Wm. Taylor wrote:
Greetings, Terry. I apologize for
the delay in getting back to you. My AC adapter died on my Laptop and
so I did not have a computer for a few days.
Yes, I have come across this verse
on occasion. Psalm 5.4-6 is a another passage with equally strong
language. I must tell you that these passages are unsettling to me: I
do not like to think that our God hates anyone. Nevertheless I must be
willing to take them under consideration and seek God's heart in trying
to understand them.
I think first I would like to tell
you what I do not think this is saying about God. God does not will to
hate certain people, while at the same time will to love others, and
this in an indiscriminate way that can only be described from our
perspective in terms that appear arbitrary at best, as if he created
ABCs to love and XYZs to hate. If you happen to be from the first
group, great, God loves you and will call you to himself; if you are
from the latter group, too bad, God hates you and you're toast, and
this because he has created you for a different end. This sort of
theology forces a dichotomy within the Godhead, dueling wills, if you
will -- a split personality. A condition like this should not be
considered anything other than the deep psychosis it is. Why would a sane
God command us to love our enemies when he himself does not? and more
to the point, from where would the goodness and persuasion come to love
our enemies if not from him whose wondrous love compels us to love even
those who hate us?
tc Wow! Amazing! We are in total agreement so far.
Is it possible to love and hate the
same object at the same time? If we define hate as the antithesis of
love, I think it would be impossible to do this, because that kind of
hate would exclude love. Some hate is anti-love, that is sure, but I
think there must also be hate that is something other than this. Jesus
tells us we must "hate" our father and mother, wife and children,
brothers and sisters, even our own life, or we cannot be his disciples
(Luk 14.26). Yet certainly we are to love them too. What kind of hate
is this? and how can we love our neighbor as ourselves and at the same
time be disciples of Christ if this hate is anti-love? We can go into
what I think this "hate" is in another post if you wish, but for the
purpose of this discussion, it is obvious that hate does not have
to exclude love. It must be possible to love one's father and mother,
etc. and hate them at the same time.
tc I think possibly Jesus was making a comparison here. Our love
for God has to be so strong that the love we have for our loved ones
would be, by comparison, puny and weak. He would not tell us to love
our enemy and hate our mother.
When we read passages that say God
hates certain people -- whether evil, or violent and wicked -- does
this mean that he does not love them? Is his hate for them anti-love,
or is it some other kind of hate that he holds for those people, maybe
something similar to the hate we are to have for ourselves, and mom and
dad? This is a fair question and we should try to answer it. We need to
be honest, though, when we do, and recognize that our answer will be
shaped by our present view of God. The way we "see" God determines the
way we think about him. This is true for me; it is true for you too.
tc I have no doubt that God would prefer to love them. His nature
is to love. Some people though, will not allow God to love them, or
maybe I should say they sneer at His love until His love in
exasperation turns to hate, and He gives them over to a reprobate
mind. God loved us first, and like all lovers, He wants that love
returned. As a matter of fact, He demands that that love be returned.
Let me tell you what I do think.
Love is the heart of God. It speaks to that eternal relationship
between the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit. When we talk about
the "essence" of God, love is in the center of it. "God is
love." Everything else, whether it be his holiness or justice or
whatever, everything else that is essence must be understood only as it
relates to his love, as disclosed by the incarnate Word himself. tc
Excellent point.
There are other things that God does
that are not things which describe him in his essence. Forgiveness, for
example, is something that springs from his essence, but is not itself
of his essence. I say this because there was nothing to forgive when
all there was was God -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Wrath is not of
the essence of God; there was nothing to be wrathful about until there
was sin. Again, excellent. Something I had never considered before
Just as those things that are
of the essence of God must be defined in relationship to love, so also
must those that are not. God is patient, and kind, and merciful, and
gracious, and forgiving, because he is love. These things flow forth
from his love. The same must be said about wrath. Wrath is God's love
in action against anything that sets itself to destroy his creation or
diminish his worth. Makes sense.
Hate is not of the essence of God.
When all there was was that triune relationship between the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, there was no hate (no matter how it is defined)
in God. Yet we must say that within the makeup of God (his essence)
there is potential to hate, just like there is potential to forgive. We
find in Scripture in the verse you mentioned and elsewhere that God
does hate, and he hates not only sin but in some cases (at least) the
sinner too. I believe that God has all the emotions that He has
given us
God is love; he wills
to hate. This gets back to my initial complaint. We dare not stand the
love of God side-by-side over against his hate, as if he could go one
way as willfully as the other. Whatever it means to say that God hates,
we must understand it as something that springs forth out of love. I think people can become so wicked and corrupt
that all there is, as far as their works, is evil. They have so sold
themselves out to sin that they have become totally depraved (cf. Rom
1. 28-32). These are those whom God hates. That said, I do not believe
that he ever stops loving them. He is not indifferent. It is because he
loves them that he hates them. That last line does not compute for me.
To me, love/hate is like start/stop or forward/reverse. You can do one
followed by the other, sometimes rather quickly, but I cannot picture
both at the same time.
This we must return to over and over
again: whatever the sin that ensnares these people, Christ carried it
with him to the cross. For their sins he died. And when he died, they
died. And when he rose again, they too rose with him. They are included
in him, just like you are and I am; this because God so loves them. Bill,
you just totally lost me. Maybe you could say it some other way that
is more understandable. I see those who are wicked, as I once was,
nowhere near the cross, not covered by the redeeming blood. That is
why they are called lost.
"And you He made alive,
who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked
according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the
power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among
whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh,
fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature
children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in
mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when
we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by
grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and
made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ
Jesus," (Eph 2.1-6).You might also want to tell me what you think
this means sinxe it seems to go with the above paragraph.
I will not stop thinking
about your question, Terry. The truth is, it has haunted me for a long
time. But I am not comfortable going any further right now. I hope I
have given you enough to begin to apprehend where I am coming from.
I really appreciate the effort you have gone to in order to answer
my query. It tells me that we are not always at opposite ends of the
spectrum, and there is room to learn from one another. I was thinking
that since you had not responded, that you considered my question to be
insincere. Terry
Bill
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