How to Exercise Holy Hatred

I’m taking as my text a verse that’s found in Romans 12. I’m going to read from verse 9 through the end of the chapter. Romans 12, verse 9:

“Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love in honour preferring one another; Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer; Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality. Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not. Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits. Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Amen. We trust God will bless what is His eternal word that you have heard here this evening. We trust that also we will receive it as we should, that we will recognize it as the very eternal word of God, which we would receive, believe, and obey. And the people of God said, amen.

Let’s pray.

Lord, give help tonight. As we come to Thy word, it is to be handled carefully. We ask that Thou wilt grant that help in communicating. But beyond that, give to everyone here the spirit of the Berean. Grant that there would be a carefulness, not just in delivery, but also in receiving. Give, O God, this congregation depth of understanding. Give to this people a breadth of knowledge of Thy Word.

We pray that there would be no one here who remains as babes, that everyone might move to the meat of the Word. So grant that we might be well-grounded, not easily blown about, but rooted and grounded in Christ—not just in terms of our status in Him, but also in the practical outworking of our lives. Stable Christians. That’s what our families need. It’s what the church needs, it’s what the community needs—stable Christian witness. So help us in that regard.

And we pray we really will go from strength to strength, every one of us growing in the Lord. Let it be so. God, help me to minister in such a way that men and women and boys and girls grow, truly grow. So give help tonight to that end. If there be one without Christ, have mercy upon their souls, open their eyes, draw them savingly to Christ. Extend then Thy kingdom, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Bible contains a number of challenges which, over the years, believers have struggled to keep in balance. One of those challenges pertains to how we hold in balance what the Scripture says concerning God’s hatred of sin and the exhortation for us to love men—especially even what we have read here in terms of our enemies.

Scripture declares unequivocally that God is love (1 John 4:8), yet at the same time speaks in many places of His hatred towards sin and wickedness. And we’re commanded, as I’ve said already, to love—to love our enemies—and yet also to hate evil. And this causes a challenge so that some struggle to hold and balance what these scriptures are presenting and how to really apply them.

This past week, I was sent a sermon. Well, actually, I was sent a clip of a sermon. And I listened to the clip, and I thought, “Well, I never want to be taken out of context myself,” and so someone sent certain clips of me, maybe misunderstood depending on where the clip is. And so give the person the time before you make any criticism to listen the whole way through. So upon hearing this clip, I thought, “Well, let me go and listen to the entire sermon,” which I did while I was going about other things. So I didn’t take notes or anything on it.

Upon listening to it, I heard a lot that was good, a lot that I would say, “Yeah, I agree with that.” But coming away from it thinking that, “I don’t think you’ve really helped resolve some of the tension that believers experience.” The lack of thinking categorically and presenting those categories to believers so that they can think in those areas and recognize how to apply the Scriptures was—least on first and the only hearing I gave to it—missing. So I was drawn then to think about how helpful it may be to address such a subject that I listened to on the subject of hatred.

God says in verse 9 of Romans 12, “Abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good.” Abhor that which is evil. The word “abhor” is strong—means to regard with disgust, to detest utterly, to shrink back in horror from whatever it may be. So it’s not just dislike. It’s not just disapproval. It is a form of what we might describe holy hatred.

And part of our struggle is that when we come to subjects such as love and hatred, we find it difficult to think of them without the emotional aspect. And so, when we think about that and we see what God’s Word reveals, often we charge those texts with the emotional side of things. And yet, Scripture speaks of God’s love and hatred, and when it does so, it is not dealing with emotional reactions.

Our confession rightly presents in chapter 2 in the first paragraph that God is without body, parts, or passions. So, He doesn’t respond in this way. There’s no emotional variation in God. If we were to think about God’s love, we might say that God’s love is His unchangeable will to communicate goodness. And His hatred is His just, eternal will to oppose and punish evil. These are not feelings that come and go. They are settled expressions of God’s perfect nature.

