God Hates Sin, but loves the Sinner?

"God Hates Sin, but loves the Sinner" by Gabby Botts is the second in a series of devotionals by the 2012 Grace Harbor Colombia Mission Team. I encourage you find a quiet place to read these words and then share the truth with a friend.

"For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths." 2 Timothy 4:3-4

Hello everyone! It’s Gabby :) I don’t know if you know, but I have a blog that I post on regularly, and I follow other bloggers. One thing that keeps popping up all over is the catchy phrase, "God hates the sin, but not the sinner." It never really bothered me until I recently reread today’s verses from 2nd Timothy. It opened up my eyes, and made me really question a lot, including this phrase! Here’s the thing, and I’m just gonna lay it out here, God does hate the sinner. God hates sinners. Psalm 5:4-5 say that God does indeed hate the sin, but look! He also hates the sinner.

"You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil; with you the wicked cannot dwell. The arrogant cannot stand in your presence; you hate all who do wrong. You destroy those who tell lies; bloodthirsty and deceitful men the LORD abhors." Psalm 5:4-5

Abhors! Can you imagine? God abhors us when we sin. If we do not grasp that, I think most of the beauty of His sacrifice is lost. For if God always loves us, even when we screw up, what is the point of Jesus? This seemingly harsh truth reveals the magnificence of God’s grace, the magnificence of mercy, and of Jesus. He knew we would be nothing but repulsive to Him because, by His nature, He cannot be with sin, or sinners (that’s all of us!). That’s why Romans 5:8 is so astonishing to me. It reads, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." He sacrificed His only chosen Son, Jesus, for those He hated. That truly astounds me. I’m flabbergasted. I’m amazed, I’m in awe. It’s only through Jesus that I can be seen as acceptable. I can’t even begin to express how thankful I am for that, and for the rest of my life I want to do nothing more than attempt to bring as much glory to His name as I possibly can, for this is what I was created for.

These things that go around, become viral, become our vernacular, become Christian-eze, so-called doctrine or clichés or whatnot are nice and all, and sound good. But friends, please, open your eyes, ears, and hearts. We have exchanged the truth of God, for a lie. We would do better to just stick to what the Bible says. "God hates the sin but not the sinner" has no Biblical backup. We want to hear what we want to hear, what makes us feel good, so we make good sounding and friendly slogans our new truths, instead of the real, radical words of Jesus, which trust me, are much more challenging to face!

So friends, let us not be distracted by "traditions", "myths", "clichés", "catchy sayings", etc, that tell us what we want to hear. Let us keep focused on what has actually been given to us, in the word of God. It is, after all, His love letter to us, and I pray always that we should hunger more and more for His word.

I love you all,
Gabby

Tweet