Are we to love the sinner but hate the sin?

It is clear that, while hating sin, God loves the sinner. All is simply demonstrated in the Cross, and is the result of who He is (Hab. 1:13, John 3:16, 1 John 4:10). "Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire, who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" (Isa. 33:14). "Our God is a consuming fire" (Heb. 12:29). "If I whet my glittering sword and mine hand take hold on judgment, I will render recompense to mine enemies" (Deut. 32:41). Such scriptures describe a God of holiness, before whom the sinner may well tremble. But in His resource that same God has devised a way, whereby the sinner may not only be recovered, but be brought to dwell with Himself in a nature and state suited to Himself — to dwell indeed with everlasting burnings.

So long as I was unconverted the very name of God was always obnoxious to me. I knew He was holy, and I was unholy; I knew He had claims upon me and I could not meet them. And the natural mind is enmity against God. Sin has put us at a distance from God. It has broken the link between man and God. There is guilt on the conscience, sins and defilement on the soul, and the sense that we are not fit for God. There is a drawing back from God, and then there is an interpreting of the heart of God by the thoughts of our own hearts. People in sin think God does not love them. It is an immense mistake. He loves the sinner, while He hates his sins. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3: 16). And what is the world? It is made up of people who do not love God. What, then, is the real Church made up of? People who love God.

So long as I was unconverted the very name of God was always obnoxious to me. I knew He was holy, and I was unholy; I knew He had claims upon me and I could not meet them. And the natural mind is enmity against God. Sin has put us at a distance from God. It has broken the link between man and God. There is guilt on the conscience, sins and defilement on the soul, and the sense that we are not fit for God. There is a drawing back from God, and then there is an interpreting of the heart of God by the thoughts of our own hearts. People in sin think God does not love them. It is an immense mistake. He loves the sinner, while He hates his sins. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). And what is the world? It is made up of people who do not love God. What, then, is the real Church made up of? People who love God.

Our attitude toward others too is to be a serious exercise. No doubt some, lacking understanding, are unwittingly influenced in wrong ways, not willfully as their cruel leaders; and we must seek their deliverance compassionately. Others require more urgent faithful treatment, specially if they tend to be self-satisfied and lax. They need pressed upon them the fearfulness of God's judgment, and their requiring pulling out of the fire. Their garment (their habitual practice) has been too contaminated by the flesh: we are to hate this, while showing love for the person.

I fully admit that love towards the saints cannot, and ought not, to take the same shape towards all. It must be in the energy and intelligence of the Spirit, varied according to the call upon love. While one ought to love even a person who is under discipline, it would be a very great mistake to suppose that your love must be shown in the same way as if he were not. You do not cease to love him; indeed you never are in a position and spirit to exercise discipline with the Lord where there is not love — righteous hatred of the sin, indignation it may be, but real charity to the person. It would be better to wait upon God if it be not so in our hearts, till we can take it up in the spirit of divine grace. There must be, of course, a dealing in righteousness; but even in dealing with one's child there ought not to be such a thing as chastening it in a passion. Anything that merely arises out of a sudden impulse, is not a feeling that glorifies God about evil. Therefore, in cases of discipline, there ought to be self-judgment, and great patience, too, unless it be something so flagrant that to hesitate about it would be culpable weakness, or want of decision and jealousy for God, for there are some sins so offensive to God and to man that they ought, if we are sensitive to His holiness and obedient, to be met with grave energy and as it were on the very spot. The arena of the sin, God would have to be the scene of its judgment according to His will.

But the Lord hates putting away. It is the last and the sad resource when all else fails, and when the person who has sinned has simply to be left to God as confessedly beyond our reach altogether. Now there are, of course, sins of such a character as makes it manifest from the first that nothing else can be done. I am not now speaking of these. In other and ordinary cases we shall only do mischief by identifying in this way the offence and the offender, by forgetting that there is a soul to be restored as well as a sin to be put away.

He is no mean Christian who can duly balance the duties of affection and faithfulness, and show us how to smite the sin and love the sinner—to denounce the error, and yet to cultivate affection for the brother who has fallen into it. He is a wise chemist who can in right proportion blend the pure and the peaceable.

All this requires spirituality and waiting upon God. This is the truth of the matter. Nothing is more easy than to get into a certain settled plan - very rigid in one way, or lax in the other; whereas the Lord would never have us to be either, but to have an exercised soul, and a conscience informed by the word of God, looking at each case according to its own peculiar features and circumstances. "Of some have compassion, making a difference; and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire." It is remarkable that in both cases it is the activity of divine love seeking the deliverance of that which had got into evil. The Holy Ghost is not telling us here how to deal with a case where there is no hope, but where there is less or more evil. He supposes that these saints were building themselves up on their most holy faith, and that this was not all they were doing. They are thinking of those who are in an evil state, who have gone back; and this is their object - to have them with God, and so thoroughly right. This is not always the case with our souls. Supposing you take a person who, perhaps, has dishonoured the Lord; do we not feel so much the disgrace done to us as to be rather glad to get rid of him? If it be one who has been disagreeable in his manners, and not pleasant in his conversation, perhaps great patience and forbearance have been shewn towards him by the saints, and then something occurs which gives them a ground for dealing with him. The danger is, that the poor soul may be left to himself, and left, perhaps, as far as we are concerned, for ever. That is not what we have here: "Of some have compassion, making a difference; and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire." Here there is much greater anxiety of soul expressed; but still it is always the thought of saving - of tenderness in one case, and earnest effort in the other. The person himself might not thank you for acting towards him with so much vigour, but still it is the way of love, though with it the strongest feeling as to the evil itself - "hating even the garment spotted by the flesh." Love is intolerant of evil, and the clean contrary of indifference.

Charity, because it is God's presence, and that we feel His presence, and look to Him in it, is intolerant of evil. In mere brotherly kindness, the brother being the object before my mind (and, if God's presence be not felt, we do not realise it, nature coming in so easily and here in its most unsuspected and kindly shapes), I put man before God, smother up evil, keep kindness going, at any rate so far exclude and shut out God. Charity is His active presence though it will be in love to man; but it gives to God all His rights. He it is that is love, but He is never inconsistent with Himself. His love to us was shewn in what was the most solemn proof of His intolerance of evil, the cross. There is no true love apart from righteousness. If God is indifferent to evil, is not righteous, then there is no love in grace to the sinner. If He abhors evil, cannot suffer it in His presence, then His dealings with us as sinners shew the most perfect love. If I have ten children, and they go wrong, and I say, 'Well, I am to shew love to them,' and I take no account of their evil ways; or if some of them go wrong and I treat them as if there was no difference to my mind in their well doing or evil doing; this is not love but carelessness as to evil. This is the kind of love looked for by unconverted man, namely, God's being as careless as to evil as they are; but this is not divine charity which abhors the evil, but rises over it, dealing with it either in putting it away or in needed chastenings. Now if God were indifferent to evil there is no holy being to be the object of my love - nothing sanctifying. God does not own as love what admits of sin.

Mr. Pink speaks of God's wrath upon one as though it might be synonymous with God's hatred, but this "confounds hatred with judicial anger. There is no hatred in God to man assuredly. Yet God is a righteous judge, and God is angry every day, and ought to be so." But Mr. Pink asks, "Can God 'love' the one on whom His 'wrath' abides?" p. 248. Our answer to this is "yes," for God's wrath against the sinner because of his sin is not inconsistent with infinite and sovereign love. Thus Christ in the synagogue looked upon them with anger, being grieved at the hardness of their hearts. The grief was love, the anger was His righteous estimate of their sin.