What I want to do then this evening is look at biblical hatred, looking at it from that angle, but also to see that it’s not the opposite of love, but rather a necessary companion of love—that when we truly love what God loves, we must inevitably hate what God hates. And He does hate. But we must do so ourselves according to the boundaries that I think we can see in His Word.

So, I’ve titled the message this evening, “How to Exercise Holy Hatred.” How to Exercise Holy Hatred.

We’re always warned in homiletics to not title our sermons “how to,” because it has a sense of all-encompassing. Well, I thought about that. That always comes to mind when I lean into something, “how to,” and I think, “Hmm, is this expansive enough to use a ‘how to’?” And maybe it’s not, maybe it’s not, because it’s just one sermon. But I’m going to try to put my arms around this subject in a way that I trust you will find helpful.

I have four main heads. We’re going to see the pattern, the practice, the paradox, and the parameters of holy hatred. The pattern, practice, paradox, and parameters of holy hatred.

So first, the pattern of holy hatred. You think of holy hatred, I want us to think first of all of the divine revelation that we’re given—the divine revelation. As I’ve already noted, Scripture speaks of God loving and God hating, but it’s not in the emotional sense that we often understand. It uses language to accommodate our understanding, but it’s never—you’re never seeing when God speaks or reveals of His hatred or of His love directed in a particular manner—that there’s some change happening in God. That’s not the case.

You might think of some distinctions of divine hatred, and I’m going to try to be helpful here. If you’re taking notes, these categories may be helpful for you to record. To think, first of all, of hatred as affection and hatred as an act—hatred as affection or hatred as an act. To think of hatred as affection is an expression of emotion. To think of hatred as an act is an expression of volition, expression of the will—emotion and volition.

For God, it is the latter. It is the expression of volition, the expression of His will. His hatred is pure, it is untainted with any sense of passion or malice, and so this prevents us from imposing upon God or imagining that God is emotionally reactive or disturbed in some way by sin the way we might be disturbed and that it functions to change our feelings. That’s not the case. And yet, He is absolute in His opposition to evil. Absolute. So we think of it not emotionally but volitionally.

Think also in this way about what Scripture reveals: absolute hatred and relative hatred. There are verses that show a sense of absolute hatred and relative hatred. God’s absolute hatred is His unqualified detesting of sin, His opposition to sin. But Scripture sometimes uses the word “hate” in ways that are more relative or comparative.

For example, when Jesus says in Luke 14:26, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife,” and so on, “he cannot be my disciple.” And so it’s comparative. He’s calling to an allegiance that doesn’t compare, an allegiance to Christ that in no way is outweighed by any affection or loyalty to anyone else.

We can also think in this way: the hatred of sin as sin and judicial hatred of the impenitent as sinners. Hating sin as sin and judicial hatred of impenitent sinners. God’s hatred of sin flows necessarily from His perfect character and nature. Habakkuk 1:13, “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity.”

And when there’s that sense of looking on iniquity, it’s not that God is irritated, but sin is repugnant to Him by definition. His nature opposes it. But there’s also a judicial hatred towards the impenitent, and this is expressed, I think, in Psalm 5:5 when you have there that, “Thou hatest all workers of iniquity.” There’s a judicial hatred of God toward the worker of iniquity in that sense. “The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth” (Psalm 11:5).

So it’s not personal spite, but an expression of His holy will of divine justice to oppose and punish those who persist in rebellion against Him. So there’s hatred of sin as sin—it’s sin, so there’s hatred towards sin—and then there’s also a judicial hatred of the impenitent who continue in rebellion against Him.

So, pull these together, it might help sort of see, “Well, that verse fits there, and this verse means that, or fits in that way.”

Not only distinctions of divine hate, but distinctions of divine love. We sometimes talk about God being loving, and we think, “just lump this all in together.” And then when we do so, we look at various verses of the Bible, we may struggle to pull it all together. What way, what way is this true that if there is a hatred of God on one side, how do we understand His love? And especially if you just have a general category of love, you’re going to struggle to make sense of all of this. And so theologians have spoken, first of all, of God’s love of benevolence—His love of benevolence.

