Pet Sayings Exposed and Exploded Number 7       "God hates the sin but loves the sinner"
By David Heesen

As with a lot of lies, there is an element of truth in it. God does hate sin. God does love sinners. So, what’s my gripe? A certain truth is being skirted here: God does hate sinners!

One Bible verse is all we need to prove our point:

Psalm 5:5 The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity.

There will be those who don’t accept plain verses of scripture. Sometimes that’s fine, especially when the Hebrew omits the word “hate.” So let’s have a preacher explain it for us:

“‘God loves the sinner; God hates the sin.’ That’s what it says on my bumper sticker; that’s what it says on my T-shirt. It must be true. They wouldn’t put it on a T-shirt unless it were true.”

Do you know who came up with that slogan? The Hindu Mahatma Gandhi. It’s nowhere in your Bible. It’s not on the lips of Jesus. You will see verses like Psalm 5:5 which declares “God hates all who do evil.” God hates evildoers.

We sin; God hates us. You say, “No, no, no, no, no! God loves us; He hates what we do.” We do what we are! We do what we are. Out of our heart, out of our center, out of our nature comes our life. Good trees, Jesus says, produce good fruit. Bad trees produce good [sic] fruit. You can’t say “that’s a good tree; it just has bad fruit.”

Some of you have this lingering myth that you’re a good person who does bad things. If you’re a good person, why do you do bad things?

You say, “I’m an apple tree.” Did you make any apples? No, I make oranges. Guess what you are. You’re an orange tree.

Yet some people I’m good in here but I’m bad out ... no, no, no, what you do out here is a reflection and echo, a result of what you are in here [indicates chest], a sinner by nature, who then has sin in your life.

You’re not deep down a really good person; you’re deep down a really, really bad person. And the fact that you don’t know that proves my point.

And you’re a sinner and I’m a sinner, and there is a sense in which God loves us, to be sure. But is also angry at our sin and He must be angry at our sin and if He’s not angry with our sin, He’s not a good God, a holy God, a just God, or a loving God. Because when someone hurts us, we want God to say, “That was wrong.” Yet when we do evil to someone else we want God to say, “That’s not a problem.”

We’re all hypocrites; we all want to receive mercy and give justice. And so God has us to contend with, and Jesus comes to earth knowing that we’re a sinner and that there is anger that is absolutely justified from God against us sinners ...

—Mark Driscoll (youtube)

Is this truth affecting some of you readers? He goes on ...

Jesus Christ, friends, did the most unbelievable thing. I’ve been thinking about it since I was nineteen, and I’ve still never gotten over it. Jesus Christ, God, went to the cross, took upon Himself all of my sin, and He suffered, died, and was punished for my sin, and all of the angry wrath of God—which I absolutely, completely, and undeniably deserve—was propitiated, the Bible says, or diverted. It was taken from me and laid upon Jesus, and He was beaten and bloodied and suffered and died in my place for my sin.

And so at the cross we see that God is holy and righteous and good, and loving and merciful and kind. And that God found a way, not to change His character, not to deny His right emotions, but also not to sentence us to eternal damnation, but to provide for us a way of salvation.

There is no one like Jesus. There is no other religion that properly understands Jesus, other than Christianity when rightly taught from the Bible. ...