Genuine Hatred

One of the recent guilty pleasures for my family and I is a show that we’ve discovered called On Patrol Live.

The concept is a simple one. The producers have arranged with eight different police and sheriff’s departments around the nation to send cameras and videographers out to film officers as they are on patrol in their communities.

The video of traffic stops, DUI investigations, vehicle searches, citizen assists, accident response, drug arrests, taser deployments, and everything else that goes on during these shifts comes to the viewers live, while a couple of retired law enforcement officers and a host back in the studio provide commentary that’s sometimes colorful and always enlightening.

There are moments of pure adrenaline, moments of comedy, scenes of great sadness, and scenes of great heroism.

We see law enforcement officers engaging people in their worst tragedies, saving the lives of people who have overdosed on heroin, catching wanted fugitives who were stopped because of missing taillights, intervening between neighbors whose disputes must have gone back for generations, calling Ubers for people who are too drunk to walk, and just about anything else you can imagine.

Here are a few lessons from the five or six episodes we have seen so far:

• Lighting a cigarette as an officer tells you to get out of your car isn’t the best way to demonstrate that you’re cool and confident, with nothing to hide.

• The center console of your vehicle isn’t the best place to keep your stash of methamphetamines.

• The moment you hear the first bark of the K-9 that’s been released to chase you down is probably only slightly less terrifying than the moment he catches you.

• If you’re running from the police and you hear the words, “Taser, taser, taser!” you should prepare to meet the pavement. Hard.

• And finally, you set the tone of any encounter you have with the police. Your good manners and respectful interactions may not keep you out of jail, but they’ll get you there in one piece, with no bite marks and limited road rash.

It’s surprising just how many simple traffic stops wind up in handcuffs and tears because someone who is angry and belligerent doesn’t recognize that the people with the badges are the ones in authority.

And it’s frankly amazing that so many of those with the badges are able to maintain their professionalism and composure in the midst of the verbal and sometimes physical abuse they face on the job.

As I was thinking about the second part of our series on 13 Imperatives for the Church this week, this series, On Patrol Live, kept coming back to my mind.

And that’s because one of the things it reminds me each week is that the human race absolutely excels in creativity, especially when it comes to applying that creativity to evil.

Now, this should come as no surprise. A quick look at the headlines confirms what we already know.

We see evil everywhere — from the mass graves of Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine to the somber museums of Dachau; from the gang-controlled ports of Haiti to the pirate coasts of Somalia; from the abortion mills to the human trafficking of the sex trade.

We see evil in the gunshot death of a four-year-old Suffolk child. We see it in the bomb threat/robbery that shut down a North Suffolk shopping center on Saturday.

We see it in the drug trade that has generated a mental health crisis that reached the proportions of a tsunami during the pandemic.

We see it in alcoholism, in broken families, in the deaths of innocent people caught in the crossfire between gangs walking even our own streets right here in Suffolk.

We see evil in the very halls of Congress, where elected leaders are even now working to codify a “right” for a woman to have her unborn baby murdered.

And we saw it in those halls as a mob of people broke in on January 6, looting and pillaging and threatening the very people charged with protecting the seat of our government and the ideals upon which our nation was built.

We all see these things, and if you are like me, you detest them.

That’s what the Apostle Paul says is the proper response to evil in the passage at the center of this series, Romans 12:9-13.

Remember that there are 13 different imperatives or commands he gives the church in this passage. Today, we’ll talk about the second. But let’s read the passage together first.

Romans 12:9–13 NASB95

9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor; 11 not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; 12 rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer, 13 contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality.

Last week, we talked about genuine love as one of the two umbrella commands of this passage. We said that the other 11 imperatives of these four verses all represent manifestations of those two umbrella commands.

The first of those umbrella commands was to let love be without hypocrisy. And you’ll recall that we said the Greek word for love there is agapao.

This is agape love, the highest form of love in the Greek language. This is choosing love, the kind of love that seeks the very best for another, regardless of whether that love is returned.

And this week, what we’re going to talk about is genuine hate. Now, we don’t talk about hatred much in the church, and that’s understandable, since we follow the God of love.

But he is also a God of hatred. He is the God who hates evil.

