Hatred is a Christian duty. Our Lord was chosen because He hated iniquity (Heb. 1:9). Believers hate even the spots of sin on their robes of righteousness. Twice Jesus said His disciple must “hate his life in this world” (John 12:25 and Luke 14:26). Repentance is hatred. The Baptist Confession of 1689 says that as God hates (2.1), so must the Christian (15.3).
What should we hate?
- We ought to hate what brings the most hateful end.
Sin brings us to eternal wrath and torment (Rev. 21:8, 27). There is no language in Scripture more extreme than the descriptions of the end of the wicked. Such terms are fierce and heavy, and yet it is only sin that justifies such heavy terms. Evil men will immediately hate the sentence of eternal condemnation when it is finally realized by them. But it is sin only and always that will bring, has brought, and must bring this result. Therefore, sin should be hated by all the wise right now.
- We ought to hate what opposes the most beautiful end.
Proposition #1: Sin defiles the glory of God.
Proposition 2: The glory of God is most beautiful.
Conclusion: Therefore, sin defiles that which is most beautiful.
Proposition #1: Sin defiles that which is most beautiful.
Proposition #2: Whatever defiles the most beautiful should be hated.
Conclusion: Therefore, sin should be hated.
Proposition #1: Sin should be hated because it defiles God’s beauty.
Proposition #2: God’s beauty is only defiled by sin.
Conclusion: Therefore, sin only should be hated.
- We ought to hate that which has brought the most pain and destruction in history.
Only sin is responsible for the pain of history. In the last book of John Milton’ Paradise Lost, an angel shows Adam prophetically what will happen in the future because of his sin. It is a long and terrifying catalogue of the murders, heartbreak, wars, and demonic activity. This long story of the earth is a continuous saga of sin and its effects.
Sin made Satan from a glorious, holy angel. Sin introduced the mind-numbing, false religions that have trapped the world’s populations in ignorance and poverty. There would be no conflict in any story without sin. And the reason we want a happy ending is that the sin of the story will finally be set right. If you like good stories, then you know instinctively that sin should be hated.
- We ought to hate what the evil love before all else.
The men in Sodom were struck blind, but then, in their blindness, in the face of a miracle, they tired themselves searching for the door to the house which they were kept from finding if in any way even in their defeated condition, they might pursue and fulfill their passion for sin.
Evil men are addicted to sin. All their conclusions are bound up in it. Freud thought sexual desire controlled men, and Marx thought greed, yet they are both partly right, and totally wrong. Their theories seem plausible to academics today because it is so palpably obvious that men have an unstoppable urge for fulfilling their desires in sinful ways.
Sinners drink iniquity (Job 15:16), and they devour it like a lion takes raw meat (Pro. 19:28). They think it is a dessert to enjoy (Job 20:12), and they make it the goal of their lives (Hos. 4:8).
Old tastes for sin pass away, and all his tastes become new when a man is born again.
- We ought to hate what the best have rightly hated.
The Son of God hated sin, and this was one of the reasons the Father chose Him for the mission of Redemption (Heb. 1:9 cf. Ps. 45:7).
David hated every sinful thing (Ps. 101:3; 119:104, 163).
The prophets reference their hatred for sin repeateddly. (Ezek. 35:6; Hos. 9:15; Zech. 8:17; et. al.)
Ralph Venning wrote 300 pages trying to stir men to hate sin. John Bunyan does the same in his The Holy War where individual sins have names and the heroes must kill them one by one.
The best Christians, those who saw revival, those whom God used, those who converted many, those who wrote the songs that strengthen us today, all hated sin.
- We ought to hate what has harmed the highest good of those we love.
Do we love our children if we let some great danger live near to them and grow among them? And when they are ravaged by it and cry out under its effects, do we have any love if we do not despise the cause of their suffering? If we do not look for the dangers that will come to them and hate that thing, are we in any way good parents? True love must have some hate in it.
When vile beasts were attempting the greatest outrages on my dear family in 2014, I thank God that He helped me to burn against them in righteous anger. How much more then will we not hate the sin that would eternally murder our little children and happy wives?
- We ought to hate what we have been expressly commanded by God to hate.
The Bible tells us to hate this one thing and only this thing.
Hate evil, you who love the LORD. Psalm 97:10
The fear of the LORD is to hate evil. Proverbs 8:13
Hate evil, love good. Amos 5:15
Abhor what is evil. Romans 12:9
What more do we need than a word from the Lord?
- We ought to hate what our best and most natural impulses tend to hate.
Man’s nature is dead in sin, blind to sin, and bent to desire evil. And yet deep in the soul of every man lies still the image of God such that some evils when conceived appear immediately loathsome and vile unless by long practice, he has become accustomed even to these grotesque actions.
How does this fit with the fourth point above? Simply that men are inconsistent because of sin itself. The common grace of God’s image makes us all naturally hate some sins while at the same time secretly opposing our own best interests and judgments. Sin alone brings inconsistency, but from the beginning it was not so. The remnants of that original beauty speak through our consciences and tell us so that we all truly know sin is the sole object worthy of hatred.
How can we describe the hatred of sin that we ought to feel?
- We ought to hate sin urgently by running from both sin and temptation to it.
- We ought to hate sin constantly day by day in a repeating schedule.
- We ought to hate sin consistently with every other duty and grace.
- We ought to hate sin carefully by examining our motives, impulses, and responses.
- We ought to hate sin simply without regarding circumstance, personality, or culture.
- We ought to hate sin publicly by condemning it with words.
- We ought to hate sin verbally by confession of it.
- We ought to hate sin comparatively by the holiness of God and His Son.
- We ought to hate sin fearfully by reviewing divine judgments and our own history of failure.
- We ought to hate sin ultimately by seeing it as the cause of the cross.
- We ought to hate sin logically by searching through each category of our lives.
- We ought to hate sin wisely by anticipating where it might lurk or trap us.
Only one thing should hated because God’s hatred is very simple. But hating sin is hard and exhausting and will bring many others—even Christians—to conflict with you. Be strong in the Lord to hate sin and only sin.
