What does the Bible say about hate?

The Lord could hate as perfectly as He loved. He loved with perfection, and He hated with perfection. It is often very difficult for us to do this, because of some personal matter involved that may stir up our hatred and our anger. But the Lord Jesus hated things because they were in opposition to His God, and we also have to have those features… God expects His people to hate them too, and to make sure that first of all they are removed from our own lives.

Love and hatred of evil will always be found together… A false charity may ignore evil under the plea of love, and even treat evil doctrine as of little account to the Lord. Genuine love will lead us to hate evil without ignoring the good.

It is not merely one that does not love, but the positive activity of hating… As hatred is found to mark his spirit when tested, he is a murderer in principle — just as the Lord pronounces a man to be an adulterer in principle who indulged in lust… God deals with the heart and not the outward things only in Christianity.

The fact is that in this matter we cannot be neutral. If we do not love our brother we hate him; and he who hates is potentially a murderer. Cain was an actual murderer, but in Matthew 5:21-22 the Lord Jesus lays the emphasis not on the act but on the anger and hatred which prompted the act… the essential nature of that life is love.

To be Christ's is enough to stir up the world's bitterness… The world hates those who, being His, are no longer of the world… For it hates us because of Him, not Him because of us. It is not our faults, therefore, which are the true cause, but His grace and moral excellence, His divine nature and glory.

The hate here is not the vindictive hatred of 1 John 4:20, for in that case one's hatred of his brother proved him a liar when he claimed to love God. But every other relationship must give way to the disciple's devotion to Christ… For instance, an unbelieving father may accuse his son of hating him because the son is set on following the Lord Jesus and refuses to worship his father's idols.

Men understand, at least, that they ought to love their neighbour… while they have invented a duty of hate, which no lawgiver would perhaps dare write on his tables, but which is nevertheless too readily obeyed in practice… God blesses those who curse Him, does good to those that hate Him — sets us the sweetest and most wonderful example of infinite compassion.

In a thousand practical instances, the question is not whether the thing is right. We often hear Christians asking, Is such a thing wrong? But this is not the only question for the Christian. Suppose wrong is done to him; what is he to feel then? If there is hostility to him in another, what is he to hold in his own heart?

What God loved in Jacob was his appreciation of the birthright, and what He hated in Esau was that he despised it.