How God Hates Sin Not The Sinner

For the many years I’ve been in the ministry, I’ve heard this question countless times, does God hate sin or the sinner? Does God hate both sin and the offender? In this post, I’d like to deal with how God hates sin not the sinner.

Let’s begin by looking at a little background about man. First, in Genesis 1:1, we learn that God created the heavens and the earth. He also created the entire creation on earth with the words of his mouth. On the sixth day, God took time and created man in His own image and likeness (Genesis 1:26)

We must note that man is the only being with a spirit, soul and body. How is this special? In Genesis 2:7, God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. This breath is “the spirit” which is part of God.

So the physical came from the ground, the spirit came from God and is what resembles God. After man was created, he was placed in the garden of Eden which God had made (Genesis 2:15). Why would God place man in the garden? For two reasons, one, to work it (develop) and two, to take care of it, but not without rules and instructions (Genesis 2:17-18)

WHAT WENT WRONG IN THE GARDEN?

In the garden, the man and his wife enjoyed fellowship with his Maker till when they allowed the serpent to corrupt them with wrong information about God. Satan brought about a distorted information about God, and as a result man immediately stopped trusting upon the truthful God who created him instead, he chose to believe a lie of the devil.

Look at the question that God asked man when He visited him in the garden after sinning. First, man hid himself in the thickets of the garden. Why is man hiding? Genesis 3:7-11, because of shame, sin comes about with shame and guilt. Man told God that he heard his sound in the garden and he was afraid, so he hid himself. It’s interesting how sin robbed man of the precious confidence he always enjoyed when God visited him in the garden.

In verse 11, God asked man, “Who told you that you were naked, have you eaten the fruit I commanded you not to eat?” Now this tells you what God hates! God had no problem with the man He created and cherished. God’s problem was what man did – disobedience to His command.

The following verses will tell you the consequences of this untimely action which am pretty sure man did not have an idea of. Man did not think about the outcome of his action. The devil when luring man to sin against God, conceals the consequences but only displays the deceptive benefits which obviously turn out very temporary and short lived.

WHY GOD HATES SIN

1. God is Holy and Calls Us To Be Holy

To understand why God hates sin so badly, we must understand His nature and character. Since this is just a short post, I may not be able to discuss all the attributes of God instead I will just talk about one communicable character – holiness.

Communicable, I mean those attributes which can be shared by both God and man. In 1Peter 1:15-16, Peter admonishes believers to “be holy for He who calls them (God) is holy.” Since God is holy, he has no communion with anything sinful and corrupt.

Considering God’s character, therefore sin is His dislike.

2. Consequences of Sin

Another reason why God hates sin is due to the consequences – what is born of sin. We cannot understand this point clearly unless we look at it from God’s purpose to create man. In Genesis 1:26, God created man in his own image and likeness, he gave man a mandate – dominion.

This task is closely tied with relationship between man and God. I’d like to remind you that when God created man, He placed him in the garden of Eden (which signified God’s presence). Here, God would visit man regularly at the cool of the day (Genesis 2:8; 3:8)

God knew that man cannot be productive unless connected to Him and in His presence. When God created all other creature, he placed them in their right environment. For example, fish was placed in water, birds of the air were placed in the sky, but man was placed in Eden (presence of God).

The devil understood this secret because he was once in Eden (presence of God) (Ezekiel 28:14) so he worked out a plan to remove man from God’s presence by making him sin. Satan understood that immediately man sins against God, the relationship will be broken, and it will be easy for him to hold him captive while away from God’s presence.

When you read Genesis 3:7-ff, you see the consequences of sin which include: nakedness, shame, guilt, curse, broken relationships, change of status, banishment from the garden, failure, birth pains, hatred, blame, death, etc.

God knows the end before the beginning (Isaiah 46:10) that is why He warned man to abstain eating the fruit in the middle of the garden otherwise he will surely die (Genesis 2:17)

3. Sin Is the Major Hinderance to God’s Purposes

As we have already discussed previously, man was entrusted with the mandate to taking care of the entire creation (Genesis 1:28). God blessed man and charged him to increase and subdue the earth. Multiplication in number was an important aspect to mankind because whenever men increase in number, they were supposed to take charge wherever they are.

I’d like you to remember that to have dominion over the creation man needed authority from God. To get authority man needed to have continual fellowship with God – the source of power. When sin came, it broke this fellowship and so taking dominion became very hard.

In one of the curses God pronounced to man in Genesis 3:17-19, man was told that he will get food through painful toiling on the ground and through sweat. The ground was cursed due to man’s sinfulness such that it would produce thorns and turn out to be very harsh to man.

This should tell you that man’s disobedience affected the entire creation and that’s why Paul says in Romans 8:19 that the entire creation is eagerly waiting for the sons of God to be revealed and liberated.

When I read this, I understand why it was very hard for me to accomplish my mandate and realize my destiny in my sinful life. Some things am just doing them now very easily took me decades of years to figure out how to do them. What was the hinderance? Sin.

WHAT GOD DID TO DEAL WITH SIN

Due to how God hates sin not the sinner, he gave His only Son to come on earth with a physical body, John 3:16. Despite the sinfulness that was in the world, Jesus did not come to condemn the world but to save the world (John 3:17).

From these two verses, you can easily understand what pushed God to send His Son to the world – the word LOVE. When the bible says that “for so God loved the world…that He GAVE His only Son. The “world” here stands for “people” (sinners).

What did God do after loving? He GAVE. What does this mean? Genuine love is accompanied by an action. God loved mankind so much because they are His representative on earth. Man has part of God in him (the Spirit). Psalm 8:4-6, the Psalmist asks, who is man that God is so mindful about? He made him a little lower than the angels. God is so concerned about man, more than He is concerned with angels.

Among all the creatures God created, only man is given the obligation to carry God with his body (1Corinthians 6:18-19). Though man is a created being, yet God allows Himself to live in man’s body. So a human body is very precious before God because it’s the temple of the Holy Spirit.

The purpose of Jesus taking a ph inysical body was so that He may deal with sin by dying on the cross, that’s why while hanging on the cross He said it is finished (John 19:28-30). When pierced on His side with a spear, there was a sudden flow of blood and water (John 19:34). The blood was for redemption, but the water was for cleansing.

The death of Jesus on the cross was a final blow to the devil. It was a way of triumphing over the enemy and clear disarming of the enemy. Jesus took all our written codes and every accusation that stood against us by nailing it to the cross (Colossians 2:14-15).

Conclusion

As we come to the conclusion, in this post we have discussed how God hates sin not the sinner, and we have done so by showing how a holy God has no communion with sin. In heaven, nothing impure will enter there (Revelation 21:27). We have also seen that since God created man in His own image, his sinfulness and disobedience came as result of deception by the enemy.

God however loved man (the sinner) so much and so He initiated a way to make things right and reconcile man once and for all to Himself. His Son’s death on the cross was due to this noble purpose.

In Romans 10:9-10, when one confesses that Jesus is Lord and believes in his heart that God raised Him from the dead he will be saved. Salvation therefore was initiated by the Lord on the cross through love.