Psalm 139:19-22 Oh, that You would slay the wicked, O God! Do
I not hate them, O Lord, who hate You? And do I not loathe those
who rise up against You? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them
my enemies.
God hates the sinner and not just the sin. He plans to destroy liars,
and every unrepentant liar should tremble at such a statement. It is only at
the cross that God hates the sin and loves the sinner. It is only IN
Christ that we find sinners not thrown into the lake of fire. Romans 5:8-9
CH Spurgeon Treasury of David "But the wicked and him that loveth
violence his soul hateth:" why, then, shall I flee from
these wicked men? If God hateth them, I will not fear them. Haman was very
great in the palace until he lost favour, but when the king abhorred him, how
bold were the meanest attendants to suggest the gallows for the man at whom
they had often trembled! Look at the black mark upon the faces of our
persecutors, and we shall not run away from them. If God is in the quarrel as
well as ourselves, it would be foolish to question the result, or avoid the
conflict. Sodom and Gomorrah perished by a fiery hail, and by a brimstone
shower from heaven; so shall all the ungodly. They may gather together like
Gog and Magog to battle, but the Lord will rain upon them "an overflowing
rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone:" Ezekiel 38:22. Some
expositors think that in the term "horrible tempest," there is in the Hebrew
an allusion to that burning, suffocating wind, which blows across the Arabian
deserts, and is known by the name of Simoom. "A burning storm," Lowth calls
it, while another great commentator reads it "wrathwind;" in either version
the language is full of terrors. What a tempest will that be which shall
overwhelm the despisers of God! Oh! what a shower will that be which shall
pour out itself for ever upon the defenceless heads of impenitent sinners in
hell! Repent, ye rebels, or this fiery deluge shall soon surround you. Hell's
horrors shall be your inheritance, your entailed estate, "the portion of your
cup." The dregs of that cup you shall wring out, and drink for ever. A drop of
hell is terrible, but what must a full cup of torment be? Think of it--a cup
of misery, but not a drop of mercy. O people of God, how foolish is it to fear
the faces of men who shall soon be faggots in the fire of hell! Think of their
end, their fearful end, and all fear of them must be changed into contempt of
their threatenings, and pity for their miserable estate.
Augustine: "He who said, �I will have mercy on whom I
will have mercy,� loved Jacob of His undeserved grace, and hated Esau of His
deserved judgment" (Enchiridion, xcviii).
John Gill wrote, "Thou hatest all workers of
iniquity; not all that have sin in them or do sin, for there are none without
it; but such who give themselves up to work wickedness, who make it the
business of their lives, and are slaves unto it, living in a continued series
and course of impiety; and this character does not only belong to openly
profane sinners, but to some professors of religion . . . these are the
objects of God's hatred. "
Gill " He hates all workers of
iniquity and brings down his indignation and wrath, tribulation and
anguish, on every soul of man that does evil, of the Jew first, and also of
the Gentile" (Rom. 2:8-9).
"But this is not the
case in another world. The saints in glory will know concerning the damned in
hell, that God never loved them, but that he hates them, and that they will be
for ever hated of God. This hatred of God will be full declared to them; they
will see it, and will see it in the fruits of their misery . . . God has
declared his hatred of the damned . . . " On Knowing Christ, Jonathan
Edwards, P. 250
Martin Luther: "the
love and hate of God towards men is immutable and eternal, existing, not
merely before there was any merit or work of �free-will,� but before the world
was made; [so] all things take place in us of necessity, according as He has
from eternity loved or not loved ... faith and unbelief come to us by no work
of our own, but through the love and hatred of God" (The Bondage of the
Will, pp. 226, 228-229).
Calvin "the reprobate
are hateful to God, and with very good reason. For, deprived of his Spirit,
they can bring forth nothing but reason for cursing" (Institutes
3.24.17).
