The Write Place

In my last blog past on the He Gets Us Superbowl ad (here) I talked about how different Jesus is from the Jesus they presented. The ad also however is very tied to this time and era in some additional ways.

It has become a definitive trait of our particular era, to define love and hate as two traits that can never share the same space. It is said they are antithetical, not distinct in our neo-pagan culture. God can be one not the other, so it goes. In fact he can only be love, so the common misconception would have us believe. This has led to the idea that love means only condoning and accepting everything about a person with nothing transformative about it. Anyone who doesn’t must be hated (because self-awareness is not a feature of our era). The only transformation, or salvation is those who need to learn to accept everyone as they are. Untruth is inevitably foolishness, and very quickly. The truth is far different, and far more desirable.

God hates, he hates because he loves, and that hate is a virtue.

 There are six things that the Lord hates,
    seven that 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 make haste to run to evil,
¹⁹ a false witness who breathes out lies,
    and one who sows discord among brothers.

Proverbs 6:16-19

Since Jesus is the same God as the God of the Old Testament, doesn’t he hate these things as well? Would you want him to love these things? Or love these people who do them without challenge? You can see the problem here in love meaning accepting and condoning. No loving God would love a murderer so much as to let him into heaven, unrepentant and unchanged with the person he murdered. Or an unrepentant liar, or a thief, or a pervert or any number of others for the human heart has no shortage to choose from. Yet our culture today would have us believe love would allow exactly that kind of thing to happen. We just pick and choose which sins we like.

We can read the New Testament and find very quickly things Jesus hated when he walked on this earth. One evident one is when he visited the temple and found people who were coming to worship God being cheated. The center of worship to the God of the universe had become a big con, with the approval of the clergy, ripping off rich and poor, Jew and converted gentile, soiling God’s name and harming his people whom he loved. His response was not to wash the feet of money changers, it was to flip their tables. Take Mark’s account.

¹⁵ On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, ¹⁶ and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. ¹⁷ And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’^[a]? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’^[b]”

¹⁸ The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

Mark 11:15-18

The response is also telling. Some found him appealing, mostly the crowds who were won by his teaching (no need to change the Gospel to make it “hip”, if people still use that word). Those who were invested in the sin and loved it, refused to repent sought to kill the messenger who opposed it. Oh how little things change.

This case was the legalists of the Sadducees and Pharisees, but there are others.

Jesus our risen lord has remained unchanged in this, he hates those who rebel against God, and pervert the things of God and his people. Hatred of the Nicolaitans, who sound a lot like the affirming movements, some with millions of dollars for a Superbowl ad. The Church in Pergamum was infiltrated by the Nicolaitans, and Christ imparted some words to them.

¹⁴ But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. ¹⁵ So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans.

Revelation 2:14-15

One great little book to turn to is the book of Jude. You can see Jude’s love for Christ leads to his love for the Church. He starts to see them how God sees them, as those whom God has chosen, loved, and blessed and he blesses them.

¹ Jude, a servant^[a] of Jesus Christ and brother of James,

To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for^[b] Jesus Christ:

² May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

Jude 1-2

Because of this Jude sees the very real threats the church faces and he does the Godly thing, he hates. He hates the evil that accosts them, he hates the wickedness that would ensnare them, and he warns them against all of it.

¹² These are hidden reefs^[e] at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; ¹³ wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.

¹⁴ It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, ¹⁵ to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” ¹⁶ These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage.

Jude 12-16

He doesn’t mince words, and he sounds a lot like the passage in proverbs. These people do sound like someone to hate, or maybe you don’t think so and he is just mean. But you’d be missing what’s at stake, and the evil of what is being done. Just look at what he loves. See what he says about the church.

²⁰ But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, ²¹ keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. ²² And have mercy on those who doubt; ²³ save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment^[g] stained by the flesh.

Jude 20-23

See some of why Jude is so harsh on these who indulge in evil. The evilness of evil threatens those and that which Jude loves, because he is a Godly man that is the people of God. That is also the things of God. He sounds a lot like his savior Jesus. So yes, Jesus taught us to hate, to hate with a righteous, Godly, loving hatred.

The “He Gets Us” ads are run by those who fit these descriptions, and they are further hypocrites teaching hatred towards Christ and his followers because they love sin. These ads are not just to woo people to a false Christ, they are to catechize Christians into ineffectiveness. We should not mince words over what real love is, and how much we hate the counterfeit, in no small part because we love even our enemies.

A father’s love for his family is why he kills for them. The imitation of this is evident in why the pagan outside the church and within, funded the “He Gets Us” ad and tells people not to “hate” by telling people to repent and refrain from evil. We all know we are to hate evil; some are just honest about it. Only a Christian can hate with a truly righteous anger founded in the love of God.

⁹ Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. 

Romans 12:9