I ran
across this quote from Mark Lowry the other day on Facebook:
“Love the sinner, hate the sin? How about: Love the sinner, hate your
own sin! I don’t have time to hate your sin. There are too many of you! Hating
my sin is a full-time job….How about you hate your sin, I’ll hate my sin and
let’s just love each other!”
Great
quote. It reminds me that I don’t hate
my sin near enough (I tend to excuse, justify, dismiss) and that I hate
everyone else’s too much (even when their sin is something I’m doing too).
The problem
with hating another’s sin is that it often leads to hating the sinner. It can also lead
to a superiority complex that is contrary to who God wants us to be. Jesus made
it very clear in the Sermon on the Mount that sin is sin, there are no degrees,
and no differences before God. He
saw no difference in the sins of Hitler and those of the apostle Paul (Paul
even said, in 1 Timothy: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of
whom I am the foremost” (verse 15)).
What’s the
answer, then? I think it may be in these
lines from the Casting Crowns song, Love You With the Truth:
“When
we love, we earn the right to speak the truth, when we speak truth, we show the
world we truly love.”
The answer
is there, love. The answer always seems to be love. But not my kind of love, God’s kind of
love. It is the answer that granted me
salvation and adoption into the kingdom of God. It is the love of mercy,
forgiveness, grace and healing. It keeps
me and sustains me and is the source of life.
None of
this is easy. I find it “easier” to speak the truth, but almost impossible to
do so in love. The problem is that you
can’t start with the truth, you have to start with love. Hating the sin isn’t the starting point, it’s
then too easy to stretch that to hating the sinner. You have to start with love, real love,
genuine love… God’s love.
