Tuesday, February 3, 2009
God Hates Sin But Not The Sinner?
And another thing... This is related to the issue of God's wrath. You’ve heard the cliche, "God loves the sinner, but hates the sin." And of course this is accompanied by the implications that so must we hate sin but love sinners. There is some truth to this, understood in a certain way. God does demonstrate His love toward us while we were sinners as Romans 5:8 says. On our part we should manifest love toward others as the fruit of the Spirit, and we are to do what we can to live in peace with all people (Galatians 5:22; Romans 12:18). Certainly by showing love to the unlovely (as God does) people are won to the kingdom. But, on the face of it, the cliche we are considering does not ring true. Consider Psalm 5:5, in which David says of God, "You hate all who do iniquity." Here it does not say that God hates sin, but that He hates the one who sins. D.A. Carson, in The Difficult Doctrine Of The Love Of God, a book I’ve recommended before, says, "Fourteen times in the first fifty psalms alone, we are told that God hates the sinner, his wrath is on the liar, and so forth. In the Bible, the wrath of God rests both on sin (Romans 1:18ff) and the sinner (John 3:36)" (69). I think this notion that God hates sin but not the sinner minmizes the seriousness of sin. People think that sin is no big deal because God is love and He will forgive. To realize that God hates sin and the one who sins should open our eyes a fresh to the deadly seriousness of sin and demand that we pursue holiness.
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3 comments:
I think believing God hates the sin and loves the sinner allows us to believe too easily in forgiveness and does not make us accountable for our actions.
Personally I would deal with this cliche on a on the spot contextual basis. If two little girls are having a tea party, and one is sharing her faith with the other and she uses the cliche, then I would simply add in the necessary truths to complete the picture, of course in the gentlest way possible, giving encouragement to both kids. However if I were street evangelizing with mature christian adults, and one of us was using the cliche I may give them a copy of the above bog post to read. And if I heard it from the pulpit, well, some definite conversation would have to follow...IN LOVE.
I believe the thing to avoid in all this is going on a defensive attack on the speaker. Just as any analogy breaks down at some point, so also cliches. However we don't go shredding the speaker of the analogy, rebuking them at the point of which the analogy breaks down, no, we listen to what is the truth of the analogy before it breaks down. I do agree with all of the original post, I would just add what I have said.
This topic came up again recently but in the context of Matthew 5:43-48. I was really having a struggle with this because I don't love those are my enemies. But Jesus seems to command that I do. Then thinking of how Jesus overturned the money changers tables, rebuked the Pharisees, and so on, I started to look for a more specific meaning in the Matthew passage. To be brief, I think Jesus is telling us not to be "In love", so to speak with those we really can't stand, it's more that we are to reflect Gods love for the world in a form of common grace. If we do, then we will be the, "Sons of our Father in Heaven", to whom we are reflecting.
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