Judy responds: The word hate
here means (love them less than) for if we put them ahead of God we are making
idols out of them and unbelieving family members can certainly exert a lot of
pressure at times.
Judy, It's interesting that you would say this. The same word
(miseo in Greek) is used in both Psa 5.5 and 11.5 (LXX). Are you
suggesting that God doesn't hate the wicked; he just loves them less than he
would if they were righteous? Hmmmmmm. I didn't
think so }:-)
jt: I'm not the one comparing
Ps 5:5 and Ps11:5 with Luke 14:26 Bill - you are. To me there is no
comparison. In the Psalms David (a man after God's own heart) pens insight into
God's attitude toward the wicked. Of course if the wicked choose to repent
and embrace His righteousness God's attitude toward them changes accordingly as
expressed by the prophet Ezekiel (see Ez 18:21-23).
As for Luke 14:26 - We need
to understand that God is not double minded, nor does He contradict Himself. How
is one to honor their parents (which is the only Commandment with promise) and
hate them ATST? The Amplified Bible puts it this way "If any one comes to
Me (Jesus) and does not hate his (own) father and mother (that is in the
sense of indifference to or relative disregard for them in comparison with his
attitude toward God) and (likewise) his wife and children and brothers and
sisters, (yes) and even his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." In a
similar situation a disciple who had been called by Jesus wanted to go and
bury his father before following Him and Jesus told this man to "let the
(spiritually) dead bury their own dead, but you come and follow Me" (see Matt
8:21 and Luke 9:59,60)
The problem is, this same word is used a
couple hundred other places too, always translated as "hate." Friberg's
Lexicon says it may be a Hebraism in Lk 14.26, but if it is, it's not
used as such elsewhere in the NT or LXX, not at least that I can tell.
And so, while I'm sure you checked your trusty Strongs, this love-em-less-than definition is woefully
without supportive precedent. What it is, is a theologically
infused interpretive opinion, one made with the greatest of intentions,
I'm sure -- but not much more than that.
jt: Oh? Can you tell me then
what kind of theology this interpretive opinion is infused with
Bill?
I trust your absence has reinvigorated you
and hope your little granddaughter is responding well to her
treatments.
jt: Jenna is responding well
to her treatments and this week she had no blastocytes in her bone marrow
which is a good sign only what she has to go through at four years old to reach
this point would break your heart. She is sadder and wiser, no longer the
carefree happy little girl who loved for us to call her Anastasia in her pretend
world (which aggravated her brother no end). Thank you for
remembering.
Greetings Bill, glad to see
you were able to get back online...
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...
jt: Right and we can know this
because "God wills for all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of
truth" (1 Timothy 2:3,4) ATST in His omnipotence He knows they won't be.
When Paul wrote this letter to Timothy in 62/67AD he was encouraging the
infant Church to pray for the evil Nero who God already knew would die
insane.
bt: 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.
jt: The above concept is
Calvinistic theology which distorts the sovereignty of God, it is not the
teaching of scripture.
bt: 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?
jt: Our enemies are primarily the
principalities, powers, and wicked spirits in the heavenlies who blind the
minds of people and compel them to act in certain ways. To walk in love
toward these people we must separate them from what controls them. It is
possible for us by the grace of God to hate the sin that binds them
yet love the sinner.
bt: 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).
jt: The word hate here means (love
them less than) for if we put them ahead of God we are making idols out of
them and unbelieving family members can certainly exert a lot of pressure at
times.
bt: 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?
jt: I don't believe we are supposed
to hate ourselves because Jesus taught that we are to love our neighbor as
ourself and He is not double minded and unstable. In Luke 14:26 it is
our own life outside of God that we are to hate..
bt: 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.
jt: I'm not trying to be smart Bill
but "essence?" I've heard that word used to describe perfume but
never God.
bt: 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.
jt: The Godhead has always been
Holy and His Holiness has always been there and is what we have to deal with;
sin causes a breach between Himself and us in spite of His love.
bt: 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.
jt: God is love Bill but there are
other aspects to his Nature and Character. Love is not God.
bt: 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.
jt: Bill, I don't know where you
find your concept of "essence" I don't see it in scripture but I do read
that "the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom" and knowledge of the holy is
understanding" (Proverbs 9:10) and that "wisdom is better than rubies; and all
the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it" "The fear of the
Lord is to hate evil, pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward
mouth (God hates). Then there are the six things the Lord hates, no seven are
an abomination to Him: a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed
innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked imaginations, feet that are swift
in running to mischief, a false witness that speaks lies and he that sows
discord among brethren." (Proverbs 6:16)
bt: God is love; he wills to
hate.
jt: Upon what grounds do you make
the claim that God "wills" to hate?
bt: 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.
jt: I don't agree with the above.
God hates sin - If only we would hate it the same way He does. If only
we would be as tenacious in rooting out the sin in our lives as those Texan
oncologists are in hunting down the last leukocytic cell in my grandaughters
body... though the treatment is poison and almost kills her by itself it is
not as harmful as the disease. Sin is the same kind of disease and will
have the same outcome in our lives. Jesus died to set us free from these
bonds. Even Paul wrote that sin dwelled in him causing him to do what he
hates in Romans 7 (when he was a believer for 20yrs).
bt: 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.
jt: If I remember correctly -
this teaching is called "Identification" or "Positional Truth" and it
originally came out of the Keswick Conventions held in the UK early in
the 20th Century. We can reckon these things so until we are blue
but if we fail to deal with our own sin on a daily basis we will stay in
our bonds and die in them being of no practical use to the Kingdom of
God.
bt: "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).
jt: "Harden not your hearts as in the
provocation in the day of temptation in the wilderness when your fathers
tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved
with that generation and said they do always err in their heart and they have
not known my ways, so I sware in my wrath, they shall not enter into my
rest. Take heed brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of
unbelief in departing from the living God - but exhort one another daily,
while it is called today lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness
of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, IF we hold the beginning of our
confidence steadfast unto the end while it is said "Today if ye will hear His
voice harden not your hearts as in the provocation. For some, when they
had heard, did provoke, howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses; but
with whom was he grieved forty years? Was it not with them that had sinned
whose carcasses fell in the wilderness? And to whom sware he that they should
not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not? So we see that they
could not enter in because of unbelief.....
"The Word preached did not profit them, not
being mixed with faith in them that heard it" (Hebrews 4:2)
God did not hate Israel but He had to judge
them or violate His own Word.... This standard applies to us also
- Without or aside from faith it is impossible to please
God.. judyt
