God Hates sin and sinners

 

 

GOD HATES SIN AND THE SINNER

BUT BY MERCY,

TRULY LOVES THE REGENERATED (Truly Born Again) SINNER

by Ray Shaw

A Flame for Christ Ministries 5/15/2015 (revised 2/26/2020)

 The well used staement that "God loves the sinners but hates the sin" is not Bibical

 

Just as it is written, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." (Romans 9:13)

The LORD tests the righteous and the wicked, 
And the one who loves violence His soul hates.For the LORD is righteous, He loves righteousness; The upright will behold His face. (Psalm 11:5, 7)

For You are not a God who delights in wickedness;evil may not dwell with You. The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all evil doers. (Psalm 5:4-5)

 

Before reading, please pray and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you truth.  In the modern western church we have lost our fear of God and hatred of sin.  This has resulted in a watered-down Gospel and many non-regenerated souls who think they are saved!  This has come about by some of our modern western church teachings, because many are afraid that they will scare people away by preaching and teaching the Biblical Truth about SIN and SINNERS.  This has led people to think lightly about sin; that it is okay to sin; or that "I am not that bad and God just loves me and He will just overlook my sin".  Many see God as a benevolent Grandfather who overlooks sin and that He is there to give them a blessing and gifts like a Divine vending machine!

NO!  Sin is so grievous to God that He sent His Son to the Cross to receive His WRATH and DEATH Sentence -- the WRATH and DEATH Sentence which is upon all sinners who are not truly born again, regenerated souls!  Here are a just a few References to God's wrath:

Eph 2:1-3: " And you were dead in your trespasses and sins which you onced walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience- among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and mind and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind."

John 3:35-36: "the Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.  Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him"

Colossians 3:5-6:  "Put to death what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which are idolatry. On the account of these God's wrath is coming."

Revelation 6:15-17:  "Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of His wrath has come and who can stand?"

The stark reality is that we cannot understand the gift and mercy of God, in Christ Jesus, until we see the true reality of our relationship with Him without Christ!  God hates sin AND the sinner! BUT God's hatred is not like fallen man's hatred.  God's hatred is a righteous hatred in which He cannot even look upon sin (Hab 1:13a), where man's hatred is a wicked self-centered hatred from a wicked heart for his own personal selfish way and gain.  God hates the sinner and his sin with a righteous hatred, and Scripture says His wrath is upon those who sin. God's ways are not are ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts (Ish 55:8) and I have tried to state He hates with a righteous Hate, not man's self-centered bigotries and hatred. God is Love, God is Holy, and God is Righteous and Just. Being Holy, Righteous and Just, He cannot love sin and sinners, and cannot even look upon them as He could not look upon His son on the Cross, as it would be absolutely contrary to His Divine Holy, Righteous Just nature.  BUT because of His Love nature He has Mercy and Compassion on sinners and because of Mercy He offers us salvation. Mercy and Grace kissed on the cross. Where the scripture (Matthew 5:45) says God pours rain etc on the just and unjust, it is His Mercy not His love for everyone that He does this! God can have Mercy on sinners without loving them. The false teaching Universalism was birthed in the thought that God loves everyone and everyone is redeemed-not true! So I believe God does not love sinners BUT He has Mercy on them and offers salvation to them out of Mercy. The scriptures states in Rom 9:15- God will have mercy on who He will have Mercy and compassion on who He will have compassion (note love is not used in this scripture). "Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in mercy. He will again have compassion on us, and will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea" (Micah 7:18-19). So, we cannot see God's righteous hatred through the eyes of man (fallen humanity) and through his definitions and meanings but only through the eyes of God in His scripture! God will send sinners not sin to the Lake of Fire, God destroyed sinners not sin in the flood. God did not separate the two. The only way and place this separation can happen is in regeneration-being born again and then the sin is removed.

