Does God hate? If God is love, how can He hate?
Far from being a contradiction, God's hatred is the necessary expression of His love. Because God is love, He must hate everything that destroys, deceives, and defiles those He loves. A father who loved his children but was indifferent to the poison that could kill them would not truly love at all. Scripture reveals both what God hates and why His hatred is inseparable from His nature as love.
God Hates Sin — Not Sinners
The distinction runs through all of Scripture. One writer states it with striking simplicity:
Messiah_PrinceGod hates sin but loves sinners. Satan loves sin but hates sinners. Christ died to save sinners.
Samuel Ridout presses this further, insisting that sin must not be treated as a misfortune but as what it really is:
Samuel RidoutSin is not to be spared or condoned. We might as well nurse a viper and not expect to be bitten as to crave sympathy for our sin. Sin is not a misfortune or an infirmity; it is that abominable thing which God hates, which murdered Christ. It would, if allowed, cast God from His throne and put Satan there. Oh, may God deepen in our hearts the abhorrence of disobedience to Him, which is sin.
And another writer, addressing a struggling believer, puts it plainly:
ECH_believers2naturesGod hates sin; He can neither have fellowship with it, nor make a believer happy when he goes on with it. How could God walk with him in such a path? Further, as a Father who loves His child, God is obliged to discipline and correct him for his own good when he is disobedient; and such chastening is not joyous, but grievous. Afterwards however, it yields peaceable fruit to those who learn by it to hate and forsake sin.
Here the connection is unmistakable: God hates sin because He is a loving Father. A God who was indifferent to sin would be indifferent to His children.
God Hates Specific Evils
Scripture does not leave God's hatred as an abstraction. It names the things He hates.
J.N. Darby identifies pride as the chief offence:
J.N. DarbyPride is the greatest of all evils that beset us, and of all our enemies it is that which dies the slowest and hardest. … God hates pride above all things, because it gives to man the place that belongs to Him who is above, exalted over all. Pride intercepts communion with God, and draws down His chastisement, for "God resists the proud."
C.H. Mackintosh points to false witness:
C.H. MackintoshWe may here see how God hates false witness; and further, we have to bear in mind that, though we are not under law but under grace, false witness is not less hateful to God; and surely the more fully we enter into the grace in which we stand, the more intensely we shall abhor false witness, slander, and evil speaking, in every shape and form.
W.J. Fereday names religious formalism:
W.J. FeredayGod hates mere forms. He cannot bear men who honour Him with their lips, while all the time their hearts are far from Him. Thus it was at Jerusalem. The feast was running its course; ritual was in full swing; all were filled with rejoicing; but the Son of God held Himself entirely aloof.
And F.W. Grant, on the Nicolaitanism of Revelation 2, draws out what it means that the Lord says "which thing I hate":
F.W. GrantI want you to look at it very carefully. I want you not to think it a mere question of a certain order of Church government — as people are very apt to do. I want you to see the important principles which are involved in this, and how really the Lord has cause, as He must have, to say of Nicolaitanism, "which I also hate." And my aim and object tonight is to try to make you hate it as God hates it. … I am speaking of a thing, as the Lord does — "which thing I hate." He does not say, "which people I hate."
Grant's emphasis is critical: the Lord carefully says "which thing I hate" — not "which people." God's hatred is directed at what destroys His people, not at the people themselves.
"Jacob Have I Loved, but Esau Have I Hated"
This verse from Malachi 1:2–3, quoted in Romans 9:13, is perhaps the most difficult text on this subject. Charles Stanley offers a careful clarification:
Charles StanleyIt is sometimes said that it was written before they were born, that God hated Esau, and loved Jacob; but this is not so. … It was said to her — to Rebekah — The elder shall serve the younger. But it was more than thirteen hundred years after this that it was written, even in the very last prophet, Malachi, "as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." Surely God's love to Jacob did not lessen the wickedness of Esau in despising his birthright.
L.M. Grant draws out the moral significance:
L.M. GrantIndeed, after the two had lived and died, and their characters thus fully manifested, the one self-judged, the other self-righteous, God wrote by Malachi, "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." It is a solemn declaration. Esau is plainly the man after the flesh — whether it be well-trained, amiable, kind, or whatever else. Flesh is nothing to God: it profiteth nothing (John 6:63), and its proud self-confidence God hates.
F.B. Hole makes a similar point from Malachi itself:
F.B. HoleThe answer of God to this was to recall them to what marked His attitude and action from the beginning. He had loved Jacob and hated Esau. Human opinion would have reversed this: Jacob stooped to crooked and crafty schemes: Esau a fine manly fellow. Yes, but the 'birth-right', which carried with it, we believe, the advent of the Messiah, meant so little to Esau, that he sold it for a bowl of pottage, whereas Jacob esteemed it of highest worth. Here we have perhaps the earliest forecast that 'What think ye of Christ' is the test.
So the "hatred" of Esau is not arbitrary cruelty but God's righteous judgment on a man — and a nation descended from him — that despised the things of God. The declaration was made not before Esau was born, but centuries after his life had proved what he was.
The Cross: Where Love and Hatred Meet
William Kelly shows that the Christian's responsibility is to share God's feelings about evil — and this is not a contradiction of love but its expression:
William KellyWhat God has fellowship with, we can have fellowship with; and what God hates, we are not to love or allow. … True love as to this consists in always having the feelings of God about what comes before us.
W.J. Hocking explains the nature of divine love itself:
W.J. HockingIt is one of the distinguishing characteristics of divine love that its object affords no originating impulse whatever. For "God commends His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." … Though man is in a desperate state of irreconcilable hatred and antagonism to everything divine, God loves him in spite of all.
The cross is the ultimate answer. There, God's hatred of sin was fully expressed — Christ was made sin and bore its entire judgment. And at the very same cross, God's love for sinners was fully expressed — He gave His only Son so that the sinner might go free. The two are not in tension; they are two sides of the same divine nature. A God who did not hate sin would not have sent His Son to die; a God who did not love sinners would not have sent His Son at all.