A Word in Season: Holy Hatred (Psalm 97:10)

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What do you hate? What do you truly abhor and loathe from the very depths of your soul?

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What makes you rear back in righteous horror or reach out in righteous indignation?

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That might seem a strange question if you're a Christian. It might not be something that you've considered before.

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Certainly, it might seem like a strange question if you're not a Christian. If you are anything like me, then when you talk to people who don't really understand

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Christianity, they assume that it's some kind of sentimental inclination.

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That because we read in our Bibles that God is love, that the Christian is simply called to thoughtlessly and spinelessly love anyone and everything, anywhere and everywhere.

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The idea of a Christian hating seems to the world and perhaps to some Christians as a contradiction in terms.

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And yet, if a Christian doesn't hate, then we're not really the kind of Christian that we ought to be.

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That comes out, for example, in Psalm 97 and verse 10. The beginning of the verse, the psalmist tells us, you who love the

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Lord hate evil. And you notice how our hatred of certain things is then a reflection of and a proper reaction to our love of other things or people.

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And so what you have here is a call to those who love the Lord. A call to those who delight themselves in his person and in his word, in his works, in his ways, in his will.

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Who delight to know what God delights in and delight in it themselves.

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Whose hearts go out toward the things in which God himself takes pleasure. What God approves of, the

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Christian approves. What God delights in, the Christian takes delight in.

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What God exalts, the Christian enters into. But there's a flip side to that.

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There's a consequence of that. Because what God hates, the Christian also hates.

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What is against the God whom the Christian loves is to be hated by the

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Christian with a holy hatred. Not the kind of ugly or bitter vengefulness that too often characterizes this world, but a holy revulsion and distaste, a desire and a willingness to see that brought down.

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You notice it is evil that the Christian hates. Evil by God's definition and God's standard.

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That which is not just offensive to God, but against God. That is what sin really is.

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It is that which is against God. Evil is anything and everything that is contrary to God in his glory, in his majesty, and in his holiness.

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If we then say that we love God, we must hate evil.

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If we are committed to the Lord, if we delight in him, and if his glory and his exaltation is our greatest joy, then everything which is against that, everything which assaults that, everything which would cloud or undermine that in its very nature, must be something that we utterly reject.

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Now, how we do that must again be conditioned by our character as the disciples of God.

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It must be a reflection of our attachment to, our union with, our life in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. You have to consider that there was no man who hated as purely and intently as the

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Lord Christ did, and yet this is the man of love. But because his love was first of all to God, and therefore conditioned by all that was in God, his hatred was righteous and was pure.

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It's revealed in his antagonism toward all kinds of evil, cruelty, sin, viciousness, and hypocrisy.

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It's revealed pre -eminently in the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ was willing to lay down his life in order to overcome evil, and he tells his followers that they are to overcome evil with good.

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So let us consider what it means to be characterized by a holy hatred that is a reflection of our love to the

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Lord. Let us be careful that we do not indulge a carnal sense of that, but that we do appreciate that if we love the