Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin

One of the tricky things about the Christian life is that we’re supposed to love the things that God loves, and hate the things that God hates. It’s really easy to say that, or write it, or think it, but the moment a body goes to try and carry through, there are all kinds of problems, because who God is is not anything like who we are.

Of course, it might be good to back up just a tiny moment and look at the word ‘hate’ which is kind of troublesome. We aren’t supposed to sling that word around willy nilly, every which way, or think about it too much. Hating anybody isn’t very nice, and it’s better if we can all just get along and not be so contrary all the time. But the trouble is, God comes along and says difficult and untimely things like ‘Jacob have I loved and Esau I have hated’ so that we are forced to run around and try to explain that it’s not that kind of hate. It’s not the feeling of hate, it’s an action of being against. Just like love isn’t usually–in the bible–a feeling of love, it’s a death-of-the-self-action for another.

God was always acting for Jacob and not acting for Esau. Which doesn’t really make it less offensive. But I didn’t want to talk about Jacob and Esau, I wanted to talk about Absalom.

It’s the usual mess. David falls into sin–really bad sin–and he is forgiven and restored after flinging himself onto God’s unfailing mercy, but the out working of the sin, and the attitudes that brought it about, carry on for quite a long time, even up to the present day. David, like so many men in the world, has children all over the place, not having confined his marriage proclivities to that which for we all aim–One Man with One Woman. So it’s a mess. And the children are a mess. And there’s a series of ugly breakdowns in communication and family dynamics that culminate in Absalom trying to wrench the kingdom out of his own father’s hands.

There are so many lessons to be derived from this section of scripture, including the substitutionary nature of the cross. David is driven out of the city, across the Jordan, and there he is cursed by a man hurling insults and stones at him. He gathers his few sheeple in the wilderness and they are fed and cared for. It’s all easy peasy and points us right forward to the passion scenes we’re all so familiar and comfortable with.

But then the battle comes and Absalom is caught in a tree by his luxurious hair and Joab kills him, against the will and desire of David, who, inexplicably, in spite of everything, really loves his son and doesn’t want it to end this way. Everyone looking at this relationship from the outside, most especially Joab, cannot figure it out. It doesn’t make a lick of sense. It’s offensive even. Here is the rebellious, angry, conniving son who is trying to ruin and destroy everything, and the father is worried about not himself and his loyal followers, but about the very person who is wrecking everything, the son. Joab’s disgust is palpable. And so there is this little unfolding exchange.
Here is David
“And the king was deeply moved and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept. And as he went, he said, ‘O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!‘” 2 Samuel 18:33
And here is Joab’s response to David.
“…because you love those who hate you and hate those who love you. For you have made it clear today that commanders and servants are nothing to you, for today I know that if Absalom were alive and all of us were dead today, then you would be pleased.'” 2 Samuel 19:6
Hearing these haunting and angry words set of many bells and whistles in my half awake mind this morning. ‘Your thoughts are not my thoughts,’ Joab says angrily to David, ‘nor your ways my ways.’ Or perhaps your mind might rush to the clouded and angry brow of the first son, standing in a darkened corner, bitter about all the rejoicing over his prodigal brother. But of course, my favorite, is “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

Of course. While we were still sinners. But what is that even. All of us are sinners so it can’t be that awful. It takes reading through the account of Absalom–the totality of his rebellion and the sickening way it destroyed the lives of so many–and then putting yourself in the place, not of David, oh no no, but of Absolam, to be able to get a glimpse of the strangeness of God.

‘While we were yet sinners,’is a terrible indictment of how different from us is the mercy and affections of God. We love those who are lovable. We love those who show themselves worthy of love. And over and above all things, we love ourselves. We do not love God because he is not like us, because his perfection is troublesome and meddling. We do not love those who hurt us and do good to those who curse us. We do not lay down our lives even for the moderately ok, because we can’t get those very lives in order.

To love the sinner, so maligned a thought in today’s world where there is no sin, is to love the one that God loves, to do good to the enemy of everything. To hate the sin is to hate the destructive, devastating woe that overtakes every good thing. God hates, and not just in an acting way, the ugliness that we have wrought over his creation. And by rights he should chuck the whole thing, like Joab, just killing the enemy and being done with it. But instead we get this ridiculous picture of David weeping, inconsolable, over the death of the one who tried to kill him.

If you stop and consider who is your enemy, you might be surprised about who it is. I was trying to think about what I hate most and all I could think of was a list of things about myself. And then I tried to think of what I love best and I was still in the center of the picture. The only remedy is to shift my eyes to God, who, though my enemy, does only good and never evil to me.

And now I must get up and go to church, which is also a ridiculous and incomprehensible activity. Pip pip.