The Bible is full of examples of this, but let’s look at what King Solomon wrote in Proverbs, chapter 6.

Proverbs 6:16–19 NASB95

16 There are six things which the Lord hates, Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him: 17 Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, And hands that shed innocent blood, 18 A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that run rapidly to evil, 19 A false witness who utters lies, And one who spreads strife among brothers.

Now, these aren’t the only kinds of evil God hates, of course. This is meant to be a representative list of the kinds of things that are evil in God’s eyes and hated by Him because they are directly opposed to His perfect righteousness.

And most of us this morning would probably agree that all these things are detestable. All of these are things that we should abhor, as Paul puts it in our passage today.

And you might expect that from here I would launch into a long denunciation of evil in the world.

That I would go back to those episodes of On Patrol Live and give you some examples of the kinds of evil we are to hate. That I would delve into today’s headlines and show you that the world is going to hell in a handbasket of evil.

But if I did that, I’d be missing the point of what Paul has to say here. If I did that, I’d be missing the point of what Jesus said in His parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector. We see it in Luke, chapter 18.

Luke 18:9–14 NASB95

9 And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 “The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 ‘I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ 13 “But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ 14 “I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

“God, be merciful to me, the sinner.”

God, be merciful to ME, the sinner.

We all should, of course, hate sin wherever we see it. And the world IS going to hell in a handbasket of evil.

But I think that Paul’s imperative in Romans, chapter 12 is not so much a command to detest the sin of the world, but to detest the sins that we as Christians continue to allow in our OWN lives.

We are not called to have the attitude of the Pharisee — “God, I thank you that I am not like all those people we see on television and in the headlines.”

Rather, we are called to have the attitude of the tax collector, unwilling even to look up to heaven in the shame of knowing who we still are and crying out, “God have mercy on ME, the sinner!”

We are called to the humility of self-knowledge that led Paul to call himself the chief of sinners.

It’s important to note that Paul wrote those words to Timothy near the end of his life, after he’d spent years learning from Jesus in the wilderness, after he’d planted churches and suffered for the gospel and led many to a saving faith in Christ.

He had spent many years by then growing in faith and in holiness. Just when we might expect Paul to say, “Hey, look at me! Look how righteous I’ve become!” instead we hear him say, essentially, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner.”

You see, Paul was not only wise in his own self-estimation. He was also wise in his understanding of people in general. And one thing he seems to have understood about people is our fascination with evil.

It’s what drives the horror movie industry. It’s what drives the nightly news. It’s probably what drives the popularity of shows like On Patrol Live.

And it goes back to the Garden of Eden.

God had created this place of perfect shalom, this place of perfect peace, where Adam and Eve had everything they would ever need to be content and fulfilled.

Where they enjoyed the very presence of God in their midst, walking through the Garden in His perfect righteousness and love.

In the Garden, Adam and Eve were surrounded by the things that God had created, and every thing that He had created, He had declared good. They were surrounded by goodness and life.

In fact, in His presence, they were in the presence of goodness personified. He is the good God who creates only good things. As Moses wrote, “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.”

But Adam and Eve were not satisfied to be surrounded by goodness. And so, when they found themselves standing below the branches of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and when the serpent tempted them with the knowledge of evil, they ate the fruit from the one tree in the garden that God had declared off limits.

Genesis 3:6 NASB95

6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

From the beginning, we have had a fascination with evil. Indeed, what was going on in this interaction with the serpent was the desire to declare for themselves what was good and what was evil.

It was their desire to put themselves in the place that only a perfect righteous and holy God deserves to occupy.

Instead of being satisfied with the goodness that surrounded them, they chose to pursue evil.

Instead of eating from the Tree of Life, they had chosen to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They had chosen to satisfy their fascination with evil.

And instead of life, they brought death into the world. The physical death that we will all experience, as well as the spiritual death of separation from the God who made us to be in fellowship with Him.

But let’s not be too quick to pass judgment on Adam and Eve.

This has been the history of the world ever since. It is the universal story of mankind, this desire to decide for ourselves what’s right and what’s wrong. This fascination with the things that God has told us are destructive, the things He has warned us would bring death.

