Sin (7) Loving Sinners, Hating Sin

A common expression among Christians is that God loves sinners but hates their sin. However, it is not really clear that it is possible to separate a person from what they have done in this neat way. What a person does reflects who they are, so we can’t easily pull them apart. When God looks at us, he sees what we are doing as well as who we are. In fact, what we are doing, reveals who we are. But that is not a problem for God because his love is bigger than anything that we can do.

Unfortunately, there are no scriptures to support the popular saying. The verses that are usually quoted are the following.

You hate all workers of iniquity (Psalm 5:5).
His soul hates one who loves violence (Psalm 11:5).

These verses do not say that God hates sin. They say that he hates people who deliberately engage in evil and violence. There are some people who are deliberately engaged in evil to do as much harm as they can, but this is relatively rare. Most people sin because they struggle with the circumstances of life. We cannot use these verses as proof that God hates sin. I suspect that when he looks at most people, he feels sadness and regret because their lives have been messed up by the spiritual powers of evil.

There is no doubt that God loves us. He even loves those who have fallen into sin.

God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8).

He proved his love by sending Jesus to die for us when we were still sinners. Therefore, a more correct statement would be that God loves us despite our sin. Our sin cannot prevent him from loving us.