One of the fundamental transformations that takes place
in the hearts and minds of disciples of Jesus Christ is that they learn to love
the things God loves and hate the things God hates. While it may be easy and even common for us
to reflect on and talk about loving the things God loves, we don’t always take
into account the things God hates. Much
less do we meditate on hating the same things.
The maturing disciple learns to both love and hate, but only in the
fashion and image of God’s loves and hatreds.
“Abhor what it evil; hold fast to what is good.”
If we are sensitive to it, Scripture is full of
descriptions of God hating evil and injustice and loving righteousness. Psalm 45:7 describes God’s faithful people
and ultimately the Messiah by saying, “you have loved righteousness and hated
wickedness.” The very character of Jesus
Christ is marked by God’s love and God’s hatred. Jesus taught the things God loves, touched
the people God loves, lead the life God loves, and taught his disciples to
continue in the same way of life. But by
the same token, Jesus had some uncomfortable things to say about the behaviors
and ideologies God hates, and the hypocrites that perpetuated them.
To abhor, or to hate, is to see the vice or evil in a
thing, a behavior, or an idea. To love
(or as Paul puts it, “hold fast to”) is to associate with, to promote as good
and valuable, and to even sacrifice for something or someone.
How do we learn what we ought to love and hate? The loves and hatred of God. Learning what God loves becomes our moral
compass – it is our matter-of-fact command to love. A disciple is willing to surrender their
fleshly loves and hatreds and let them be transformed by God’s point of view on
the matter. Every disciple comes to God
with a set of loves and hatreds given to them by the world, and all of them
must be surrendered. And as the disciple
is surrendered and submitted, their obedience to command becomes the very pulse
of their desires. Our loves become
transformed so that we willingly and naturally love the way God loves and we
righteously hate what God hates.
In becoming these kinds of disciples, a distinction
becomes clear: God loves people and hates the things that destroy them. Scripture says that I was an enemy of God in
my sin, but God loved this sinner so much that he entered flesh, lived among
us, died on the cross because of my sin, and rose again for my life. The transforming disciple learns to view
humans – even our enemies – in the same way.
Our enemies cease to become targets for our cursing and wrath, and
become potential recipients of the grace and forgiveness of God.
In this we see that the love of God necessarily includes
the hatred of sin – otherwise the cross of Christ is a superfluous act of
torture and death. Sin is a destroyer
and needs to be destroyed. Sin is hated
by God and ought to be hated by his disciples so much so that they are ready to
sacrifice themselves for the love of sinners. Only in this way can the disciple of Jesus
Christ learn to love what he loves.
