Does God Command Us to Hate?
Biblical Hebrew lacks the necessary language to exactly define the comparative sense, i.e., ‘more than’ or ‘less than’. Instead it tends to express two things which may be comparatively of different degree like ‘first’ and ‘second’ as extremes such as ‘first’ and ‘last’. In this way love and hate whilst appearing as opposites may in fact be related but lesser terms such as ‘love more’ and ‘love less’.
God does not hate. God is love. English is a shitty target language for the original Biblical languages. There. I said it.
Even if one were to take this ‘hating’ verse literally, a semantic twist would have you back where you started. For, Jesus tells us that our enemies will be the members of our own family, yet we are also taught, “love your enemies”! (Matthew 5:44; Luke 6:27,35)
Love your enemies. Huh. Reminds me of this bit from Colossians chapter one:
For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.
This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.
So, we were his enemies, yet Christ commands us to love our enemies. Is he then laying down a double-standard? Of course not! Romans 5:8 clarifies:
God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.
God loves sinners. God loves you.
God.
Is.
Love.
