Does God hate? If God is love, how can He hate?

But it is not sufficient, however, to say that God is love and that He loved us; it is important that the holiness of the love of God be safeguarded. It must not be thought that because God is love, sins are of small account in His eyes. If we say, God loves men, it must not be understood as implying that He overlooks their sins. That would be falsifying His character. Sin is abhorrent to Him. He cannot behold iniquity. His eyes are too pure for that (Hab. 1:13). As antagonistic to His nature, an infringement on His sovereign rights, He cannot possibly tolerate sin. But how can God's love to men and His hatred of sin be harmonized? How can He maintain the holiness of His love? If He loves us, does He not violate holiness and righteousness? Such questions show the need of a fuller statement. The character of God in His love to us must be expressed: hence in saying, "Not that we loved God but that He loved us," the apostle adds, "And sent His Son [to make] propitiation for our sins."

The character of love in God is thus fully safeguarded. For, seeking man, seeking to win men from their sins is very different from visiting upon them the due of their sins. In seeking to reconcile men to Himself, it involved atonement, therefore. While it is important to insist on this, the great point in the statement we are considering is God's propitious attitude toward men in sending "His only Son to be the propitiation for our sins." The very act of sending His Son for this purpose was the wonderful display of God's gracious attitude toward men. It was the love of God exercised in consistency with holiness and righteousness. It was Love operating in its sovereign rights, and in harmony with His hatred of 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.

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.

In this day of God’s free favour, of His saving grace, men commonly think of Jesus simply as “meek and mild,” a sort of philanthropist, who will put up with anything. It is true He is full of mercy, and grace, and love; it is true His love is long-suffering and kind; but let it not be forgotten, that true love, divine love, however long it may wait upon the sinner, seeking his salvation, will not be indifferent to sin; its punishment must be carried out. We see this at the cross; the very place which shows God’s love to us shows us His holy hatred of sin also.

The love of God is not like that; it is not the love of a weak and indulgent parent; it is a holy love, there is a force and energy and vigour about it that can only be found in God. His love transcends our highest thoughts, it baffles all illustration, but it reaches out to all men, and the meanest and most unintelligent may receive it, and the blessing of it. It is a love that hates sin, and yet has set itself to rescue men from its power and its penalty, and to do this righteously, in the only way in which it can be done, and at its own cost.

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.

It is quite true that justice is not wrath or judgment. But as far as men go, we may justly say we turned God into a judge by sin, not assuredly into a righteous Being. When he had created Adam innocent, there was nothing to judge. It would have been judging His own workmanship. But righteousness becomes wrath (not hatred) when evil is in the presence of judicial authority exercised in righteousness. The righteous Lord loveth righteousness; but God is a righteous judge, and God is angry every day. And now wrath is revealed from heaven as surely as infinite love is. In sovereign grace He rises above the sin, and loves without a motive, save what is in His own nature and part of His glory. Man must have a motive for loving. God has none but in Himself, and "commendeth his love to us" (and the "His" is emphatic as to this very point), in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us: the best thing in heaven that could be given for the vilest, defiled, and guilty sinners. Dr. W. seems to me to lower and depreciate the love of God quite as much as His justice and His righteous wrath.

Now God cannot make light of sin, though He has only love in His heart for the sinner. You have outraged God's character and God's throne, but you have not changed one whit the heart of Him who fills that throne; and though you may be a sinner of the deepest dye, yet you are an object of the love of God; His love has not been destroyed by your sin. And so we see in David, his heart yearns after the runaway.

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.