Hate Evil

“The verb śānē and its derivatives have the root meaning “to hate.” It expresses an emotional attitude toward persons and things which are opposed, detested, despised and with which one wishes to have no contact or relationship[1]”

[1] “2272 שָׂנֵא,” ed. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 880.

Do you hate evil? Those who love the Lord should hate evil. We should oppose it, detest it, despise it, and want no contact with it.

This idea of evil has two different connotations in the Old Testament.

Hate False Worship

First, when this verse says, “hate evil,” the context tells us that we should hate the false worship of God.

Psalm 97:6–7 ESV

The heavens proclaim his righteousness, and all the peoples see his glory. All worshipers of images are put to shame, who make their boast in worthless idols; worship him, all you gods!

We are bombarded with a different spirit in our world. Many Americans believe that it is a sin to be critical for one religious group to be critical of any other religious group.

The Bible doesn’t hesitate. How many people who worshipped idols appreciated them being call worthless? How insensitive! How politically incorrect!

How true!

God will never be found in images of wood and stone. God will never be found in the worship of creation. God is not pleased when people credit “Mother Earth” for what he has done.

The history of Christianity includes times of greed, power and the killing of infidels. Jesus has not called Christians to retaliate, exact revenge or kill unbelievers. He has called us to love our enemies. He has also called us to hate the worship of any God but the God of the Bible.

Paul says,

1 Corinthians 10:14 ESV

Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.

1 Corinthians 10:21–22 ESV

You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?

I have had people say, “I will go to their church and they said they would come to mine.” That is ok if the church they go to is one that preaches the gospel. But if that building is full of people who are not worshipping God, then we should not participate with them. We are to flee idolatry or the worship of false gods.

Hate Sin

A second way that evil is used is to describe sin.

Psalm 52:3 ESV

You love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking what is right. Selah

Evil is shown here as lying. Evil is seen in any sin. One hallmark of sin in the Bible is that when we commit it, it either hurts God, fellow humanity or it hurts us. Sin tears down.

We should hate sin that tears things down.

People are hurt by physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Backbiting and gossip have ruined many people. Adultery, pornography, Sex trafficking and sexual sins have bruised people for life. Should we say that it’s ok? Should we be neutral? Or should we hate evil?

We hate evil we find inside ourselves.

Isaiah 6:5 ESV

And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

Job 42:1–6 ESV

1 Then Job answered the Lord and said: 2 “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. 3 ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. 4 ‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you make it known to me.’ 5 I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; 6 therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

After following Jesus instructions and seeing a large catch of fish Luke records,

Luke 5:8 ESV

8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”

When we see this in ourselves, self-loathing is often the result. But though it may be the immediate result, it should not be the end result.

For Peter, Job and Isaiah, these revelations of the evil within them were life-changing.

Why? The realization of their own evil led them to repentance and faith in God through Jesus Christ.

Repentance describes that moment we realize that change is needed and we are going to do it. We realize what we have done is wrong and doesn’t work and are looking for a new and different way.

God does not want just repentance. He does not want us to just realize that we need change. Many people who have the light go on then take the next step of following false religions, getting bad advice and for some, the self-loathing turns into suicide.

On the road to Emmaus, Jesus said,

Luke 24:45–47 ESV

45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47 and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

God does not want just repentance. He wants us to change by trusting in Jesus. We are never trusting Jesus when we sin. Repentance says that we need to change and we need to trust Jesus and do it his way.

When we trust Jesus, God forgives our sins. God forgives all our sins.

Job, Isaiah and Peter experienced personally the great truth in…

Romans 5:20 ESV

20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,

It’s bad to be bad. It’s worse if we are not only wrong, but the law comes in and affirms it. That makes the sin even worse. In other words, if I think I am wrong, that’s bad. But if everyone agrees that I have done wrong, that makes the sense of sin increase even more. If the Bible affirms it, then we feel awful about what we have done.

But where sin increases, grace increases.

We know that by grace we are saved through faith, but we often don’t experience the strength of this grace until we are in a position where we are fully aware that we don’t deserve grace. This is where Job, Isaiah, and Peter were.

Yet God extended his grace to each of them. If you forgive someone for cutting you off in line, that is good. If you forgive someone for causing the death of a relative, that makes national news. The apostle Paul cries out that “while we were yet sinners Christ died for us…”.

The greater our realization and hatred of our own sin, the greater our appreciation of God’s grace when we embrace it.

