John 8:39-44 They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, (40) but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. (41) You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father–even God.”
(42) Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. (43) Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. (44) You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
Quite often we hear from Christians, pastors, authors, and counselors something like, “you must love your abuser because he is a child of God like all human beings. God loves all His children, and so must we.”
Totally bogus. I will prove it to you.
Look at the passage quoted above. Does that sound like the Pharisees are children of God? Nope. Who is their father according to Jesus? The devil. They even share the devil’s spiritual DNA. “If God were your father…”. But he isn’t. The devil is.
This business of all human beings being children of God is simply the same old theological liberalism that infected the church long ago and which was opposed by faithful saints like J. Gresham Machen.
Think a bit further on this. If God loves the wicked because they are his children, then necessarily his love for them is motivated by something in them. That is to say, in some way, God finds them “loveable.” But is that what the Bible says about man outside of Christ? No way. Did God elect us to salvation because of some merit he saw in us? No way. If he did, then grace is no longer grace.
So don’t ever fall for the line “we must love everyone because everyone is a child of God.” The fact is that the wicked, such as the domestic abuser hiding behind a facade of “saintliness,” is an object of God’s own hatred. And thus the Psalmist can say in perfect holiness:
Psalm 26:5 I hate the assembly of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked.
Psalm 139:21-22 Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? (22) I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies.
Praying Lady
Amen and thank you, Pastor Crippen!!
Jane Smith
Awesome as usual !!!!
Em
Thank you Pastor Crippen. I was taught to “love the sinner and hate the sin”, a lie that I questioned but figured I was missing something and was in fact just being rebellious. Not so, as you have indeed proven! My new understanding is that God Himself, the only righteous judge fit to hold that office, hates the evil, unrepentant, unregenerate sinner and will toss each one into the fire of hell. He does not separate the body from the heart or the mind, He does not separate the attitude of and desire for evil from the physical body that has been carrying out that evil – they are all one and the same person! And He eliminates all of it – no evil enters Heaven.