Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Tender Loving Hate

by Dave Wilkinson

Romans 12:9b

June 20, 1999

Schroder, the intellectual of Peanuts, is almost always at the keyboard playing Beethoven. Lucy, Schroeder’s great admirer, constantly interrupts him with questions. She asks, "Schroeder, do you know what love is?" Schroeder stops his practice and stands at attention. In very somber, straight forwards tones he says: "Love: noun; to be found of a strong affection for or attachment or devotion to a person or persons." Without further distraction, he resumes his position over the keyboard. Lucy gazes into space in deep reflection. Then she says, "On paper, he’s great."

Schroeder said the right words but he did the wrong thing. Love isn’t a definition. Love is action. It is more of a verb than a noun.

1 Corinthians 13, which we read, is one of the most famous chapters in the Bible. It tells us how love behaves. The verses we are looking at beginning today are the Romans parallel to 1 Corinthians 13. Like their more famous cousins, Romans 12:9-18 immediately follow a teaching on spiritual gifts. Like 1 Corinthians 13, these Romans verses don’t define love. Instead, they describe what loves does.

In Romans 12:9 Paul writes that we are to love without hypocrisy. Then Paul turns to the first action of this non-hypocritical love. He writes that true love hates what is evil. The word Paul uses here, apo-sty-go, is used only this one time in the whole New Testament. It expresses an intense loathing.

Does it surprise you to see hate listed as the first action of love? That might surprise you if you have too small a concept of God. C.S. Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain: "We want not so much a Father in heaven as a grandfather in heaven — a senile benevolence who, as they say, "likes to see the young people enjoying themselves" and whose plan for the universe is so simple that it might be truly said at the end of each day, "a good time was had by all."

That’s what we may want from God. But that is not who God is. The true God who is truly love hates with a passion. Proverbs 6:16-19 tells us seven things that God hates: "haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs us dissension among brothers." In Amos 5:21 God says, "I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies." The reason, of course, is that these merely formal observances were hypocritical.

From God we learn that real love does not love everything. Love is not the same thing as toleration. It has some hard boundaries. And Paul writes that as the people of God, we need first of all, to hate that which is not of God. We need to hate this whether we find it in other people, in our society as a whole, and especially in our own selves.

Let’s start where we ought to start — with ourselves. That’s where Jesus always tells us to start. He asks "Why do you try to take a speck of dust out of your brother’s eye when you have a plank sticking out of your own? First get rid of the plank."

I think that most of us have a problem with that plank. This is because most of us have a hard time really hating what is not of God in our own selves. We have a double-mindedness about evil. We don’t like it but we are fascinated by it. We respect Billy Graham. But we buy books by Stephen King. If a real quality movie about Mother Theresa came out, it would be buried at the box office by the latest action pic -- and many of the people lining up to see the moviezed mayhem would be people who say they admire Mother Theresa.

From childhood we are driven by two desires. We want to be good enough to be okay. But we also want to be bad enough to be interesting. We want to be more godly. But we also like to deliberately leave a few wilderness parks — places in our personality untouched by God — just in case we want to go there for a vacation from responsibility. We want to be truthful. But we don’t want to be unpopular. Our teenagers want to be faithful. But they also want to be cool.

But Paul tells us that we are not to look at evil in ourselves with toleration or even a mild discomfort. We are to hate it.

This is more important now than ever before. Because today, more than any time in history, the very concept of "the good" is under concerted attack. The Biblical teachings about morality are no longer in the mainstream in American life -- to the extent that it is no longer possible to be both faithful and cool.

Tony Compolo wrote a book called Who Switched the Price Tags? In this book he describes the experience of going into a store only to discover that someone had been busy switching the price tags on the merchandise. The things that should have been expensive were listed as dirt cheap while the tackiest items carried very high value. He said that this is what has happened in our country. Someone has been switching the price tags. The things that were once considered precious in our culture have been sidelined and debased. The things that once were considered cheap and tawdry get the attention and the fame. And there are consequences. "We laugh at honor," C. S. Lewis wrote, "and then we are surprised to discover traitors in our midst." We get what we praise.

The price tags have been switched. But this switching of the price tags didn’t just happen. It was done on purpose by people with a very particular agenda to push about our society. And the vehicle for tag switching is our popular media. Some of the work is very subtle and entertaining -- like all good propaganda.

Let me give you an example.

