Does God hate me?
The most striking thing about God's love is its timing. It did not wait for us to become good enough. It came to us at our worst.
God Loves the Unlovely
Hamilton Smith, commenting on Romans 5, writes:
Hamilton SmithTo set forth the greatness of this love we are reminded that it was when we were "without strength", and "ungodly", that Christ died for us. When we were utterly helpless, unable to do anything for God, and ungodly, unwilling to do anything for God, then it was that love made the great sacrifice by dying for us.
Man's time of need was God's time of love.
Where is there a love amongst men that would lead anyone to die for a sinner? In contrast to all that can be found amongst men, God commends His love, in that while we were yet sinners Christ, died for us.
F. B. Hole puts the personal wonder of it this way:
F. B. HoleJesus the Son of God loved me, and gave Himself for me. The Lord of glory on the one hand, and then poor little me on the other — not merely little, but degraded, dirty, unlovely… He loved me when there was nothing in me to love, and He gave Himself for me. What a melting fact is this!
It Is Man Who Is Against God — Not God Against Man
W. T. P. Wolston, in his address on the story of Mephibosheth, confronts the lie head-on. Mephibosheth stayed away from King David for years, convinced that David — his grandfather Saul's old enemy — must hate him. But David's heart was the very opposite: "Is there yet any left of the house of Saul, that I may show him the kindness of God?" Wolston draws the parallel:
W. T. P. WolstonEvery man has the thought — God is against me. Lie! Lie of Satan! Foul lie of hell! God is not against man. He is for man.
It is man who is against God. It is you and I who are by nature against God. We have been opposed to God, and not God opposed to us. No, my friends, the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ clearly solves this question. "If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all" conclusively proves that God is for us.
What reconciles the heart of man to God? It is the thought — God loved me, when I did not love Him; Jesus died for me, when I did not care for Him.
God Seeks the Lost — It Is His Joy
J. N. Darby, expounding the parables of Luke 15 — the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son — shows that God does not sit back passively. He goes out after the lost:
J. N. DarbyGod is love; and if He will be God, He must be love, and that notwithstanding all the reasonings and murmurings of the heart of man against Him. God will act upon what I may call the feelings of His heart, and make them find their way into the hearts of men.
One great principle runs through them all; it is the joy of God to seek and to receive the sinner. He is acting upon His own character.
And when the prodigal does turn back, the father doesn't wait at the door with crossed arms:
the joy of God to seek and to receive the sinnerThe father does not stop to ask him anything… It was no question of fitness or worthiness in the son: the father's heart did not reason in that way; he was acting from himself and for himself — worthily as a father. He was on his neck, because the father loves to be there. It is the love that is in God, not any loveliness in the sinner, that accounts for the extravagant liberality of his reception in Christ.
Nothing Can Separate You from His Love
An article in An Outline of Sound Words traces the love of God through all of Scripture and arrives at this:
1 The Love of GodThere was nothing in us to love when we were in the distance from God, but the motive lay in the heart of God; it was a love of divine compassion that chose to take us up and make us suitable for His holy presence.
From the love of God, nothing can separate us, not life, death, nor angels, for the love we have learned is in Him in whom God has blessed us, even in His own Son.
God's love is a perfect love, a love that has provided for everything in regard to the past, the present and the future, a love that has dismissed every bit of fear from the breasts of those who know His love.
Before ever there was a movement in our hearts Godward, He loved us with an infinite, sovereign and eternal love, so that it has been written, "We love, because He first loved us."
No, God does not hate you. The entire testimony of Scripture runs in the opposite direction: "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). God hates sin — but He loves the sinner so deeply that He gave what was most precious to Him to bear sin's judgment in our place. The proof of that love is not that He waited until we were good enough; it is that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. Whatever you have done, wherever you are, His arms are open — like the father running to meet the prodigal while he was still "a great way off."