 A very misleading statement used in the modern church is "God hates sin but loves the sinner". This statement is just not Biblically sound or true.  Almost everyone uses John 3:16 as proof that this statement is true; but that Scripture does not say that God loves sinners, it says He loves the world.  But what world does He love?  The world that He loves is the world He originally created as GOOD -- not the present fallen world.  In the book of Genesis, Chapters 1 and 2 states that God said what He created was good and that man was created in God's image.  Genesis 3 talks about the fall of man in sin and that all creation fell with him.  What God had created as good was cursed because of man's sin.  Therefore, both man and the creation (i.e. the fallen world) was no longer like what had been originally created by God and were no longer GOOD.  Both man and creation are waiting for God's redemption (Rom 8:19-23)!  God was sorry He had created man and the earth!  Genesis 6:5-8 states:  "The Lord saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  AND THE LORD WAS SORRY HE MADE MAN on the earth and it grieved Him to His heart.  So the Lord said, 'I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I made them.'  But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord." Noah was the only righteous man on the earth.  The Lord loved Noah but hated the sinners and put His wrath and death on them and destroyed them ALL but saved Noah.  You may be thinking, "Well that is just Old Testament and God is not like that now". The Scriptures say (Heb 13:8) "Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever".  Jesus tells us in Mathew 24:37-39 that His return will be as in the days of Noah.  These verses are about us and our generation and how God's wrath is on the sinner and how He is going to destroy them! So God does not love this world rather He loves the original world He created and what He called good.  He hates the fallen world and the sinner in it, and He is going to destroy the sinners and the fallen world by fire! All the scriptures I listed that God hates the sinner are in the bible and our as valid as John 3:16!

Andrew Murray wrote this about the world and God's hatred of the fallen world:

1 John 2:15:  "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.  If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him".  John taught us clearly what he meant by "the world". He wrote," For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father but of the world" (vs. 16).

The world is the disposition or power under which man has fallen through sin.  And the god of this world, in order to deceive man, conceals himself under the form of what God has created.  The world with its pleasures surrounds the Christian each day with temptations.  This was the case with Eve in the Garden of Eden..." (From Andrew Murray 365 Day Devotional Jan 25)

It is clear from 1 John 2:15 that God does not love the world and that anyone who does, does not belong to the Father! What John 3:16 is stating is that "God so loved the world (the world that He originally created as good) that He sent His only begotten Son, so who should ever believe in Him would not perish but have everlasting life" (the eternal life just as God had intended for man in the Garden with the "Tree of Life").  Jesus came to redeem that which was lost in the fall to bring it back to GOOD and made in God's image! So, to use this Scripture that God loves the sinner is not sound exegesis. God wanted from the beginning to redeem man and the world to bring it back to state of His original creation when God had said it was "good".  Genesis 3:15 talks of a future event to redeem man, and we will look at that Good News later in this message (Hope in Christ).

So are there really scriptures that say God hates sinners?  The answer is yes!  Here are some of them:

Psalm 5:5 says: "The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity"

Psalm 11:5 says:  "The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates"

Jeremiah 12:8 says:  "My inheritance has become to Me like a lion in the forest; she has roared (sinned) against Me; therefore I have come to hate her"

Hosea 9:15 says:" All their evil is at Gilgal; indeed I came to hate them there, because of the wickedness of their deeds";

Malachi 1:3 says:  "I hated Esau and destroyed his mountains"

Romans 9:13 says:  "Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated".

These Scriptures are clear -- God hates sinners.   But we must remember this is a righteous hatred of sin and the sinner, and cannot be compared to man's hate.  God cannot even look upon sin (Hab 1:13a).  The statement than "God hates sin but loves the sinner" is not Bibically sound!

 I believe this is a Biblically sound statement:  "God hates sin and the sinner but by His mercy, compasioand Grace God truly loves the regenerated (righteous) Born Again sinner".

 

Romans 9:13 says:  "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated".  God loved Jacob who He made righteous and named him Israel; God hated Esau because he rejected his birth right. His birth right was the promise of Christ to come in his lineage. He sold Christ for a bowl of stew! No one is righteous unless God makes them righteous.  God does this through His mercy on sinners; not His love for sinners.  God loves the righteous, but He hates the sinner.  Psalm 11:5, 7 says:  "The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates".  For the Lord is righteous; He loves righteous deeds".  Again, the Scripture gives a comparison of what God loves and what He hates.  It states He hates the sinner and loves the righteous. We must be careful not to cheapen God's mercy and grace by cheapening what sin is and what God thinks of sin and those who are sinners!  We must realize who we are in God's eyes without Christ before we can realize, by the Holy Spirit, that we desperately need Christ's salvation.

 

HOPE in CHRIST

 

So, how do I get from a sinner hated by God and destined to wrath to a place where God loves me and His wrath is removed from me?  No one becomes righteous unless God makes them righteous!  I have spent much time here talking about sin and sinners and God's hatred of both and His wrath upon them.  If I stop here, I leave you, the reader, in great despair!  God in His mercy has a gift for us!  He wants to make us righteous; and there is only one way sin can be removed and righteousness imparted in us - and that is through God's Mercy in and through His son Jesus Christ.

