No Love – Know Hate… Know Love – No Hate!
Leviticus 19:17-18 ‘You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.
I heard a lady on a video the other day, talking with Jesse Lee Petersen – a wonderful man of God – who was trying to reason with her about the consequences of the evil of hate. She vehemently declared that she didn’t hate anyone BUT she approved of the organization that promoted violence to win at all cost. She had judged herself and them as being on the RIGHT side and therefore qualified to be judge and jury of everyone else. She was very passionate about the need to STAND UP FOR JUSTICE but failed to see this form of justice (vengeance of the self-appointed jury) was the very evil she was proclaiming justified the violence and caused them to riot.
Unfortunately… Hatred masked as justice is still hatred. Hatred masked as the majority group think (moral or otherwise) is still hatred. Hatred turned in retaliation for hatred, is vengeance… explainable and understandable but still… unauthorized by God!
There are those who believe that if we can PROVE our sincerity, we are declared righteous. Our hatred is justified and therefore we can willfully sin and it not be counted as sin.
I really “hate” to be the bearer of bad news… but… the only place sin is honored and the sinner celebrated is hell. And, the only person who loves hatred in any form is Satan. Now, if you think you are going to find justice with Him, you do not know evil! 1 Peter 5:8 Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. There is an enemy… and he isn’t flesh and blood our fellow man/woman. Ephesians 6:12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
We are a creation made with feelings and a sensory ability that without discipline can overload and self destruct. We do struggle, all of us, trying to maintain the balance, because love is so strong and full of fire, sometimes it can appear equal to hate, in its strength and power and commitment.
We get so caught up in our passion for truth and justice, that we do not recognize when it begins to be fueled by anger instead of love and peace . If left unattended, anger burns and blinds the eyes, when we no longer see clearly, our adversary steps in with his hatred to replace what started out as speaking the truth and standing up for the good of all.
God says… Ephesians 4:26-27 Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.
As Leviticus says in the first Scripture of the blog… you may surely reprove your neighbor… none of us (not one) are perfect and never need reproof and correction!
BUT… You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart… You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself!
And then comes the most important verse of all… BECAUSE… I am the Lord!
This is the will of God. If we do not obey His command to love, we sin.
Joshua 24:15 … choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living
Our choice today… god of hate – Satan.
Or our God… who so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.(John 3:16)
Maybe our problem today is our description of love and hate…
Or maybe its thinking that our words are magic… ignore the man behind the curtain saying one thing and doing another!
We definitely water down the meaning of most of our words in today’s way of life. And, if we don’t like the “feeling” we get when something is brought to our attention, we try to shut the mouth of the person saying it by making them cast-outs from the crowd of people (MY KIND of people) who know so much more and are better able to decide these things.
Rather than dealing with the lies residing in our own heads and hearts, we prefer to make others the scapegoat or deflect the attention on some other issue that caused the mistake (definitely not sin) I may have made but for all the right reasons.
We do desperately need to return to speaking the truth in love…
Ephesians 4:14-15 As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ,
Grow up… now that’s something many of us never want to do…
We need to view ourselves and others through the spoken truth – the Word of God.
1 John 4:20-21 If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.
Usually we only speak about what love looks like at a wedding, insinuating that LOVE is something only for the married couple. The truth is, if you cannot love outside of marriage you cannot love inside of marriage. Love looks the same inside and out.
Love isn’t defined by how YOU feel. Love is defined by what YOU do.
It is not deserved, it is given as a gift…
It is not used as a weapon of manipulation, it is used to build up…
There are not varying degrees… there is no “but” following the declaration of love.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
1 Corinthians 13:8 Love never fails…
Hate promotes and depends on fear.
1 John 4:18-19 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us.
The lady I heard say that violence is sometimes justified, obviously does not think it would ever be justified against her and her friends and family. I would imagine she would call it HATE should someone support such actions against her. And you know what… I would call it hate also!
But hate isn’t because of ______________ (fill in the blank) something you do, or something you are, or something you wear, or even something you’ve said or done that you shouldn’t have said or done.
Hate is because it’s author is Satan. It is evil!
The law can sometimes reign hatred in by judging the acts resulting from it, but the only thing that will destroy hate is love!
Love, not proved by getting everything we desire, but love proven by everything we give to God and others.
Satan is waiting to devour us…
God is training us to love…
Matthew 22:35-39 One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and foremost commandment. 39 The second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Hate or Love? Can never be both and can never be without assessable action (words are great but action is the proof of our words).
If we all just stopped for one moment and asked ourselves which outcome would be the most beneficial for ourselves and others, which would be the smartest to choose?
Then we would know which should we give our passion too?
Which will I give my passion to? Which will you?
**All Scripture quoted comes from the “Bible Gateway” app and is the NASB version of the Bible