One of the most difficult yet ubiquitous imperatives of the Christian life is the necessity of loving those in error (be the error that of faith or practice) while despising the error itself. Ellen White speaks of this dual imperative in the following statement:
It is not Christ’s follower that, with averted eyes, turns from the erring, leaving them unhindered to pursue their downward course. Those who are forward in accusing others, and zealous in bringing them to justice, are often in their own lives more guilty than they. Men hate the sinner, while they love the sin. Christ hates the sin, but loves the sinner. This will be the spirit of all who follow Him [1].
In another statement she writes:
Those who would cover evil under false charity, say to the sinner, “It shall be well with thee.” Thank God there is a charity that will not be corrupted; there is a wisdom that cometh from above, that is (mark it) first pure, then peaceable, and without hypocrisy, and the fruits of righteousness is sown of them that make peace. This is a description of heaven-born, heaven-bred charity. Charity loves the sinner but hates the sin, and will warn him faithfully of his danger, pointing him to the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world [2].
Many in our day question this construct, insisting that to love someone while despising their thoughts or actions isn’t possible. Yet careful thought quickly disposes of such reasoning. The vast majority of human beings can relate to the reality of loving a person while hating some of the things that person does. Parents can certainly relate to this, as can lovers and spouses. Mothers and fathers often hate some of the things their children do. At the same time, most of them couldn’t be said to hate their children. Boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, and wives may in fact hate some of the things their partners do, while at the same time maintaining a deep love for the partner who does those things.
One major problem with those who question the idea of hating sin while loving the sinner is that many who raise such doubts have come to believe that the sin in question isn’t really sin after all. Many, for example, who dispute this construct as it relates to same-gender sexual intimacy have less of a problem with hating sin while loving sinners than with the idea that sex with persons of the same gender should be condemned without qualification, a prohibition that is absolutely clear in both Old and New Testaments (Lev. 18:22; 20:13; Rom. 1:26-27; I Cor. 6:9-10; I Tim. 1:10). At the same time, we can be sure that such persons frankly acknowledge other sins in their own lives and in the lives of people they love—conduct they despise and wish to be vanquished, in their own experience and that of their loved ones.
Vilifying Hatred
There are those who claim to disavow the very idea of hatred. Some believe that so-called “hate speech” should be condemned, even criminalized. But years ago one thoughtful commentator—himself, by his own admission, an “unrepentantly atheistic Jewish homosexual” [3]—spoke of laws seeking to make hatred illegal as both undesirable and impossible. In his words:
Not only is wiping out hate and bias impossible in principle, in practice “eliminating prejudice” through force of law means eliminating all but one prejudice—that of whoever is most politically powerful [4].
It’s like the argument over so-called “creedalism” in the church—an issue the present writer addressed in an article on this site several years ago [5]. Every Christian, no matter how liberal or conservative in their theology, has a creed, if one defines this term as a set of doctrinal or moral beliefs to which contradiction should be disallowed in the faith community. If, for example, a teacher at one of our colleges or universities were to claim that persons of African descent are intellectually inferior to persons of European descent, we would likely see a consensus across the Adventist spectrum that the teacher in question be fired from his job and subjected to the full measure of ecclesiastical discipline.
By the same token, everyone hates something, and rightly so. Advocates of social justice rightly despise racism and other means whereby the downtrodden are mistreated. Those who believe in protecting the environment from exploitation despise the abuse of nature and the negative consequences such abuse brings. Those who hate sin as defined by Holy Scripture adhere to a similar principle, even if what is hated may vary within and among the above groups. One way or the other, as Jonathan Rauch says, eliminating hatred is impossible.
Selective Priorities
But perhaps the biggest problem some folks have with the “love the sinner, hate the sin” construct is the sad fact that many Christians have a tendency to give enthusiastic attention to either of the imperatives here stated, while giving studied or perhaps benign neglect to the other.
For any genuine Christian, the truthfulness of this construct is inescapable. After all, according to Scripture, “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). And our Lord is clear that love for one another—for fellow sinners, no less—is an identifying mark of His disciples (John 13:35). At the same time, on account of the world’s sinfulness the Bible admonishes us not to love this present world:
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world (I John 2:15-16).
So the dual imperative of loving the sinner while hating the sin cannot be gainsaid from a Biblical perspective. The problem arises when Christians practice this imperative selectively, either by focusing all their energy on loving sinners (usually those who practice sins considered culturally acceptable at a given time) while ignoring the necessity of hating the sin in question. Others will focus their hatred on particular sins—usually those vilified by close friends or contemporary culture—while turning a blind eye to sins considered less egregious by loved ones or by society. Genuine Biblical Christianity will foster love for all sinners and hatred for all sin, with equal passion and identical zeal.
Conclusion
The following Ellen White statement addresses both the difficulty of simultaneously loving sinners while despising sin, as well as the spiritual peril in failing to keep this balance:
To hate and reprove sin, and at the same time to show pity and tenderness for the sinner, is a difficult attainment. The more earnest our own efforts to attain to holiness of heart and life, the more acute will be our perception of sin and the more decided our disapproval of any deviation from the right. We must guard against undue severity toward the wrongdoer, but we must also be careful not to lose sight of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. There is need of showing Christlike patience and love for the erring one, but there is also danger of showing so great toleration for his error that he will look upon himself as undeserving of reproof, and will reject it as uncalled for and unjust.
Ministers of the gospel sometimes do great harm by allowing their forbearance toward the erring to degenerate into toleration of sins and even participation in them. Thus they are led to excuse and palliate that which God condemns, and after a time they become so blinded as to commend the very ones whom God commands them to reprove. He who has blunted his spiritual perceptions by sinful leniency toward those whom God condemns, will erelong commit a greater sin by severity and harshness toward those whom God approves [6].
Like the pursuit of character perfection in general, finding that Biblical balance between loving sinners and hating sin is to be persistently striven for through the power of sanctifying grace. It’s easy for many to despise particular sins, in most cases those they find especially repugnant. And for such persons, loving those who commit such sins with a strength equal to their hatred for the sins in question can be quite a challenge. For others, by contrast, it can be easy to love sinners whose sins they can better relate to, and perhaps not so easy to simultaneously hate their sins.
The Christian’s daily task is to be so immersed in the Biblical paradigm of good and evil, righteousness and sin, redemption and damnation, that when fellow believers lose their balance in the endeavor to equally love sinners while despising their sins, they can help them regain this balance and thus practice complete and uncompromising faithfulness to the directions and commands of God’s Word.
REFERENCES
1. Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 462.
2. ----Manuscript Releases, vol. 1, p. 217.
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Rauch
4. Jonathan Rauch, “Thought Crimes,” The New Republic, Oct. 7, 1991, p. 20.
5. Kevin Paulson, “The Red Herring of Creedalism,” ADvindicate, Sept. 16, 2018 http://advindicate.com/articles/2018/9/16/the-red-herring-of-creedalism
6. White, Acts of the Apostles, pp. 503-504.
Pastor Kevin Paulson holds a Bachelor’s degree in theology from Pacific Union College, a Master of Arts in systematic theology from Loma Linda University, and a Master of Divinity from the SDA Theological Seminary at Andrews University. He served the Greater New York Conference of Seventh-day Adventists for ten years as a Bible instructor, evangelist, and local pastor. He writes regularly for Liberty magazine and does script writing for various evangelistic ministries within the denomination. He continues to hold evangelistic and revival meetings throughout the North American Division and beyond, and is a sought-after seminar speaker relative to current issues in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He presently resides in Berrien Springs, Michigan