"love the sinner, hate the sin"
By telling someone that you love them, but that you just hate what they do, you are passing judgement. You must necessarily put yourself in a position above them to be in a place where you can call out another person’s actions as sin. The fact is, we are all sinners. Just because someone sins differently than me doesn’t give me the right to pass judgement on how they sin. If everyone is a sinner (ad therefore everyone sins), lets not say “the sinner” and “the sin” as if the person speaking is in someway separate from these things. Why don’t we instead adopt the phrase, “love everyone, love God.” These are the two great commandments right? If we love God, our personal actions will attest to that. We learn to love his commandments for ourselves and hate to disappoint him. But why should we be judging others by saying “I love you, but I hate that you disappoint God.” Who are we to tell someone that God is disappointed with them? Perhaps the initial use of this phrase was more correct, but the present-day interpretation, and the way people throw the phrase around doesn't seem very Christ-like to me.
If this phrase was solely applied to one's self, I can accept it as being a good, true statement. If it is applied to one's self, we are saying, "I love myself as a son/daughter of God, I hate the sins that so easily beset me. I hope to learn to hate all sin, for I love God." The minute we use this same phrase in reference to someone other than ourselves, however, we enter dangerous ground.
We should love people (all people) for who they are not in spite of who they are. Christ commanded us to love our neighbor. It is that simple. He didn't say, "love your neighbor even though they sin and are disappointing me by their actions, and you must be the better person by making sure they know they are sinning while also telling them you love them." Come on people. Get off your pedestals. God is no respecter of persons.
4 comments:
Thank you for this. I am a strong believer in now passing judgement on people. Too many people in the church feel they have to judge people. They are concentrating too much on the bad and not seeing the good in people. Please add more to your blog, I find it very interesting and inspiring. And also thanks for your honesty, it;s very admirable of you. Thanks again.
I have often not been a big fan of that saying either, though I never really can put my thoughts about it to words. Thanks for sharing this. I have thought about it before that we should hate the sin because we love the sinner. Like I hate it when my friend smokes because I know it is causing hard to him. I still don't know though if that is my judgment call to make, and It also does not apply to all situations.
Hello! I love your blog! This was a very good point.
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I know this is old but i thought you should know thar, jesus never said hate the sin love the sinner. Its a Catholic teaching miss qouted by a genral athorty in 1987, quoting president kimble as saying it
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