Years ago, a young woman who was a member of our church and her boyfriend asked if I would perform their wedding ceremony. I expressed my willingness but advised them that they would first need to meet with me for several counseling sessions. I did not know the young man and the girl attended church very rarely.
They came for counseling and after a couple of sessions, it was apparent that they were not ready for marriage. I have always felt the church was too lax by just performing a wedding ceremony for anyone that comes along, so I decided to take a stand. I advised the couple that I would not perform the ceremony because I was confident the marriage would not last six months. Tact has never been one of my strengths.
They found another preacher and got married anyway. I was wrong! The marriage lasted seven months.
I have always taken marriage very seriously and considered divorce a total failure that should be utilized only in extreme circumstances.
At about the same time, I noticed the adult Sunday School classes had a Bible study lesson on divorce. We were a small church with two adult classes, one for older and one for younger adults. After the lesson, I asked several from each class about the study. To my surprise, the older adults were much more forgiving and accepting of divorce than the younger ones. I quickly surmised that the older adults were more experienced with life, and they had more first-hand encounters with the reality of divorce. It was not so easy for them to be dogmatic.
My lesson continued when a family member went through a painful divorce. It was a difficult time for the whole family. He worked hard to make the marriage work. I remember one evening sitting next to him at a restaurant and telling him it was time to give up, it was not going to work. He replied that he could not give up, and he did not for many more months.
As our family walked through this experience, we learned a great deal. Malachi 2:16 says, "God hates divorce…" In my younger days, I probably had the tendency to claim this meant that God hates divorced people. However, as I matured, I realized God does not hate people; He hates the sin of divorce. Now, after even more years of experience, I realize the reason for God’s hatred of divorce. He hates it because of what it does to the people He loves. Divorce is very painful for everyone involved. Like God, I hate divorce because of the pain it caused my loved ones.
A common phrase I hear from Christians is that they "hate the sin but love the sinner." It sounds good when you first hear it, but then as you see how it is lived out, the words do not seem so appropriate. Our actions often say that we hate the sin and we simply tolerate the sinner.
Take for example the sin of drunkenness. It is easy to hate that sin, but it is very difficult to love the sinner. It means when he is passed out drunk in the street, we must stop and pick him up. If she chooses booze over her children, we must provide for her as well as her children. If he shows up at church on Sunday morning, hung over and disheveled, we must greet him as a friend and offer to sit with him.
Instead of loving the sinner, often we simply tolerate him. We excuse ourselves from helping because "until he wants help we are just wasting our time." We will provide for her children but leave her to fend for herself. He is welcome at church, but probably should sit in the back by himself.
Loving sinners is messy work. If you don’t think so then you need to take another look at Jesus. He loved sinners and He was constantly criticized, condemned, and accused as someone who accepted sin.
When you look at Jesus, kneeling beside the woman who had been caught red-handed in the sin of adultery, you know He hated the sin. The reason He had such hatred is because of what it was doing to everyone. It was ruining this woman’s life, forcing her to expose her shame in the middle of a busy street. He hated the sin because He loved the woman.
It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to truly hate the sin until you have actually loved the sinner. Once we get this process in the proper order, the change will be dramatic. First, we love the sinner. Then, because of what it does to the one we love, we hate the sin. Now, instead of throwing stones at the sinner or shouting angry slogans at the sin, we will be about the business of picking up the sinner and encouraging her to sin no more.
I lost a friend last week who was concerned that I had not shown enough hatred toward a particular sin. We were trying to work out a business arrangement where we could partner together, but he was afraid that someone might notice that I had refused to be angry enough toward a particular sin and it would cause him embarrassment. In spite of the fact that we had identical theology, he was unwilling to risk his reputation.
I guess I should have forwarded more emails or shouted more slogans or joined more organizations. But you know, the amazing thing is that when you are trying to love sinners there really is not enough energy left for campaigning against sin. The truth is that I need to work at loving sinners more then I think my hatred toward the sin will take care of itself.
I like reversing that old saying...love the sinner, hate the sin! That's the order Jesus followed.
Posted by: JD | October 12, 2009 at 08:19 AM
Yeah, once I figure out how to love the sinner then I'll be better able to hate the sin. Right now I'm still focused on loving the sinner because I don't do so well with that.