This is His general goodness, His long-suffering towards His creatures, even the wicked. Our Lord Jesus taught that God “maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). We sometimes refer to this as common grace, or it comes in the expanse of common grace—God’s providential care, sustaining His creatures even among those men who are His enemies. Love of benevolence.

Then there’s God’s love of complacency. Benevolence and complacency. We don’t think of complacency as being complacent like you might say, “I was complacent in my work” or something. That’s not it. But it is this special, electing, adopting love that rests in His people, this particular, peculiar love. Those who come into the experience of saving grace are those who are recipients of this love of complacency. There’s a love for them that is distinct, a love that saves them, a love that sanctifies them, a love that glorifies them.

And when you think of those distinctions, there’s this love of benevolence and love of complacency, and you start asking yourself, “Well, where did that put me before I was converted? I mean, if He had a love toward me and Christ died for me, how do I understand then His love while I was yet in my sin and unbelieving?”

Ephesians 2:3 tells us that we were—and he’s referring to the church and directing this language to those who are now converted—that they were “children of wrath, even as others.” They were children of wrath. They were under wrath. Our Lord Jesus upholds this in John 3 as well. God’s wrath rests upon the children of Adam.

While at the same time having a love toward them, choosing them in Christ, placing them and calling them in time, there’s no way around it. You can’t look at people who are without faith in Christ and say that they are participants of this love of benevolence. You see this wrath of God upon them even though ultimately there is—but we’re not aware of it—a special love for them that will in time call them unto Himself.

Think not only of divine revelation, think of human reconciliation. How do we reconcile this? How do we bring this all together? Men have sought to reconcile this by distinguishing by looking at God’s will. All right, so He has a love, and through that love for His people, He is going to draw them to Himself, while at the same time, He communicates the same message to all men, regardless of what is going to ultimately happen to them.

And so they reconcile it in this way. They distinguish between God’s will of precept and God’s will of decree. His will of precept and will of decree. His will of precept is what He commands. It’s what He has given in His Word. It’s what He expresses to all men, that all men everywhere should repent—language that calls men to Himself while also having then this will of decree. That’s what He sovereignly has ordained.

And so God simultaneously expresses good to sinners, calling them to repentance while at the same time having a decree that may not include them. Ezekiel 18:23, God says there, “Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?”

You look at that and say there’s a sincere, sincerely meant offer to all men: “I have a desire that you be saved.” And so He commands them to call upon Him, respond to Him. And at the same time, when you go to Romans 9, verses 22 and 23, where you have God’s sovereign purpose to show His wrath and make His power known, and vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, while at the same time showing the riches of His glory in the vessels of mercy, there is something He has decreed there. You can’t escape it.

So this is how men understand it. They do their best to try and pull these things together: a will of precept and a will of decree, that which He commands and that which He has sovereignly ordained.

So how’s our response to this? How does the individual respond? Seeing that this pattern of holy hatred—the divine revelation, the human reconciliation, the individual’s response. What are we to do? Well, Romans 12. We are told to “abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good.” We are to hate sin in all its forms. “Ye that love the LORD, hate evil” (Psalm 97:10). “Hate the evil, and love the good” (Amos 5:15). That’s it in a nutshell.

At the same time, and we’ll deal with this a little more in just a moment, private individuals must recognize that they do not exercise any position of judicial hatred. Private individuals are not in a position to exercise that which is reserved to judicial expressions of hatred against sin. We’ll see that a little more in just a moment.

Secondly, the practice of holy hatred—not only the pattern, but the practice of it. First, we should hate sin entirely. We should hate sin entirely. To truly hate sin is to hate all sin. Psalm 119:104, “I hate every false way.”

And as I was preparing this, I was exposed in my own heart that the evidence of remaining hypocrisy within my own life, in which I will hate some sins, and maybe not all. Now to hate all sins equally does not mean that we respond to all sins equally. But to truly hate sin is to hate all of it. And there are very few of us who feel that.

