Does God hate?

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. As you know, we’ve been progressing through the book of Romans. This last week we talked about Romans 9, 10, and 11, specifically how those chapters address the question: Why is most of Israel not believing in their provided Savior, Jesus? Why are most of them on the outside?

Those chapters give two reasons: God’s election and Israel’s own failure to receive God on the terms He has presented through the Savior He provided. But in those chapters, there is a verse that is troubling to many. In Romans 9:13, God says, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” We wonder, how could God hate anyone? Isn’t God love? John 3:16 says that God so loved the world that He sent His only Son. We think of God as love personified, and yet here we have God saying that He hated Esau. To make the problem even more difficult for a moment, Psalm 5:5 says that God hates all evildoers. This is troubling to our hearts.

I’ll respond in a couple of ways. First, we are actually not all that different. We hate the evil and injustice that we see around us. When we see cruel things happen—terrible oppression, abuse, or violence—we hate that. One reason we hate what is wrong is because we love. If someone hurts someone we love, we have very strong feelings against the perpetrator. In a way, hate comes out of our love. Imagine what God sees: all the problems in the world and how far we’ve fallen from the perfect creation He intended for us. It isn’t that surprising that God would hate evil and injustice, because we do too.

The surprising part is what God is going to do about it. Earlier in Romans, Paul writes that “none is righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). As Isaiah 53:6 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray.” We have all participated in the evil and injustice of the world. Take Jacob as a case study. If you read Jacob’s life, he’s a terrible guy. He is deceiving his family and manipulating the people he should be closest with. He’s not a good guy at all. So the real question is: How could God say, “Jacob I loved”?

How could God love any of us, considering how we have contributed to the darkness of the world? When you look at that passage, it’s actually more surprising that God loves than that God hates. What God does for Jacob is extend him mercy. He lets Esau go in the way that he wants, but He intervenes to rescue Jacob.

In the arc of the biblical storyline, we see that God deals with the penalty and punishment Jacob deserved by taking that penalty onto Himself in Christ. The great question of the Bible is: How could God end evil without ending us? Because we have participated in the evil, He accomplishes that on the cross by taking the evil onto Himself.

Does God hate? Yes, He hates evil and injustice, and so do we. But what is more surprising is that God loves those who have committed the evils and has provided a way for them to be saved. As always, our action step is to surrender to Him, receive the grace He has provided, and proclaim Him over our lives.

Hope that’s helpful. See you next time.