Love the Sin But Hate the Sinner

Doesn’t sound right does it? We’re not supposed to hate people, after all, Jesus said, “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39), it is the second greatest commandment behind, “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (v. 37). But the saying that is the mirror image of the title, “love the sinner but hate the sin” isn’t much better than our title. But wait a minute, aren’t we supposed to do that? In a manner of speaking, but there is so much more to it than that. 

All through the Bible we can see God’s response to people who continue in their sin, “for the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), so we come to understand that God hates sin. The problem comes when we try to be God and start to judge another’s sin as worse than our own. Our hatred of sin needs to be primarily of the sin that we have been (and are) guilty of and, only under God’s direction, are we to speak of another’s sin. 

The practical problem with loving the sinner and hating the sin is in the way it comes across. If we are so intent to do this it isn’t the love that comes across, but the hate, in other words, what matters is how someone perceives our actions, not our intent. Therefore, hatred of the sin becomes hatred of the person, practically speaking. Also, this saying is said so often as an excuse to not have to deal with those who are different than us. Discussion about the sin becomes one of anger and judgement as opposed to love and compassion. 

What we need to do is to forget the second part of the saying, “hate the sin” and leave that to God. We need to look at our neighbor as a person who is made in the image of God and is loved by him unconditionally. Because he looks on the heart we can rely on him to be faithful to convict the person of the sin that he hates so much. Without God doing it we alienate those that we are supposed to love and, in a lot of cases, drive them to another who will not teach them the way of Christ. 

Please, siblings in Christ, “let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1b, NKJV) in a way that is consistent with the high calling that is ours in Christ Jesus. If we do not allow him to strip us of our sin, the sin of judging in particular, we will do more harm than good for his Kingdom as we run people off because we “love the sin but hate the sinner.”