Every one of us does the same thing as Adam and Eve when we fail to demonstrate the righteous character of the God in whose image we are made.

From the time a baby learns to manipulate his parents into giving him something he doesn’t need. From the first time a child steals a cookie from the jar her mother said was off limits.

From the time a young boy searches for pornography on the internet. From the day a group of girls bullies the new girl at school. From the day a boy cheats on a test.

Every one of us reveals the same fascination with evil — the same desire to decide for ourselves what’s right and what’s wrong — that Adam and Eve demonstrated in the Garden of Eden.

We are all sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, and we all demonstrate their sinful character, rather than the righteous character of God. And that’s sin.

And our fascination with sin puts us in direct opposition to God. It makes us enemies of the God of perfect righteousness, the God of perfect goodness.

But remember what we said last week about agape love. It’s a choosing love that loves regardless of whether the love is returned.

And agape love is the kind of love that the Bible describes God having for us. Agape love is the love that Paul writes about in Romans, chapter 5, where he says:

Romans 5:8 NASB95

8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Our sin creates a bunch of problems for us, and not just on an interpersonal level. It creates problems between us and God.

Our sin causes us not to be who we were created to be. Our sin separates us from God. Our sin causes a breach in the relationship between us and God that we can never repair.

But God loves us. God has CHOSEN to love us, and He chose to love us, even though He knew we would be sinners. He chose to love us before we were born.

And because He loves us, He sent Jesus, His unique and eternally beloved Son, to live a sinless life as a man so that He could suffer and die in our place and on our behalf at the cross.

Hanging on that cross, Jesus took upon Himself the sins of all mankind, and He experienced the just punishment from a God who hates sin.

And He did this to show His great love for us, so that all who repent of their sins and turn to Him in faith that He alone can repair the breach can have eternal life — life the way it was meant to be, in fellowship with God through Jesus.

God hates sin. God hates evil. And He has promised to punish evildoers. But God loves us. And so, He allowed Jesus to take the punishment that we evildoers deserve for our sin so that we might be saved by placing our faith in Him.

Of course, not everyone is willing to accept this gift of salvation. Not everyone is willing to place their faith in Jesus.

There are many who deny God, reject the gift, and go on about their lives, choosing to declare for themselves what is good and what is evil.

And the Bible is clear about what will happen to those people. We see it in the Book of Revelation, chapter 20.

Revelation 20:11–15 NASB95

11 Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. 12 And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. 13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. 14 Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. 15 And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

There will come a day of judgment for all unbelievers as they stand before the Great White Throne. When their names are not found in the Book of Life — the book in which are written all the names of those who have followed Jesus in faith — they will be cast into hell to suffer eternally for their sins.

They will be condemned for their unbelief, and they will then be punished for their sinful deeds.

And so, when we look at what Paul says in Romans, chapter 12 — “abhor what is evil” — I don’t think he’s saying we are to go around judging the world for being sinful.

Jesus, the risen Savior who sits on the Great White Throne, will do that. He is the only one who is WORTHY to do that, because He is the only one who has lived without sin.

And we can’t really expect unrepentant sinners to act like saints anyway, can we? What we CAN expect — what we SHOULD expect — is for saints, those who have been saved by faith in the shed blood of Jesus, to act like saints.

I think what Paul is saying in today’s passage is that we should abhor — we should detest — sin wherever we see it, but we should have a special and genuine hatred for it in our own lives if we are followers of Christ.

We should be revolted by it. We should be ashamed of it. We should be on our knees, crying out, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner.”

This morning, as we sing our closing song, I want to invite you to come and join me on the steps at the bottom of this platform and repent for your fascination with evil.

If you have never followed Jesus in faith, come and talk to me now, and I’ll tell you about how you can be set free from the chains of sin, how you can find freedom and peace in a Savior who loves you so much that He gave His life for you.

And if you have placed your faith in Jesus, but you are still struggling with that fascination with evil — if you, like Paul, are realizing that there’s still unresolved sin in your life — take this time to come down here and pray.

Pray for forgiveness; pray to be set free; pray for a new fascination, not with evil, but with goodness.

I promise you this: You will not be alone as you pray here.