Saturday, January 26, 2013

Hate Evil


January 27, 2013

Proverbs says, “To fear the Lord is to hate evil.”

Many have twisted this instruction and added “person” after the word “evil.”  God hates evil.  But he loves people.  God cannot tolerate sin because He’s holy.  But he absolutely loves the sinner because He wants ALL to experience His great love.

So how do we hate evil, yet love the evildoer?  Evildoers are just operating according to their nature.  We are all born into sin, and it’s our fleshly nature to do evil.  I’m not referring to mass murderers.  Evil can be as simple as just causing harm to another person through neglect, slander, or even disobedience. 

I think the easiest way to love the evildoer is to remember that if not for the grace and love of God, we too would be evildoers.  This makes it easy to love the person doing the evil.

How can we then effectively hate evil?  We can pray against it.  We can pray against hatred, malice, anger, etc.  And we can pray for God’s love to be evident through our lives and the lives of others who were once evildoers themselves…but have now been saved by Grace.

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