Do I hate all sin? You will know, you will know from your own experience how quickly you are to respond to the wrong that you face—someone wrongs you. And then you take a moment to step back and ask, “Am I so swift to deal with my own shortcomings? Am I as vigilant to respond with a sense of gravity of what I feel to what has been done to me to what I have done?” And you may find an imbalance there that exposes the hypocrisy of your heart.

We should hate sin entirely. We should have no place for what some may term respectable sins—sins that society tolerates. These things, if they are sin at all, are abhorrent to God. We’re not just to focus then on that which is scandalous and may make the headlines and be the subject of gossip. We are to hate all sin. And the primary battlefield for you and for me is within our own heart.

Our Lord Jesus warned us carefully to first remove the beam from our own eye before addressing the speck in our brother’s (Matthew 7). And He addressed that problem because it’s a perennial issue. How swift we are to see that problem over there and not the massive issue in our own life. True abhorrence of evil must begin with a ruthless self-examination.

Turn to Psalm 139. David in Psalm 139, we come near the end, has much to instruct us in this subject. Psalm 139, look at verse 21. He is a man who—He talks in verse 19 of “bloody men,” those who speak wrongly, take God’s name in vain. Verse 21, “Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.”

That has much to say. You see this man who is expressing explicit hatred, a complete hatred if we understand verse 22. A recognition that those who are opposed to God are therefore my enemies as well. But then look what he says in verse 23, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

There David reflects in his own meditation that all that recognition of wrongdoing over there, that recognition of sin in them, he pauses and he ends with a reflection upon his own heart. And beloved, there’s much—I’m saying there’s much to learn there. When the impulse is natural, the bent of our nature is to see the wrong in others, and it may be legitimate as it was for David. There is a lack of impulse to then turn and search. Have God search. Invite God to search our own heart. “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me.”

You see how God—David knows God is interested in his very thought life. God is interested in his thought life. Too many Christians set that aside. This is David looking to see if there even be a speck in my own eye. I should have it removed.

So we should hate sin entirely. David didn’t just hate evil men, but the sin that may have existed in himself. And so the believer ought not to show any mercy to their own secret sins and compromises. We are to hate sin entirely. To hate sin is to hate all sin, if we are to be consistent.

But also, in this practice of holy hatred, we should hate sin implacably—that is, without appeasing it. But just as God declared war on Amalek in Exodus 17, so we ought to declare war perpetually on our own sin. It is a daily battle. You know it as well as I do.

This implacable opposition means that we can never make peace with it. We do not call for a truce with it. And we do not decide then that certain sins are acceptable in certain circumstances. We oppose it all the time. If we don’t, it will destroy us.

Practically then, this hatred manifests in decisive action when temptation comes. We are going to respond, recognizing the danger that is coming our way. We take proactive action as well, recognizing that there’s a good chance there’s a problem here, and therefore I’m going to block up that way and prevent that from even happening. That’s how some of us run our own devices, laptops and phones and so on—being proactive so that things we fear we may see are stopped before we see them.

But it goes beyond that. We avoid certain environments that are likely to lend to sin. You know, once you go out into the workplace, you’re going to be invited to things. And that come Christmastime and the Christmas party and so on with all the employees go out, you’re going to feel a keen sense of pressure to not be the oddball who doesn’t go. Or you’re going to be at a wedding and things begin to unfold at that wedding that you know this is not something you want to be tangled up in, but you don’t want to be the oddball who’s sitting in the corner not doing anything or who goes home early.

Beloved, you have to be willing, we all must be willing to avoid, to circumvent, and to even be misunderstood in the reasons why we hold to our positions.

I know the pressure. I remember keenly the pressure on my—My final days of employment were I worked in Northern Ireland before I went to Australia. Men I’d worked with for several years. We went, boss took us out for a Christmas dinner, off we went. And then some of them decided they were going to go on and go elsewhere—play what we would call pool, you would call it billiards, have a few beers and so on. They’re going to a hotel.

