Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

A truck had run off the road and crashed into a tree forcing the engine back into the cab.

The driver was trapped in the twisted wreckage.

The doors were crushed and bent out of shape, and he had his feet caught between the clutch and the brake pedal.

To make matters worse, a fire started in the cab.

Concerned people on the scene began to panic, for it was obvious that the driver would burn to death before the fire engine could arrive.

Then a man by the name of Charles Jones appeared, and he took hold of the doors and began to pull.

His muscles so expanded that they literally tore his shirt sleeves.

People could not believe it when the door began to give way.

Jones reached inside and bare-handedly bent the brake and clutch pedals out of the way, and freed the man's legs.

He snuffed out the fire with his hands, and then crawled inside the cab, and with his back against the top lifted the roof so other spectators could pull the driver to safety.

We have all heard stories of how mothers have lifted cars, and done other superhuman things to rescue their children, because they are motivated by love, but this man was a stranger.

There was no relationship to the driver.

If he was a brother, or son, or even a good friend, we could see how love would motivate one to such a feat of strength.

But this was not the case.

What then was the motivation that enabled this stranger to do such a powerful act of love?

It was hate.

Charles Jones was later interviewed, and was asked why and how he was able to accomplish such a Herculean feat.

He simply replied, "I hate fire."

He had good reason for his deep hatred, for a few months earlier he had to stand by and watch helplessly as his little daughter burned to death.

His intense hatred for this enemy gave him enormous strength to fight it.

His hate led him to a great act of love.

On the other hand, love can lead to hate.

Most of the stories of hatred you read about are directly connected with love.

Just recently I read of a man who shot his wife and her two brothers because she was leaving him.

The statistics show that most murders in our country happen in families.

People are most likely to kill those whom they love, or once loved.

Love is the cause of so many acts of hate.

What a paradox, that these two strong and opposite emotions can so often be linked together.

Paul in verse 9 puts them side by side, and urges Christians to feel them both in the same breath.

He says love must be sincere, and then demands that we hate what is evil.

Paul was not the founder of this paradoxical partnership of love and hate.

The unity of these two emotions runs all through the Bible.

I counted 27 verses in the Bible where love and hate are in the same verse together.

We remember the old song, Love and Marriage that says they go together like a horse and carriage, but it is equally Biblical to say, love and hate go together.

Listen to a partial reading of how the Bible links these two emotions in partnership.

Psalm 45:7 "You love righteousness and hate wickedness.

Therefore God, your God has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy."

Psalm97:10 "Let those who love the Lord hate evil for he guards the lives of his faithful ones."

Eccles.

3:8 "There is a time to love and a time to hate."

Isa.

61:8 "For I, the Lord, love justice; I hate robbery and iniquity."

The love-hate partnership begins in the very nature of God.

God could not be sincere in his love if he did not hate that which destroys love.

To be God like and Christlike is to combine in our being, love and hate.

Rev. 2:6 Jesus says, "...You have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate."

You cannot be a good Christian, and a truly loving Christian, if you do not feel hate for that which is the enemy of love.

There are many more texts we could read but the point is established: Hatred is a legitimate emotion in the Christian life.

In fact, it is a vital emotion if we are to be balanced.

This is, however, one of those dangerous truths that can lead to disaster if it is not understood.

These paradoxical partners can still be bitter enemies.

There is still the major distinction to be made between the hatred of evil, which is good, and the evil of hatred, which is bad.

Hatred is still a deadly foe, and an emotion that has to be kept in check, or it can lead us to become very unChristlike, and totally out of God's will.

I John 4:20 says, "If anyone says, I love God, yet hates his brother he is a liar.

For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen."

Hate destroys relationships of both God and man.

Prov.

8:36 has wisdom say, "All who hate me love death."

Hate for what is good is love for what is evil, and when these two emotions are reversed from the way God intended them to function, they are destructive of all that is of value in life.

The traditional, and normal, concept of love and hate being opposites and enemies is valid and true.

It is just that it is not the whole truth about love and hate.

There is more,and we must understand the more, or we will not be in control, and use these emotions the way God intends.

The area where we are weak is in this area of understanding the paradoxical partnership of love and hate.

Emotional health depends on our growth in this area.

To be what God expects us to be, we need to understand the reality of what is called

ambivalence.

This word stands for that psychological experience in which opposing emotions, such as love and hate, joy and sorrow, or desire and fear, exist at the same time within the same person.

Paul is urging Christians to be ambivalent by telling them to feel love and hate at the same time.

It is a cliché among Christians that we are to love the sinner and hate the sin.

It is very hard to separate the two, and so we really are feeling both emotions at the same time toward the same individual.

This is ambivalence.

This leads to much emotional turmoil in the person who does not see this mixture as legitimate.

In marriage, for example, it is a common cause for the breakdown of relationships.

Many mates have no understanding of the paradoxical partnership of love and hate.

They are locked into a narrow view of reality that says, I cannot love that which I hate, or vice versa.

They discover that they feel hate toward their mate for a variety of things, and thus they conclude, love has flown the coop.

I lost my love.

Because of this false psychology that says, love and hate cannot dwell together, they let their hate boot their love out.

It happens all the time that people who really love each other get divorced just because they hate aspects of each other.

Children run away, and mates shoot each other, and all sorts of tragic behavior takes place because people do not understand it can be valid to have hate for people you love.

Almost every child hates their parents at some point in life.

Sometimes they verbalize it, and are not as subtle as little Bryan.

Little Bryan had just been punished, and he sat in silence at lunch.

Finally he looked up and said, "God can do anything He wants to can't He?" "Yes dear," his mother replied, "God can do anything."

Bryan looked up again and said, "God doesn't have parents does He?" God doesn't have parents, but He does have children, and that relationship also leads to ambivalence.

God knows the mixed emotions of love and hate.

Way back in the fourth century St. Augustine described the divine ambivalence.

He wrote, "Wherefore in a wonderful and divine manner, He both hated us and loved us at the same time.

He hated us, as being different from what He had made us; but as our iniquity had not entirely destroyed His work in us, He could at the same time in every one of us hate what we had done, and loved what proceeded from Himself."

The cross becomes the central focus of the divine ambivalence.

The cross is where God's wrath and judgment were poured out, and Jesus bore the hatred of God for man's sin.

Yet the cross is where the love of God is brightest, for there He gave His Son, and the Son gave His life to atone for sin, and make it possible for all men to be forgiven, redeemed, and reconciled to Him in love.

Never again, and no where else do we see the paradoxical partnership of love and hate working together on so grand a scale.

If God did not hate sin, there would be no cross, and if God did not love the sinner, there would be no cross.

The cross is a love-hate symbol of the divine ambivalence.

So what does this mean for our emotional system?

It means we need to accept our own ambivalence, and not flea from it, or seek to suppress it, as if it made us abnormal.

Accept ambivalence as part of what it means to be made in the image of God, with the capacity to both love and hate.

If mates could see it is okay to hate those we love, they would not let their hate destroy their love.