During the 1700 and 1800's, revivalists had what were called "inquiry or birthing rooms" where individuals upon hearing the preaching of the Gospel(real Gospel) and being drawn to Christ by the Holy Spirit and would go into these rooms and "labor" in prayer and the Word as they were convicted by the Holy Spirit of (1) their own wickedness and sin, (2) of God's righteousness, (3) of His wrath upon them and (4) of the coming judgment.  In this birthing process, the individual is confronted by the Holy Spirit with Christ's death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead which was required for God to establish a love relationship with man.   A love relationship with God can only be obtained through Jesus Christ.  God the Father calls and Jesus Christ gives eternal life.  Salvation is not controlled by a human act of man.  Salvation is a supernatural encounter with the living Christ wherein God the Father draws us; we turn to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith and cry out for Him to have mercy and save us; and by His grace and in His perfect timing He redeems us and we are regenerated ( see EZK 36:26_27)- we become born again to walk in newness of life - and we receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  If we have a REAL encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ, we become new creations and will never be the same from that day forward.  "Behold, [Christ] makes all things new.  You must be born again."

 

In the early 1900's - "decisional evangelism" by simply walking an aisle, raising a hand, signing a card, or praying a prayer became increasingly popular - particularly increasing to new heights during the ministry of evangelist, Billy Sunday.  No more were there "birthing rooms" where man under the conviction of the Holy Spirit would see his sinful state, the righteousness of God, and the coming judgment.  It became unpopular to wait on God's timing where the individual called on the Lord and his eyes were opened to Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life -- and by God's grace through the power of the Holy Spirit he would believe and be gloriously saved -- surrendering his everything to Christ.  The lack of such true conviction and decisional evangelism has, unfortunately, led to many still births - hence, a real born again experience did not happen -- thus many remain still unsaved!  Many, many churches still use the decisional evangelism method! Richaard Owen Roberts refers to them as twice dead souls!

 

And whosoever believes on Him shall have eternal life.

 What is eternal life?  John 17:3 clearly defines eternal life as knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.  It's a living love relationship with the one and only Triune God wherein the Holy Spirit indwells the Believer and enables the Believer to testify and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, to walk in obedience to Christ, and to bear much fruit:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  It is the Spirit of Christ working in the Believer to will and to act according to the Father's good purpose (Philippians 2:13). They are living the sanctified life.

 

The Scriptures in Mathew 7 tell us that "many are called and few are chosen" - "the way is narrow and few are those who find it".  The spiritual condition of the American church seems to declare that there may be many people that have "walked an aisle" or "prayed a prayer" that most likely have a false assurance of salvation and may one day hear "depart from Me, I never knew you".  Statistics from George Barna indicate that possibly as many as 65% of those sitting in church pews every Sunday are not truly born again.  Billy Graham felt that only one in four who came forward at crusades were really saved.  A. W. Tozer felt that as many as 90% of church members were unsaved.

 

So, how do I get saved?  First I must be drawn (MERCY) to Jesus Christ by God the Father; and the Holy Spirit needs to convict me of my sin (MERCY) and of God's righteous judgment and wrath which is going to come upon me.  I must believe in my heart (FAITH) that Jesus Christ died - paying God's penalty for my sin on the cross -- and that God raised Jesus from the dead and HE is seated as God with God the Father in heaven.  The hatred of God and the wrath of God were satisfied when they fell upon Christ on the cross (GRACE AND MERCY KISS).  I must ask Christ, in His mercy, to save me - confessing Jesus Christ as Lord -- and I expectantly wait for God's supernatural act to fall on me when He imparts and seals me with the Holy Spirit and I become a regenerated soul.  It may happen right away, it may not.  A person is not saved by saying a prayer or by walking an isle or by baptism.  A person is saved when Jesus Christ enters into them in the power and person of the Holy Spirit.  A person who has encountered Jesus Christ in this way knows without a doubt that they have been saved!  They will never ever be the same!  They are now a regenerated soul - born again - a new creature!  THE LOVE OF THE FATHER AND THE SON AND THE HOLY SPIRIT NOW RESTS UPON THEM. THEY ARE HIS CHILDREN AND ARE NO LONGER CHILDREN OF WRATH!

To see more please visit www.aflameforchrist.org home page and click on evangelism.

 

May God in His MERCY save you!

 

 Ray Shaw