I thought, they were urging me because I’m leaving, this isn’t just Christmas for me, I’m leaving. I’m heading to Australia after a few days. I remember going, feeling this pressure to go. I was not there very long before I realized I need to get out of here. So I said my goodbyes and left.

There’s another scenario in which we were invited to a New Year’s Eve party of Christians. Melanie and I went and there was alcohol present. Well, they weren’t forcing it down my throat, so I just, you know, watched on, and we stayed, and there was a barbecue going on, or, sorry, pardon me, there’s my British terminology. They were grilling, they were grilling. And so, eating and so on, and then, I remember a moment where something was said, and there was just this little bit of discomfort, beginning to see the alcohol take effect. These are professing Christians. And then a little while passed, and something else was said that was more repugnant. And I remember both Melanie and I said, “It’s time to go.” And up we went and walked out. Excuse yourselves and off you went.

You have to be willing. We are constantly bombarded with forms of temptation. I often think of that scene concerning Herod. Herod actually enjoyed listening to John the Baptist. We’re told that he heard him gladly. There was something in Herod that could respect this man of God and had an interest in hearing what he had to hear, even though he was reeling against his sin.

So when he has this great big birthday party, we’re not told that they’re drinking, but I can’t but read that narrative of Herod making that statement: “I’ll give you up to half of my kingdom.” That’s the language of a drunkard. He’s lost his wit.

So Herodias’ daughter goes to her mom and says, “What should I ask for?” “The head of John the Baptist.” John lost his head because of environment. Herod put himself in a position where he was compromised.

Our Lord Jesus warns us to be so careful about any forms of potential compromise or things that may cause destruction within our life. Matthew 5:30, “And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off.” Now that’s true of anything in ourselves that might offend, how true is it about cutting off friendships, relationships, and other things that are destroying us?

Also, we should hate sin, not just its effects. We should hate sin, not just its effects. Many people hate sin’s effects—the guilt, the shame, the consequences that may flow from sin—without really hating the essence of sin, of what it is.

What is sin? Why is it an issue? It is rebellion against God. Our feeling, our response, our action toward sin is not just, “Isn’t it sad, these negative effects.” It is, the first principle is, “This is rebellion against God.”

If there are no ill effects discernible, if you could say to yourself, if you could imagine for a moment, where someone could have the position of, “All right, you freak horse here, you can sin and get away with it. Go ahead, Joseph. Your master will never know that you lay with his wife.”

But for Joseph, it was an understanding. It wasn’t just, “No, if I do that, I might lose my head.” To Joseph, if I do that, I might lose my soul. “How can I do this great wickedness, and sin” not against his master, but “against God?”

To sin is cosmic treason. It is the creation, part of the creation in rebellion against the Creator. And you, as a creature of volition, are held accountable. You ought to know.

So we should hate sin, not just its effects. We should hate false doctrine, things that lead people astray. When the psalmist says, “I hate every false way,” in Psalm 119:128, it should include that which leads in the false way, the messaging that would lead into a false way—doctrines and teachings that destroy souls, wrong beliefs, wrong practices that are expounded in such a way that may lead people astray.

We’re also to hate, and I’m just underlining what I said a little earlier about God, we are to hate volitionally, not emotionally. We should try as those who follow in how our God hates sin, volitionally, not emotionally. So our wills then have a settled opposition. We bring our wills to have a settled opposition and not just a mere reaction of emotion.

So that the essence of our hate is a principled rejection. And this can prevent us from degenerating into the fleshy outcomes at times that can tie into the emotion. If it’s an emotional response, then we may also fall into bitterness, revenge, other selfish motives.

Thirdly, let’s consider the paradox of holy hatred. The paradox of holy hatred. There is a paradox in terms of us balancing things. You can think of the balance, first of all, of justice and mercy. Justice and mercy.

It has been often said, we must hate the sin and love the sinner. Hate sin uncompromisingly, love sinners unconditionally. I have heard this mocked, and I’ve given it thought. They go to verses, of course, some of which we have already read, about hating things. And not just that God hates the evil way, but He hates the evildoer. There are verses that are there, right there, black and white.