Jerome Zanchius: "When
hatred is ascribed to God, it implies (1) a negation of benevolence, or a
resolution not to have mercy on such and such men, nor to endue them with any
of those graces which stand connected with eternal life. So, �Esau have I
hated� (Rom. 9), i.e., �I did, from all eternity, determine within
Myself not to have mercy on him.� The sole cause of which awful negation is
not merely the unworthiness of the persons hated, but the sovereignty and
freedom of the Divine will. (2) It denotes displeasure and dislike, for
sinners who are not interested in Christ cannot but be infinitely displeasing
to and loathsome in the sight of eternal purity. (3) It signifies a positive
will to punish and destroy the reprobate for their sins, of which will, the
infliction of misery upon them hereafter, is but the necessary effect and
actual execution" (Absolute Predestination, p. 44).
Francis Turretin: "For as he who loves a person
or thing wishes well and, if he can, does well to it, so true hatred and
abhorrence cannot exist without drawing after them the removal and destruction
of the contrary" (Elenctic Theology, vol. 2, pp.
237-238).
Robert Haldane: "Nothing
can more clearly manifest the strong opposition of the human mind to the
doctrine of the Divine sovereignty, than the violence which human ingenuity
has employed to wrest the _expression_, �Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I
hated.� By many this has been explained, �Esau have I loved less.� But Esau
was not the object of any degree of the Divine love ... If God�s love to Jacob
was real literal love, God�s hatred to Esau must be real literal hatred. It
might as well be said that the phrase, �Jacob have I loved,� does not signify
that God really loved Jacob, but that to love here signifies only to hate
less, and that all that is meant by the _expression_, is that God hated Jacob
less than he hated Esau. If every man�s own mind is a sufficient security
against concluding the meaning to be, �Jacob have I hated less,� his judgment
ought to be a security against the equally unwarrantable meaning, �Esau have I
loved less� ... hardening [is] a proof of hatred" (Romans, pp. 456,
457).
A. W. Pink: "�Thou
hatest all workers of iniquity��not merely the works of iniquity. Here,
then, is a flat repudiation of present teaching that, God hates sin but loves
the sinner; Scripture says, �Thou hatest all workers of
iniquity� (Ps. 5:5)! �God is angry with the wicked every day.� �He that
believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God��not
�shall abide,� but even now��abideth on him� (Ps. 5:5; 8:11; John
3:36). Can God �love� the one on whom His �wrath� abides? Again; is it not
evident that the words �The love of God which is in Christ Jesus� (Rom.
8:39) mark a limitation, both in the sphere and objects of His love? Again; is
it not plain from the words �Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated�
(Rom. 9:13) that God does not love everybody? ... Is it conceivable that God
will love the damned in the Lake of Fire? Yet, if He loves them now He will do
so then, seeing that His love knows no change�He is �without variableness
or shadow of turning!�" (The Sovereignty of God, p.
248).
John Murray: "[Divine
hatred can] scarcely be reduced to that of not loving or loving less ... the
evidence would require, to say the least, the thought of disfavour,
disapprobation, displeasure. There is also a vehement quality that may not be
discounted ... We are compelled, therefore, to find in this word a declaration
of the sovereign counsel of God as it is concerned with the ultimate destinies
of men" (Romans, vol. 2, pp. 22, 24).
Homer C. Hoeksema: "All
history, in which vessels unto honor or unto dishonor are formed, is the
revelation and realization of the counsel of God according to which He loved
Jacob and all His elect people, but hated Esau and all the
reprobate."
James Montgomery Boice: "although hatred in God is of a different character than hatred in
sinful human beings�his is a holy hatred�hate in God nevertheless does imply
disapproval ... [Esau] was the object of [God�s] displeasure ... "
(Romans, vol. 3, p. 1062).
John MacArthur, Jr.: "In
a very real sense, God hated Esau himself. It was not a petty, spiteful,
childish kind of hatred, but something far more dreadful. It was divine
antipathy�a holy loathing directed at Esau personally. God
abominated him as well as what he stood
for" (The Love of God, pp. 86-87).
D. A. Carson:
"Fourteen times in the first
fifty psalms alone, we are told that 
