What Should We Hate?

What is your attitude regarding things that the Bible tells us are sinful and evil? Do you have different standards depending on whether it is you or somebody else doing what is contrary to God will?

Do you sometimes make excuses or overlook behavior, writings, or speech that you know offends God? Do acknowledge that we, especially Christians, should try to do better and hope that someday we will?

Surely we should want to sin less than we do. If you think you don't sin, then take a look at 1 John 1:8-11.
That passage lets us know that if we confess our sins, Jesus will forgive and cleanse us. But should we be content knowing that His sacrifice is sufficient to pay for any sin we have done or will do?

Yes, it's wonderful that Jesus paid the price for our sins and gives us the faith to believe it.  However does the wonderful grace of our Lord in forgiving us of sin give us permission to be unconcerned about things that are evil? What sort of an attitude should we have in regard to what is evil?

Psalms 97:10  O you who love the LORD, hate evil!  ESV

Now that is an interesting command. If we love the Lord we are not just to dislike and avoid evil, we are told to hate it. Oh, but that verse of Scripture is in the Old Testament. Now that the grace of our Lord Jesus has come do we have to be that passionate against evil?

Romans 12:9  Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. ESV

Again we see the right kind of love being written about and then followed by the command to hate evil. Abhor it. The Greek word used for abhor in this verse is very strong, and is the only time it is used in the New Testament. We are to detest evil, be revolted by it. Love honors God and people. Evil offends God and condemns people to hell.

Satan and the world wants people to think that those things the Bible identifies as "evil" are just the opinions of those who wrote the Bible a long time ago. But God divinely inspired all of Scripture, and God is altogether holy and therefore hates evil. If we love God we are also to hate evil.

Although it may be fairly easy to hate some things that are evil because they are so obviously hurtful to ourselves or people we care about, it is not so easy to hate other things that offend God. Just as we need God given grace and faith to love God and our neighbor, we also need the same to abhor evil the way He wants us to hate it.

God uses His Holy Spirit along with the hearing of the Word of God to bring us to salvation, and to grow us in faith, understanding, and obedience to His will. He does the same thing in regards to our coming to hating whatever goes against Him and His will.

Psalms 119:104  Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way. ESV

Let's not be indifferent regarding what is evil or false (what is false leads people to believe and do what God knows is evil).  Let's be in prayer about our attitude to what God says is contrary to what is righteous and holy. Let's pray that God gives us and others the faith to believe and to be obedient in both loving God and others and also hating evil the way He wants us to hate it.

What Kind of Love Should Abound?

Philippians 1:9-11  And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,  (10)  so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,  (11)  filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.  ESV.  

God has much to say to us about love in the Bible. The two great commandments are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as our self. (Mark 12:30-31)  It also says that "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love" (1 John 4:8)

Jesus gave His disciples the highest standard of love that could ever be given. He told them to love one another just as He had loved them. And He told that by their loving one another people would know they were His disciples.(John 13:34-34)

Although we cannot love as perfectly as Jesus, we should be so thankful for how He loved us in going to the Cross and enduring the wrath of His Father in our place that we should seek to do whatever he enables us to please Him and express love to Him and others.

Of course not everything that people call "love" is what God means by love. In the name of "love" there is adultery, fornication, and the tolerance and acceptance of many other things that offend the one true holy God. In order to love in ways that actually please God we need to see what He says in His Word.

In Paul's letter to the Philippians quoted above, he not only prayed that their love would abound more and more, but that their love would be with knowledge and discernment. Only by gaining the knowledge that God has given us in the Bible can we properly discern what expressions of love are godly and which are not.

The love that God wants us to have is not what may feel good to us. It is not necessarily what we or other people consider to be acceptable expressions of love. God's love is perfect. God's love is excellent. When He teaches and enables to love His way we can know it is excellent. Abounding more and more in loving God's way can help us be pure and blameless as we progress toward the day of Christ.

Jesus is altogether righteous. He loves purely and perfectly. We don't have to settle for loving with corrupt motives and methods. We can turn to Him and to His Word and He can fill us with the fruit of righteousness that will help our love to grow in ways that will truly be to the praise and glory of God. 

Love Your Enemies?

Mat 5:43-48  "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust...You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. ESV


Jesus said some awfully hard things. It was commonly accepted that loving our neighbor and hating our enemy was completely acceptable. But Jesus told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. He said that our Father in heaven makes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and unjust, therefore that is the example we are to follow.

By giving the example of how God loves us, providing sun and rain to everybody, Jesus let us know that He's not talking about feelings of affection. He is talking about what we do in regards to others, whether they are friends or foes. Just as God provides things that are needed by everybody, so we ought to give to others what they need regardless of how they treat us.

But being kind to those who are unkind to us isn't easy. It doesn't come naturally. If someone insults us we want to insult back...or maybe punch them in the nose.

We want to live by own own standards. We want to be just "good enough" to be acceptable to those people whose opinions we care about. But Jesus doesn't go along with that. The only standards that matter to Him are God's standards. He calls on us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.

Can we succeed in being perfect? No. We're sinners and even when we try our best we still fail. And often we won't even bother to try. We'd rather sin that do things the way God wants them done.

So, should we give up and just go on sinning against others and against God? God forbid that we should even think such a thing.

Jesus, who did live perfectly, was the perfect spotless sacrificial lamb to die in our place. We can be acceptable to God because Jesus paid for our sins. For that we can be eternally thankful.

If we seek to cease from sinning and sometimes fail, we can and should confess our sins and Jesus will forgive us and cleanse us (1 John 1:9). But if we intentionally sin whenever we feel like it, then we'll be declaring by our actions that we don't consider Jesus to be our Lord. Such behavior and attitude will hopefully result in chastisement by God. If it doesn't, then a person should question whether he or she has ever really been saved and adopted by God as His child (Hebrews 12:8).

Loving our enemies, being kind to those who are unkind to us, isn't what most of us want to do. But that is what Jesus did. We were His enemies. We didn't want Him to tell us what to do. But He loved us so much that He suffered and died for us, to atone for our sins.

Jesus has much to say to us that we might not appreciate hearing or obeying. But He's the boss. He knows what He's talking about. He knows what is best. And He loves us more than we can imagine. Let's thank Him for what He's done. Let's seek His help to do what He wants us to do. Let us express our gratitude by our words and deeds.

How Should Husbands Love Their Wives?

Eph 5:28-30  In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. ESV

This passage of Scripture is important to me because I am a husband, and I should know how God wants me to relate to my wife. We husbands don't always do a good job of expressing love to our wives. So God inspired this portion of the Bible so that we might have a better idea of what should be involved in loving our wives.

I'm to love my wife as my own body. When it comes to my body I want it to feel good. If my body is hungry I want to eat something that will satisfy that hunger. If at all possible I want that food to taste good to me. Not what somebody else says is tasty, but what tastes good to me.

Therefore, when it comes to loving my wife I should strive to discover what will satisfy her hunger and appeal to her tastes. That should be true in regards to food and everything else in her life

 Today my wife and I were at a mall to do some shopping and have lunch. We took our time to browse and purchase some clothing items, a jar of preserves, and have lunch together at a restaurant we both like. In one store we saw a Kinkade calendar for next year that included one of his pictures that used to be displayed in a gallery at a mall she frequently visited when she lived in California. She loved that picture and so instead of getting a Spider Man calendar (that was also in the store today) I bought the Kinkade calendar.

Buying the calendar for my wife was not a big thing. But the more I learn about what pleases my wife, and the better I get at doing that, the happier she will be. And the happier she becomes, the happier I become. Indeed, he who loves his wife, loves himself.