And so they take those verses and they say, “This is how the believer is to live.” And of course, that creates a massive problem. As soon as you fall into that, as soon as you adopt that, in which the private Christian is to have expression of verses like that, they’re going to be in all sorts of tension and trouble to really do what Scripture calls them to do.

We must make a distinction between that which is required of the magistrate and that which is required of the private citizen. If you don’t do that, you’re going to be in all sorts of error trying to balance this out.

The balance of justice and mercy is seen in the recognition, and we’ll look at this a little more in just a moment, is seen in the recognition that there are offices in which we are called to exercise justice in the matter. That’s our calling under God. For the rest of private citizens, those of us not in such positions, or in places maybe even we are in those positions, but in other times we’re not, I think it right to hate the sin. Have a volition of opposition to the sin. Love the individual. We are called to love.

Even our hatred must flow from love. We hate what we hate because we love God. We love what is right. When Jesus cleansed the temple and He exhibited righteous anger and indignation against what was profaning the place of public worship, the disciples knew the reason why: “The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.”

And yet the same individual, our Lord Jesus, would pray for His enemies, for their pardon, showing compassion to the individual even when they were guilty of worse sin. When He suffered, when He suffered privately, when He suffered against Himself, He did not retaliate with hatred for the individual.

So then how do you balance this hatred? You have the balance of justice and mercy. How do we exhibit perfect hatred? That’s what David talked about, isn’t it? “I hate them with perfect hatred.” How do we do this?

Think of it practically. You’re at some meeting. Maybe you’re—You’re a member of the Parent and Teachers Association at the school, or you’re on a school board maybe is a better, I think there’d be more authority there. And there’s a pushing of a curriculum that you oppose, you think it’s wrong, it contains things that are against God’s word. It’s gonna corrupt the minds of the children, lead them astray. And you sit there in that meeting and you oppose it strongly, and you give your reasons why.

But on the other side of that table is someone who’s advocating for it, pushing for it. You’re never allowed to permit your flesh to degenerate into an expression of hatred at the individual. They’re your enemy. But you’re not in judicial position over them. This is a setting of equals, battling ideas, and you pull strongly. But you can’t hit them.

We read it: “Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.” Those who may be doing destructive things, if we do not have authority over them, we must endeavor to love them, even though we may oppose them and their ideology.

The same is true online. Oh, the online vigilantism. You want to right every wrong. But in most cases, at best, it’s equals discussing matters among themselves.

Even in the family at times where there may be conflict and sin is destroying some loved one, if you’re not over them in any office or capacity, then there may be little you can do except speak the truth and love them for the dignity of being made in the image of God. We may need to set boundaries, but we never abandon love.

John Calvin, when he commented on Psalm 139:22, “I hate them with perfect hatred,” he noted this: “We are to observe, however, that the hatred of which the psalmist speaks is directed to the sins rather than the persons of the wicked. We are so far as lies in us to study peace with all men. We are to seek the good of all, and if possible, they are to be reclaimed by kindness and good offices. Only so far as they are enemies to God must we strenuously confront their resentment.”

The hatred is directed to the sins rather than the persons of the wicked. Some men need to do a little more reading.

So what does perfect hatred look like for you? Well, we might say, first, opposition to sin that is rooted in zeal for God’s honor, not personal offense. It is hatred directed at the sin and rebellion, not the person as an image-bearer. It is hatred accompanied by prayer in the hope for the individual’s conversion. It is hatred that remains subordinate to God’s judgment, not presuming final condemnation, which, for example, what I mean by that, you start saying, “Send them to hell.” It is hatred that operates within proper vocational boundaries, which brings us to the fourth and final point, the parameters of holy hatred—the parameters.

There are, we may term first of all, vocational distinctions, vocational distinctions. Scripture reveals, and you know this by your life, that not all Christians have the same calling or authority in opposing evil. God has established different spheres, different responsibilities, and we are to respect these boundaries in our hatred and opposition to sin.