Posted by: Geoffrey Bray | October 12, 2009 at 09:53 AM
Just curious more than anything else. If speaking on divorce, how can one ignore Jesus repeated words "But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery."
We take other scriptures and hang entire theology on single words, yet this statement coming straight from Jesus is rarely even mentioned in church today. Have we just gotten so politically correct that we now ignore those parts of scripture we don't like to hear?
Posted by: Steve | October 12, 2009 at 03:57 PM
I think I agree with most if not all of what you said here. However, I have a question that I am trying to fit in. In your example of the drunken people, are we to love them to the point of protecting them from the consequences of their sins. Could not a consequence of continued drunkenness be that a mother loses custody of her children? Is there a point where loving the sinner and providing for her becomes 'enabling' her in the sin? (I don't like this word as it is a pop psychology type word but I could think of no other)
A biblical example is the rich young ruler. Jesus presented him with what he had to do - give up his materialism. The man walked away loving his stuff more than Jesus. In other words, he walked away in sin. I know Jesus loved him and hated his sin but did he chase him down and help him in his sin?
How does it look to love the sinner and hate the sin? I am working on this and on my sin.
Just thinking out loud.
Posted by: David Lane | October 14, 2009 at 03:01 PM
You raised a good point David, and this is where we have a whole lot of confused "Christians" today. A friend of mine who has been an EMT supervisor for many years told me once that giving drunks, druggies, and panhandlers money was the absolute worse thing you could do for them. Jesus never initiated any aid or welfare agency that I can find in scripture, and there were many, many poor and hungry everywhere he went. It creates a real dilemna, which many people cannot reconcile, especially in light of some of the frivilous mission trips of today. Does it make sense to have 30 people take a "European vacation" mission trip for $3000 each so that they can deliver $800 worth of bibles and paint a few walls? Ridiculous.
Posted by: Steve | October 14, 2009 at 04:06 PM
You guys seem to be having a problem deciding what "hating the sin" looks like. Does it mean leaving them to suffer consequences for the action? Does it mean ignoring the person to let them suffer alone? Does it mean "enabling" them to continue? Does it mean joining a cause, sending out emails, hurling accusations?
Rather than focusing on hating the sin, perhaps we should zero in on what it means to love the sinner. Try this approach - how would I treat my spouse (or some other loved one) if they had a drinking (or some other sin) problem? You might eventually leave them to suffer consequences, but not until you had tried everything else first.
My point in writing the article is that if we would concentrate on loving the sinner, our hatred of the sin would be much more effective. As an added benefit, the sinner would listen to us better if we love them first.
Posted by: Terry Austin | October 14, 2009 at 05:04 PM
I have a problem with the whole thing, I guess. What does hating the sin look like and what does loving the sinner look like?
Question: Does God love us out of the consequences of our actions? This has to be an individual thing. If I am trying to get out of my sin and seeking help is that not a different position than if I am wallowing in my sin and do not want out of it - like the drunkard mother in your example?
Posted by: David Lane | October 15, 2009 at 03:46 PM
David, once you love the sinner you will know what it means to hate the sin. If we would spend more time trying to love the sinner, our hatred for the sin would be appropriate and more productive.
For example, the drunk mother. What if she is someone that you love, i.e. family member, close friend. You do not go around saying, "All drunks are destined for hell!" Instead, you do whatever you can to help her overcome this sin. You spend your energy helping the sinner (drunk in this case) and you hate alcohol and do whatever you can to keep others from getting caught in it's clutches.
Posted by: Terry Austin | October 16, 2009 at 10:10 AM
I don't know that it is either possible or practical to hate inanimate objects. That can lead to lack of accountability. It is not alcohol in itself that is evil, nor the hamburger that adds fat, nor the gun that murders. Sin requires a choice. I suppose you can hate that choice, but that choice is integratively tied to the person who makes it. So the man that murders just for pure evil pleasure, greed or from hate cannot be totally separated from his actions. If that were possible, there would be no judgement for anyone because God would automatically absolve them of their sins without Christ's intervention. Christians cannot love evil. And when evil and sin co-exist in a non-Christian, Christians can only pray for God to have mercy on them and to love them enough to try to make sure they understand the eternal consequences of the choices they make.
Posted by: Steve | October 16, 2009 at 04:20 PM
Steve, I think you have said it very well!
Posted by: Terry Austin | October 16, 2009 at 06:16 PM