How many of you have seen the movie "Pleasantville?" It is put out in the guise of entertainment. But what is the core message? -- that goodness if stuffy and dull and evil is vibrant and interesting. The world of Pleasantville is a drab, predictable black and white world until people start to sin. Then things brighten up. It is the sin that brings color. Teenagers who engage in premarital sex at lover’s lane are transformed into technicolor people. A "here’s your cookies and milk" sitcom wife and mom is brightened through an illicit relationship. The mayor finally gives way to his rage and breaks out of his half-toned life. It is very well done. And it is sheer propaganda for the world view that claims that the good is stuffy and dull and evil is vibrant and interesting. Isn’t Mallory’s picture of Satan with his claim "better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven" more interesting than Mallory’s picture of God? Don’t books about Hitler outsell books about St. Francis?

We aren’t to get sucked in by our quicksand culture. As Paul wrote back in verse 2 of this chapter, "we aren’t to allow the world around us to squeeze us into its own mold." God calls us to be realistic about evil. He calls us to confront it in ourselves. And He also calls us to confront it in society. We, as Christians, need to hate evil and move to end it -- and not just personal evil either but societal evil, corporate evil and governmental evil as well.

The Prophet Isaiah sets forth the call of God in Isaiah 1:17: We are to 'cease to do evil and learn to do right, pursue justice and champion the oppressed: give the orphan his right, and plead the widow's cause." The widow and the orphan were people without official standing in the family oriented, male dominated Hebrew world. And the mark of a man of God was that he gave voice and representation to those who were without the power to help themselves. God says that we need to be the voice of those who have no voice.

At the height of the abolition controversy that led to the Civil War, James Russell Lowell of Boston wrote the hymn "Once to Every Man and Nation." The hymn is centered on the Christian response to societal evil. Do we tolerate it? Do we say, "We just talk about spiritual things here?" Or do we follow the lead of our God?

The British Parliament abolished the slave trade in their colonies in 1807. In 1823 the British Parliament abolished slavery throughout the Empire and committed the considerable resources of the Royal Navy to ending the slave traffic altogether.

The outlawing of the slave trade and the abolition of slavery was primarily the work of one man, William Wilberforce. Wilberforce was a member of the House of Commons. He was converted to Christianity in 1784. As a Christian, he became convinced that slavery was wrong. Against great opposition he began a one-man campaign to get it abolished. His convictions came from his Christian understanding that all humanity is worthwhile to God. Because Wilberforce knew of God's love for all persons, he tore at the evil of slavery with all his passion. The love of God needs to work on us in the same way.

If we love as God loves -- and we must if we are Christians -- then there will be things for us to hate. We will hate the violence done to people by whatever name -- nationalism, ethnic cleansing, racial or religious pride, war, keeping the peace, even "necessity." We will hate lying, especially by those who are in important positions -- CEOs and other heads of corporations, political figures, presidents, and even ministers of the gospel. We will hate what their lies do to others.

Dr. David Seamands wrote: "Anger is a divinely implanted emotion. Closely allied to our instinct for right, it is to be used for constructive spiritual purposes. The person who cannot feel anger at evil is a person who lacks enthusiasm for good. If you cannot hate wrong, it is very questionable whether you really love righteousness."

God calls us to confront evil in society as well as in ourselves. And He also calls us to confront it in other people who are a part of society and a part of ourselves. For true love is not toleration. True love is not an easy come, easy go acceptance. Love comes with expectations for the good of another person. And we are to show our love by our hate — our hatred of evil in first in ourselves and then, secondly, in the lives of others. We will hate it in them because we know what it does to them.

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray describes an exceptionally handsome young man so physically captivating that he drew the persistent and awe-stricken adulation of a great artist. The artist talked him into being the subject of a portrait, saying he had never seen a face more attractive and pure. When the painting was completed and presented to young Dorian he became so fixated and enraptured by his own looks that he wistfully expressed the longing to draw license from such beauty and to live any way he pleased, unfettered by any restraint. Any ensuing disfigurement from a dissolute life would mar only the picture, leaving him unblemished.

Dorian received his wish. His life of sensuality, indulgence, and even murder left his physical appearance completely untainted. Spurred on by the success of his undiscovered duplicity, he plummeted ever further into the depths of wickedness. Then one day, alone and worried, he uncovered the portrait he had kept hidden for all those years, only to be numbed by the hideousness of the face which bore the horror and scars of a life scandalously lived. Besieged by the fear of being found out and of the incriminations the portrait would reveal, he buried it among the goods he kept stowed in his attic.