So first we may think of the sword of the magistrate, right there in Romans 13, in front of you, as the apostle has just given command to recompense no man evil for evil. If you have an enemy who’s hungry, to feed him. “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” At the same time, he then gives clear direction to those in a capacity of authority by God, who are the very servants of God. Verse 4, “For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil,” what is he to do? “Be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.”

That is very different than just a few verses prior. And the apostle is not dealing here with a sense of anything that’s conflicting. He is recognizing categorically men are in different places in life. And so when you have personal offense, the private citizen of Romans 12 is to love his enemy. And the one who is a servant of God and a position of authority is to get, give, exercise the use of the sword to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.

So there’s a sword of the magistrate. And in case there may be those who wonder whether Christians should be involved in such things, our confession affirms that it is lawful for Christians to accept and execute the office of a magistrate. It affirms the use of just and necessary war.

So the sword of the magistrate. There’s the keys of the church. Christ gave authority to the church to bind and loose (Matthew 18:18). And this includes the power to excommunicate the unrepentant sinner. And so church officers have specific responsibilities to rebuke them that sin before all that others also may fear (1 Timothy 5:20). When there’s doctrinal impurity or the threat of it, they are to expose it and cast it out on those who carry it.

So there’s the sword of the magistrate, the keys of the church, and there’s the rod of the family. Parents have authority and responsibility to discipline their children. “He that spareth his rod hateth his son.” Oh, look at the language. He hates his son. He doesn’t love him. “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes” (Proverbs 13:24).

Failing to oppose sin in the household is a form of hatred toward those who are engaged in such sin. And so you’re in a position, don’t become a father or a mother without the understanding that now you hold an office that you did not once hold. Some here who are expecting, little ones will be born very soon and those parents are going to be launched into a new office. There’s not going to be any grandeur about it. It just is. But you have to bear that wrath as a magistrate bears a sword. Church officers bear the keys, the family bears the rod.

Outside of these offices, the calling of the private individual is to overcome evil with good, opposing sin through prayer, through our witness, through appropriate confrontation, but not jumping into a sphere that doesn’t belong to us.

I also think then not only vocational distinctions, but imprecatory psalms, imprecatory psalms. We speak of imprecatory psalms. These are psalms in which David often calls down the judgment of God upon the enemy. And they provide a pattern for us as we read them that there’s a place for calling judgment.

Now, there’s a struggle in this. There’s a tension here. I would suggest, first of all, that we must see David in his kingly office depicting the Messiah. The Messiah exercises that role at the right hand of God. He is there with authority, all power’s committed unto Him, and He is exercising His kingly role against His and our enemies.

But, nevertheless, the imprecatory Psalms, I think, have some things to teach us, and they may be lawful when, first of all, listen: God’s honor and the church’s safety are primarily in view, not personal grievances. The honor of God and the safety of the church. David sees Israel and the threat against Israel and the honor of God. That’s what calls out these prayers from his heart.

Second, the imprecation is conditional on impenitence. There’s no penitence. They refuse to repent. There’s a stubbornness, and so we pray for judgment only if we know there is evidence of ongoing unwillingness to repent.

It is also free of private revenge. We are not seeking personal satisfaction, but divine justice. In the fourth place, it remains Godward, not manward. You commit to the whole matter to God’s judgment. It’s not about us and our cause.

The Larger Catechism says that we may pray for the conversion of our enemies. But it also says this, this is the Larger Catechism 191, “but against such as are incorrigible blasphemers that God would sooner destroy them than suffer them to blaspheme his holy name.” But again, you have to submit that whole thing to God and His wisdom and leave it with Him.

I hope this has been helpful. Understanding that there’s a place for hatred in the Christian life is not something we often give much thought to. But if we, and I trust we do, love God supremely, then we must hate what opposes Him. And if we love people, as I trust you do, then you must hate what destroys them. And yet this hatred must be governed by wisdom, channeled through proper authorities, and motivated by genuine love.

