Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from “The Adult Sabbath School Guide” is titled “God’s Call”. In Wednesday’s lesson, Romans 9:13 quotes Malachi 1:1-2. God saying through Malachi, “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated”. Yikes! God hates a person?? Can this be true?? Some Christians, even some Adventist writers have so claimed. “He has a right, after all”, they say. “He is our Omnipotent God,” they say. But again we have a “word” issue. We interpret the word “hate” by our own sin-filled perspective. Just as we interpret “love” from our own sin-filled perspective. This is faulty reasoning. And this is not just semantics. It is crucial we understand this. We need to understand what God does to those who do not love Him? Does He hate them? If so, many of us could be on bad terms with our Heavenly Father. So let’s take a look at this pivotal aspect of God’s character. Does He hate sinners?
The Scripture is pretty clear. We are told by Paul, “for I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8: 38-39). Pretty clear. Nothing. Even your own choice. God loves us. Period. So even the wicked in the end are not outside of His love. Oh they will perish alright. For they want none of His love. But that does not mean the irreclaimably wicked have gone beyond His love for them. After all, “Love never ends” (1 Corinthians 13:8). So what to do with the verse that says God hates? Matthew 6:24 gives us a most valuable clue, from the mouth of Jesus. Here it is…
“No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth”. So many Bible writers use a method of expressing themselves called synonymous parallelism. Where successive lines repeat the original words to add clarity and depth of meaning. In the verse just cited, the word “love” is matched with “devoted” and the word “hate” is matched with “despise”. That word “despise” is from a Greek word meaning, “not like-minded”. Oh. God is saying that Esau is “not like-minded” to God. And this is true. This is not just a Divine opinion. This is a sad reality. Esau has moved so far away from God that there is nothing in him like His God. Nothing that strikes a complimentary chord in Esau’s heart. And of course the word for Love in this verse is “agape”. Strong’s Concordance gives this definition of “agape” (found in G5638)… “embracing especially the judgement and the deliberate assent of the will as a matter of principle, duty and propriety”.
So we see that God’s love is, in fact, absolute. And His “hatred” is a statement of fact regarding the one who is (and will never be) so like-minded. This understanding of His hatred is the only one that does no insult to the rest of Scripture that praises God’s everlasting, eternal love. As EGW so wisely states in Steps to Christ page 54, “He hates sin, but He loves the sinner”. He hates the sin because it is destroying His child, the sinner. He loves the child… always. And even as the child spits in His face, rejects His love and walks away, forever to reject His Father, God still loves the child. And will always, even as that rebellious child (not like-minded) perishes in the end.
It is our job as Seventh-day Adventist Christians to explain our Father to our brothers and sisters. So, so many have questions about Him that lead them to reject Him. Legitimate questions regarding an Omnipotent God that would allow suffering in this world. We are the ones who are best situated to explain our loving Father to them. Let us live our lives in such a way that the reality of out explanation is seen in our lives. Let us love as He loves. Let all judgmental attitudes and behaviors in our hearts be rooted out as we turn to our God of love to be healed and cleansed each day. God as He is (not as others think He is) is the only hope for this sin-sick world.
With brotherly love,
Jim