God Loves the Sinner, But Hates the Sin?
00:00:00.000 | Marco from Reading, Pennsylvania writes in to ask this question, "Pastor John, what
00:00:10.100 | do you make of the saying, 'God loves the sinner but hates the sin'?" The problem
00:00:15.440 | with the statement, "God loves the sinner but hates the sin," is that it's misleading.
00:00:21.480 | It's not a false statement. And what's misleading about it is the word "but." "But"
00:00:28.240 | hates the sin because "but" should be "and." God loves the sinner and hates the sin because
00:00:36.240 | "but" implies He doesn't hate the sinner. That's not true. God does hate sinners. Psalm
00:00:47.240 | 5 verse 4, "You are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you.
00:00:54.440 | The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all evildoers." Or Psalm 11 verse
00:01:02.040 | 5, "The Lord tests the righteous, but His soul hates the wicked and the one who loves
00:01:08.880 | violence." So it's just not true to give the impression that God doesn't hate sinners
00:01:17.360 | by saying He loves the sinner and hates the sin. He does hate sinners. His wrath is real.
00:01:27.240 | It's not something He pours out on people He approves of. This infinite disapproval
00:01:34.120 | is what the Bible means when it says God hates sinners. He infinitely disapproves of them.
00:01:43.120 | Sin is not sinful except as committed by sinful hearts. Sin is an expression of anti-God human
00:01:51.000 | corruption, human hearts. Sinful volitions are owing to sinful hearts. Sin doesn't just
00:01:57.240 | hang out there with its own existence. It is in hearts, or it's nothing. Sins do not
00:02:04.760 | suffer in hell. Sinners suffer in hell. I wonder what people who say that believe about
00:02:11.000 | hell because He's not punishing sin in hell. He's punishing sinners in hell. He hates,
00:02:20.200 | and here's the paradox, and He loves at the same time. "For God so loved the world that
00:02:30.200 | He hates." Hate and love are simultaneous as God looks upon hateful, rebellious, corrupt,
00:02:41.920 | loathsome, wicked, God-dishonoring sinners. Now, here's the distinctions we need to make.
00:02:51.880 | This is just so crucial. I hope people will listen carefully. Hate and love both have
00:02:59.320 | two meanings each. Hate can be intense loathing of a quality, or hate can be beyond that,
00:03:09.920 | the intense intentionality to destroy. Love, similarly, can be an intense delighting in
00:03:19.000 | a quality, and it can be an intense intentionality to bless, even in spite of the presence of
00:03:28.200 | some unsavory quality. So, in any given text in the Bible, we have to ask, "Is the hatred
00:03:40.200 | being spoken of here only an intense loathing of a quality of a person, or is it also the
00:03:50.080 | intent to destroy?" And it's different. If you went over to Malachi 1, you'd find the
00:03:56.960 | latter, and I think some of those texts in the Psalms refer to the former. Same with
00:04:02.560 | God's love. God's love moves Him to save millions of people who, in and of themselves,
00:04:09.640 | are loathsome to Him. Now, here's why this matters. If we don't understand that God finds
00:04:20.360 | us hateful and loathsome in our ugly sin, we won't be as stunned by what love is for
00:04:32.040 | us. God saves millions of people who, in and of themselves, are loathsome to Him until
00:04:42.520 | He saves them and makes them the apple of His eye, which makes salvation stunningly
00:04:50.600 | more. Stunningly more, if you get that. That God comes to us not in our attractiveness,
00:04:58.080 | like "Oh, I really love this person and just hate their sin." No. He finds me reprehensible
00:05:03.680 | because of my rebellion, just like we find certain wicked people reprehensible because
00:05:08.880 | of their sin. And He's coming to us, and He's dying for us in order that He might make us
00:05:15.600 | into the apple of His eye. So God can love us with the intent to save us, even while
00:05:25.240 | He's hating God-despising rebels like us. And then when He saves us, He transforms us
00:05:33.760 | so that now He not only loves us with the intent to bless us forever, but He loves us
00:05:41.200 | with an ever-increasing delight, I think, in helping us make much of Him.
00:05:49.200 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email your
00:05:52.360 | questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. At DesiringGod.org, you'll find thousands
00:05:57.560 | of free books, articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper. I'm your host,
00:06:01.560 | Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.
00:06:02.960 | [END]
00:06:03.460 | Desiring God.org
00:06:04.460 | Page 1 of 8
00:06:05.460 | Desiring God.org
00:06:07.460 | Page 1 of 8
00:06:09.460 | [BLANK_AUDIO]