing something that is of paramount importance. Though the intent of the statement is okay, the danger is that it can lead you into the pluralistic relativism you so despise in the culture today. Hate the sin, but love the sinner is a forced juxtaposition of biblical thought that can abuse the word “love” while obscuring God’s full character and attributes. You can only “hate the sin and love the sinner” by committing three sins. First, you must judge that the other person’s activity is a sin. Second, you must judge that the other person is a sinner. Third, you have made yourself a judge of sin, even though as a sinner, you are not qualified to judge sin.
We are to have compassion on sinners for whom Christ died, and we are also to keep ourselves “from being polluted by the world”—part of what constitutes “pure and faultless” religion (James 1:27). But we also realize that we are imperfect human beings and that the difference between us and God in regard to loving and hating is vast. Even as Christians, we cannot love perfectly, nor can we hate perfectly (i.e., without malice). But God can do both of these perfectly, because He is God. God can hate without any sinful intent. Therefore, He can hate the sin and the sinner in a perfectly holy way and still lovingly forgive the sinner at the moment of repentance and faith. The Bible clearly teaches that God is Love. “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” Mysterious but true is the fact that God can perfectly love and hate a person at the same time. This means He can love him as someone He created and can redeem, as well as hate him for his unbelief and sinful lifestyle. We, as imperfect human beings, cannot do this; thus, we must remind ourselves to “love the sinner; hate the sin.”
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AuthorMy name is Cal..I was raised and born Jewish and now Christian by choice.. Archives
July 2018
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