Does God hate me?

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.

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.

The message of Malachi begins with the sublime statement, "I have loved you, saith Jehovah." It is the message to Israel. This love is written large on every page of their history. A former prophet gave the message from the Lord, "You only have I known of all the families of the earth" (Amos 3:2). And long before that Moses had told them, "Only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and He chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day" (Deut 10:15). And the man of God in his final utterance burst out in praise, "Yea, He loved the people" (Deut. 33:3). And this generation, brought back through His mercy from Babylon, the generation that had listened to the marvelous words of Haggai and Zechariah, could brazenly answer back, "Wherein hast Thou loved us?" How deep they had sunk! Greater still is the insensibility of nominal Christendom which rejects, yea, despises, the great love wherewith He has loved us in the gift of His Son. Then the Lord in infinite patience answered them, "Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith Jehovah: yet I loved Jacob, and hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness." This takes us back to Genesis, but in vain do we look for this statement in that first book of the Bible. Though it is quoted also in Romans 9, it is nowhere to be found in connection with the story of the birth of the twins. The late scholar, William Kelly, has expressed the whole matter so well that we can do nothing better than to quote his excellent comment. "It is only in Malachi that He says 'Esau have I hated.' I could conceive nothing more dreadful than to say so in Genesis. Never does Scripture represent God as saying before the child was born and had manifested his iniquity and proud malice, 'Esau have I hated.' There is where the mind of man is so erroneous. It is not meant, however, that God's choice was determined by the character of the individual. This would make man the ruler rather than God. Not so; God's choice flows out of His own wisdom and nature. It suits and is worthy of Himself; but the reprobation of any man and of every unbeliever is never a question of the sovereignty of God. It is the choice of God to do good where and how He pleases; it is never the purpose of His will to hate any man. There is no such doctrine in the Bible. I hold, therefore, that, while election is most clearly taught in the Scriptures, the consequences that men draw from election, namely, the reprobation of the non-elect, is a mere reproduction of fatalism, common to some heathen and to all Mohammedans, the unfounded deduction of man's reasoning in divine things." With these good words we agree perfectly. The hatred against Esau is mentioned in this last book, because it was well-deserved, after all the opposition and defiance of God the descendants of Esau, Edom, had manifested. But the love wherewith Jacob was loved was undeserved. His love for His people had been fully manifested, as well as His displeasure against Edom by laying his mountains and heritage waste, and all their attempts at reconstruction failed. God was against him on account of Edom's wicked ways.

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.

Can David have confidence that God hears him? Yes indeed, for he bases his confidence on the very character of God, who takes no pleasure in wickedness, and cannot allow evil any place in His presence (v. 4). His patience with evil is not by any means indulgence, nor indifference. Proud boasters will not stand in His sight. Workers of iniquity can only expect hatred for the character of hatred they have formed, and those who speak falsehood must reap the results of this in destruction (v. 5). "The bloodthirsty and deceitful man" is the one whose wickedness does not stop short of murder and uses every kind of crafty artifice to conceal his evil; but the Lord will expose this, for He abhors such characters (v. 6).

If, on the other hand, you are compelled to confess, that you have not peace with God, you are even now under His wrath (John 3:36), and when death comes, should you remain as you are, it will introduce you to an eternity of misery and woe under the just judgment of a holy God.

But it was not so. Nor are the fatherly chastisements that come upon His saints today, any denial of His love, as Hebrew 12:6 plainly declares. Let us remember this, and never ask, when trying circumstances arise — If God loves me, why does He send, or permit this?

And here it may be as well to point out the danger of those who cite Psalm 22:1, as an ordinary saint's experience, despising or at least failing to use the lesson scripture gives us, that those words suited Jesus on the cross, and certainly no Christian since. He was thus forsaken then that we might never be. It is not then true that the believer under any circumstance is forsaken of God. Jesus only could say in the fulness of the truth, both "My God" and "Why hast thou forsaken me?" And even He never did nor could, I believe, have said these words save as atoning for sin. To suppose that, because David wrote the words, he must have said them as his own experience, is to make the Psalms of private interpretation, instead of recognizing the power of the Spirit who inspired them. Psalm 16 might as well or better be David's experience; yet it needs little discrimination to see that both in their full import belong to Christ exclusively, but in wholly different circumstances.

David had his ups and downs as most of us have, but they are strange words that he uses at the opening of this 60th Psalm: — "O God, Thou hast cast us off." Is that true? Does God not cast off those who are His? Not one of us who have believed could say that. Cast down we may be, and often are, and good for us too, for "God comforteth those that are cast down" (2 Cor. 7:6), but cast off, never; God cannot deny Himself. He cannot be false to His word. There are wonderful words in the Old Testament which assure us that that could never be. They are meant in the first place for Israel, but we may appropriate them. Take this: — "Hearken to Me, O house of Jacob, Even to your old age I am He; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you" (Isa. 46). And again: — "Can a woman forget her sucking child? … Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold I have graven thee upon the Palms of My hands" (Isa. 49). But the New Testament makes assurance more assured, for there we are in our own sphere, and we read, "He has said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee". So that we may boldly say, "The Lord is my Helper, and I will not fear what man shall do to me" (Heb. 13); and most wonderful of all, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8). It is as clear as can be that we shall never be cast off.

Hence the apostle contrasts the call of God with works, rather than our faith, so as to cut off the poor semi-Pelagianism of such as Chrysostom of old or Tholuck of late, which would make election governed by the foreseen superiority of one to the other. Language cannot more precisely contradict this, the natural thought (not of natural men only but) of reasoning or imaginative saints. Esau had done no ill to disqualify him, Jacob no good to qualify him; but, before either of the twins was born, God in the exercise of His sovereign will chose that the greater should do service to the lesser. Such was His purpose. Their works had nothing to do with the matter and are excluded, so as to rest all on the caller, God Himself.

On the other hand, there is no ground favourable to that absolute reprobation which Calvin deduces from this place. Not a syllable is hinted as to hating the unborn Esau in Genesis 25. Man hastily infers reprobation of the one from the choice of the other. This is unfounded. Out of two who have no claim to choose one to a superior place is to exercise will; but to show favour in one case is not therein to condemn the other. They were in themselves both born in sin, as they no doubt grow up in sins. This is to be obnoxious to condemnation, which turns on man's sins, not on God's purpose. It is not Jehovah's word to Rebecca, but by Malachi which speaks of hating Esau. It was at the very close of the Old Testament, after Esau had displayed his unrelenting enmity to Israel. The love to Jacob thus was free; the hatred had moral grounds in Esau.