In Hebrews 1:9, there’s a text there applied to our Lord Jesus Christ, “Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity.” And such was His love for righteousness, He maintained it all of His life, and He was willing to sacrifice everything to obtain that righteousness for His people. And such was His hatred of sin that He committed to having that sin dealt with in the way that it needed to be dealt with because it was so awful.

We may live in a time when sin is permitted to run unchecked—unchecked in homes, unchecked in churches, unchecked in society—but the response to that is not to call for hatred against people who are doing what Scripture opposes, and I fear in some quarters that is what is going on. Scripture’s calls for hatred are never to be harnessed by the private Christian to support doing things that are explicitly against loving our enemies, not being peacemakers, or the call to do good to all. We are called to do these things, to love our enemies, be peacemakers, do good to all.

So this text again, “abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good.” Turn away, oppose that which is evil. I quoted earlier Psalm 97:10, “Ye that love the LORD, hate evil.” You love the Lord, what do you do? You cleave to the Lord. Your love for the Lord cleaves to the Lord, and your hatred of evil shuns it and opposes it.

And if we do not get this right, there are two ditches I fear, and with this, I will end. Two ditches I fear you fall into. Number one, moral compromise. That such is the challenge of this, if we don’t get it right, that we just say it’s easier just to tolerate everything without lawful opposition. Well, that is destructive. Just because there may have been abuse in your home doesn’t mean to say you set aside the rod when you raise your own children. Just because there are wicked doers doesn’t mean to say that we just decide that the best thing to do is let them go on and hope that everything will just work itself out. No, lawfully oppose it whatever way we can.

On the other side, if we fall into the trap of being so taken up with a sense of hatred, and we take some of those verses that are really reflective of those who are in a judicial position, and we take them to ourselves, and we, every time there’s a call to love our enemies, we just, “No, but I need to hate this because here’s what they’re doing.” If we do that, it’s not moral compromise that we’ll fall into, although that’s debatable. It’s evangelistic paralysis. You’ll be paralyzed because if you lose the ability to love as a private citizen, other private citizens, to love them, to be so motivated by Christ’s love, if you lose it, if you’re governed by a sense of the rightness to hate, you will stop preaching the gospel.

And even where you preach the gospel, it will be always with a note of condemnation. You’ll struggle to understand why there would be a text like John 3:16, why it would say in the next verse, “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world,” because that’s all you feel like doing. Condemn the world. “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”

If you’re not overwhelmed by a sense of God’s love, if you do not see the benevolence of His love across His creation, and you’re amazed that He sends the rain upon the just and the unjust, and He extends a gospel call to all souls, and you think, “What a marvel it is that Jesus Christ would have me go and preach the gospel to every creature.” If you lose that, you lose the heartbeat of the church and its purpose here on earth, and you’re gone. At that point, you’re gone.

We must love, because love is of God. Let’s pray together in prayer.

There are many evil things going on in our world. And we ought to, where we are able, expose it, apply pressure to those who have power to change it, and even if God so wills for you, run for office and make a difference in the various spheres that you can.

But let us go out and hear that call of our Lord Jesus, who could see so much fault in every single person. He did not commit himself to man because he knew what was in man. And yet still he looked over the multitudes and had compassion. And he wept over a city that rejected him.

Oh, that we would be governed by love that would enable us then to hate rightly. Oh God, help us. We are our own greatest enemy, and we are far too invested in our own will and desire. Grant, oh God, that Thou wilt daily supplant our passions with obedience to Thy Word, eradicate all carnal responses and fleshly expressions of our will, and help us to do justly, love mercy, to love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.

Their souls all around us who are just as we once were, and they need to know about the love of God in Christ. Help us. Stamp John 3:16 upon our heart, and may it govern our words and actions, except in the place where we are given responsibility to stand as judge on the behalf of God.

Guard us, hedge us, use us, and keep us. May the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God our Father and the fellowship of the Spirit be the portion of all the people of God, now and evermore. Amen.