The songwriter said, “Grace, grace, God’s grace. Grace that is greater than all our sin.”

If we hate evil in our own hearts, then…

We also hate seeing evil people getting away with their evil.

As people made in God’s image, we have a strong sense of justice. We hear it from our children… “That’s not fair…” Even criminals believe in payback. Karma is another word that describes justice. What you give you will get back. Paul writes that whatever a man sows that he will also reap. That works in two directions. If we do good, good comes back. If we do evil, evil comes back.

We struggle with giving ourselves any grace. We struggle more with giving others grace. We hate the evil so much that we feel we are letting them off the hook. We say, “It’s not right that they should get away with that…” We are right. It’s not right.

Romans 3:26 ESV

26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

The one who has faith in Jesus is justified. They are made right. Jesus is just in forgiving the one who sinned. He was the lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world. He was the substitute who died in our place. They needed to pay and Jesus paid it all.

This is not a blank check. Only God knows the heart, but if the heart of those who do evil is not right, they don’t get a free pass just for saying the right words. Their faith needs to be real.

Jesus comes into this discussion by calling all to repentance and faith. Both are necessary. They work together like a steering wheel and a map.

We know we need to change. As a wheel turns, so we know we need to turn. That is repentance, the knowledge that we need to change and are willing to do so. We see our situation in a new light, in a different way. The light comes on. We thought everything was ok, but it is not. We finally realize change is needed.

It’s not enough to know we are on the wrong road and need to get off. One can be on the wrong road and turn onto another road that is just as wrong as the one they got off. This is where the wheel and the map work together. This is where repentance and faith merge.

Faith describes where you turn. You turn to Jesus.

Why? Because Jesus hates evil. He hates the evil that is both inside our lives and outside. He came to save us from sin. Sin separates us from God. Jesus hates the division we have. He came to remove that barrier. Jesus hates what sin does to us. He came to give us a different path. He calls this path eternal life. That is eternal life as compared to temporary life.

In order for us to experience this life, we must hate evil and turn from evil to Jesus.

Paul writes,

Acts 20:20–21 ESV

20 how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, 21 testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

We cry out to God, “Help me!” God says to us, “I will help. Trust Jesus.

Jesus hates evil. Evil made him leave heaven to come to earth. Evil made him the object of scorn. Evil caused him to be betrayed. Evil sent him to the cross. Evil put a guard on his tomb. Evil made people spend money to motivate the guards to tell a lie.

“O you who love the Lord, hate evil!”

If we hate evil, then instead of making people pay for their evil, introduce them to the one who paid it all. Jesus has the power to change people.

Romans 1:16 ESV

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

We don’t know who believes and who doesn’t. But those who believe find that within the gospel message of God’s love for us in Jesus is what is needed to deliver us from our sins.

There is power in the gospel. There is power in the news of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. There is power when we trust Jesus.

The hatred of evil and the power of the gospel has motivated missionaries to go around the globe with the message of Christ and his grace toward sinners. The hatred of evil pushed people like John Newton, Wilber Wilberforce and others to fight slavery. This hatred of evil and the desire to help people has led to the building of schools and hospitals. William and Catherine Booth formed the Salvation Army to spread the gospel and to help those in real need. During the time when child labor was acceptable, young people were growing up never learning to read and write. William King suggested to his friend, Robert Raikes, that they might try to teach the children on Sunday, their only day off. These schools taught arithmetic and reading and writing, with the Bible at their textbook.

In 1907, William Watkinson was bothered by the negativity he saw in his culture. He published some sermons he wrote entitled, “The Supreme Conquest and Other Sermons Preached in America” by William L. Watkinson. One of the sermons was called, “The Invincible Strategy”. In this sermon he coined the phrase that has since be quoted around the world,

“…it is far better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”

Which are you? The darkness is there. We should identify it, hate it, and run from it. But where can we go to totally avoid evil? If it is going to be around us, we need to light a candle.

Be the person at work who is thankful. Thankfulness in light of the blatant ugliness that often goes on in the workplace is a candle.

Be the person of grace. When everyone else is shunning a friend or relative, be the one who, though acknowledging any evil, stands with them. Be the candle.

Be always ready to give a reason for the hope you have in Christ. There are people in our community who are going through hard times. Many of them have never even thought about Jesus, God, or the help that a church like this could be to them. Be a candle.