Hate the Sin/Love the Sinner?

Micah J. Murray is “finished” with the slogan: “hate the sin and love the sinner”. Why? Well, as you might have guessed, it has something to do with homosexuality:

It’s a special sort of condescending love we’ve reserved for the gay community. We’ll agree to love them, accept them, welcome them — but we reserve the right to see them as different. We reserve the right to say “them” instead of “us.” We embrace them with arms full of disclaimers about how all the sinners are welcome here. And yet, they’re the only ones we constantly remind of their status as sinners, welcome sinners…In all this, we turn our backs on all the gay brothers and sisters already in our church, already following Jesus. Our “us vs. them” narrative leaves little space for those who didn’t choose to be gay, but did choose to follow Jesus. Using “gay” and “sinner” interchangeably, we force them away from the Table and into the shadows…read more

To Mr. Murray’s mind “hate the sin/love the sinner” is just one more way to hate gay people, to force people struggling with same sex attraction “away from the table”. He goes on to argue that Jesus never called himself the “friend of sinners” but that that is the title his enemies gave him. And since Christians are forgiven and cleansed through faith in Jesus Christ, we are no longer “sinners” and ought not think of ourselves as such nor use that label when referring to others.

Mr. Murray is correct with regard to the believer’s “position” in Christ. God credits the believer with Christ’s own righteousness and on the basis of that righteousness he “counts” or “considers” the Christian pure, holy, and undefiled. And through Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, God cleanses the believer and forgives him from every sin. Christians are, therefore no longer condemned before the Father but reconciled to him on account of his Son.

God, in Jesus Christ, has rescued us from the consequences of sin. And yet we still struggle under the power of sin. Once God brings sinners to repentance and faith, rescuing them from eternal punishment(justification), he works in them to liberate them from the enslaving power of sin(sanctification).

The apostle Paul describes this struggle in Romans 7

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Romans 7:15-24)

Paul, justified by faith, set apart as an apostle refers to himself as “wretched”. His body, still under the deadly influence of sin, is “a body of death”. Paul clearly loves himself, loves the law of God, but that love fuels his hatred for sin. He knows that he is a new creation. But that recognition does not lead him to a deeper appreciation of his sin as if it were an inherent part of his created nature. Quite the opposite. It is not, he writes “I” who do it (transgress) but “the sin that dwells within me”(v.20). He does not consider his sin “good” or something to be accepted or something with which he might make peace.

Nor would he suggest that others enable him to do so. On this point he is also quite clear:

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:1-2)

Brotherly kindness, for Paul, does not include ignoring or accepting the transgressions of your brother. It does include helping brothers to see their transgressions and be rid of them. This is agape. Why? Because Paul wants to create a community of judgmental snooping hypocrites? No, because sin is a deadly, enslaving, power (Romans 6:23) and true love wants the beloved to live and be free.

The Christian hates sin in his brother because he loves his brother. It is hard to believe that any Christian familiar with the New Testament would object to this kind of hatred. The bible presents sin as a deadly disease that infects all mankind. It leads to Hell. With regard to homosexual behavior, Paul lists it among those sins that, engaged in unrepentantly and defiantly, keeps people out of the Kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9). It does no good to argue, as Mr. Murray tries to do, that the person struggling with same sex attraction didn’t choose his struggle. Men do not choose to struggle with lust. Humans do not choose to struggle with selfishness and greed. These impulses are part and parcel of the sin nature with which we have all been born. The only way to be rescued from the consequences of sin and be increasingly delivered from the power of sin is through the grace and power of Jesus Christ.

Can you imagine telling the sibling of someone with terminal cancer: “You must not distinguish between your brother and his cancer. You must love all of him including his disease”? Or, imagine saying to a the parent of a heroin addict: “Your son’s love for heroin is ‘who he is’ so to truly love your son you must also accept his heroin addiction.” Absurd. But that is very close to what Mr. Murray suggests. I say close because Heroin and cancer do not have the power to damn. The sin Mr. Murray will no longer hate does just that. God loves his creatures and for that reason he hates sin. If we would have the mind of Christ we also must hate what he hates and love what he loves. And so, as Solomon writes “the fear of the Lord is hatred of evil”(Prov8:13). We must, it is true, hate our own sin first and foremost but loving others as Christ loves us means hating their sin too because we love them.