Romans 12:9 ‘Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good’
Love and Hate seem antithetical, and reading them in the same sentence in Romans made me feel strange. But I've come to realise:
Genuine Love cannot exist in a sinful world without Hate.
Righteous, radical love is not always smooth, gentle, positive, placatory, soft and warm. Since evil hurts people and dishonours God, we are called to abhor it just as God abhors its presence in us.
The thing is, this 'hate' is not how we'd normally define hate. This 'hate' is not the evil, malicious sort that hurts others and is violent and destructive. In fact, we are called to hate sin because it hurts others and is violent and destructive. To answer sin with sin would be counter-intuitive.
John Piper defines two sorts of hate and two sorts of love:
The first kind of hate - Hate which rejects and is far removed from something in its entirety, which resists and repudiates the values and qualities of something. This is the kind of hate I hold towardanimal abuse or human trafficking and exploitation for example. I consciously reject and refuse to support these systems.
The second kind of hate - Hate which is the intense intentionality to curse something. This is the kind of hatred which leads to more hurt and violence, the kind of hatred that sees people slander another group of people, or build walls between them.
And
The first kind of love- Love which embraces and is intimate with something in its entirety, which rejoices and affirms the values and qualities of something.
The second kind of love- Love which is the intense intentionality to bless something.
God both hates the sin that lives in us (‘You are not a God who delights in wickedness ... You hate all evil doers’ Psalm 5:4) and loves us ('For God so loved the world') at the same time. He can simultaneously hate and love us because of the different sorts of 'hate' and 'love'.
When He first created us, perfect and sinless, He loved us with the first kind of love. The all-encompassing, total love of our entirety. Then, when sin entered the world, that love was no longer possible. God is so perfect and just that He cannot accept and affirm sin. Instead, with sin infecting us, He hated us with the first kind of hate, the rejection of our new sinful selves and the sin within us that not only dishonoured Him but was soul-destroying in us.
The amazing thing, however, that He still loved us with the second kind of love, the love that intends to bless us. And He did.
He sent the biggest blessing of all - His only son Jesus Christ. God’s love moves him to save people who in and of themselves in their sin are loathsome and hateful to him. Jesus' death on the cross paid for our sins, since the payment for sin is death. Without sin, we could be loved again by the first kind of love, which draws us into an everlasting and intimate relationship with God.
So when I say I love you, it is not easy. I do not love all of you, in fact, because I love you I hate parts of you which I see destroying you or tearing you away from God. And I hate parts of myself that destroy me or tear me away from God. To truly love myself I despair at my hated sin, and ask God for help.
And I truly love you, dear friend, and pray that God's transformative love will always surround you, and change the parts of you that you despair at.
'Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.'
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