The pathetic charade came to an end one day when the artist himself laid eyes on it. Overcome with grief because of what he knew it meant, he confronted Dorian and implored him to turn his wasteful life around and seek God's forgiveness. "Does it not say somewhere," he pled, "'Come now let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as white as wool'?" Dorian doesn’t want to hear this. In a fit of rage Dorian Gray grabbed a knife and killed the artist, silencing the voice.

The story reaches an emotional climax when, no longer able to stand the indictment of the picture, Dorian reached for the knife once more to destroy the portrait and remove the only visible reminder of his wicked life. But the moment he thrust the blade into the canvas the portrait returned to its pristine beauty, and Dorian Gray himself lay stabbed to death on the floor. The ravages that had marred the picture now so disfigured his own face that he was unrecognizable to the servants who heard the scream of death and came rushing in to help.

The power of Wilde’s book lies in its most central idea: Can an individual or a society live with complete disregard for a moral and spiritual center and not suffer from the wounds of wickedness? Can the soul of a people who have lived without restraint be left unravaged? And is it loving for those who know the truth of God to let the damage continue and spread to others like a cancer.

The Bridges of Madison County was a brilliant propaganda piece. In the book a woman has an affair and keeps the letters hidden in the attic. Years later her children find her letters and learn about this part of her life -- and her betrayal of their father. She knows that these letters will be found and read and so she encloses a note to her children which says: "If you love me, you must also love what I have done." That is simply not true. We can love another person -- and completely reject what they do to themselves or to others. In fact, it is unloving to tolerate in another person something that will bring them harm -- just as it is the height of hypocrisy to condemn in someone else behavior or attitudes or vices that we accept in ourselves.

True love rejects sin, but not the person who sins. This is what Paul means when he says, "Hate what is evil; cling to what is good." He is talking about people. Hate what is evil in people, but don't reject the person because of the evil. He or she is made in the image of God. Therefore, true love learns to hate evil but not to reject the good.

I grant you this is difficult to do. I have a very hard time doing it. For example, our denomination has been wracked in recent years by people who desire to push a pro-homosexual agenda onto the church — in spite of the crystal clear teaching of the Word of God that homosexual practice is a soul destroying behavior. This advocacy group has been on the losing end on some major votes in recent years — to the extent that some of those in this camp have been talking about leaving the Presbyterian Church for a denomination more congenial to their agenda.

I have to confess that their talk of leaving has not grieved me. My response has been either "don’t let the door hit you on the way out" or, if I’m feeling more harsh, it’s "go ahead and let it hit you." So I need to hear what Paul says here and make it more a part of my life. Yes, I am still called to resist the behavior and the agenda. But I am not free to reject the people as a part of my "group" — as if I were the one that had made up the guest list for God’s party. I am still called to hate what is evil — not as our pluralistic culture defines it but as God clearly defines it in his Word — but I am also called to hold on to what is good — including people made in the image of God.

These verses are very practical. They are practical for me and they are practical for you. For every one here is faced with the fact of evil in our own lives. Every one here sees situations in society where we need to take a clear stand against what is wrong. Every one here is faced with talking to people about what they do -- even as we love them. These may be people in our work. They may be people in our church. They may be our own children or a spouse. In all these situations we need to master the fine balance of hating the sin and loving the sinner — especially when the sinner resents our words and acts hateful.

There are two ways that we can be in error according to this verse.

It is wrong to not hate the evil. It is hypocritical to condone sin because you accept the person. Christians often realize that it is wrong to cut people off and have nothing to do with them because they are not behaving properly. But some Christians accept these people and say nothing about their evil or sin, and even defend it on occasion. We are seeing something of this today in the matters of homosexuality and alcoholism. People want to defend these sins, as though they were right, simply because they want to accept the person.

But the other error is to identify the person so much with what they do that we reject them as people. The evil we are to hate and the good we are to hold on to are often wrapped up in the same package. It isn’t like we are all that separated out between those who wear white hats and those who wear black hats. Most people wear gray hats of varying shades. So even in those situations where we are called to cut a person off from Christian fellowship because of extreme sin — as Paul writes about in 1 Corinthians — it is with a goal of helping that person fly right and welcoming them back into the family.

As God’s people, we will love the truth and will stand up for the right. But we will at the same time also love those who are doing it wrong. These people aren’t symbols and they aren’t crime statistics. They are people. They are people made in God’s image. They are people who need the Savior . They are people for whom Jesus died.

Hate evil. Hold fast to the good. It’s a hard balance. But it’s what real love does.