As we travel on life’s journey as believers in Jesus Christ, we learn more and more about what God’s love for us means. We increasingly understand what God has done for us through His love in Jesus. The temptation to hatred radically lessens, even if much pain still remains, as we realize more clearly the love and mercy of God toward us. For this reason, it is completely inconsistent with the Christian faith to hate anyone.

Hatred of any human being is never an option for a believer in Jesus Christ.

It is easy to sinfully justify hatred, especially when the world, the community around us, encourages it. Hatred, a lust that already exists in the human heart in seminal form, doesn’t need a lot of stoking to bring it to a raging flame.

Many in today’s political movements, whether socialist or capitalist, constitutional nationalists and patriots or global order advocates, moralists or libertarians, religious or anti-religionists—influencers of all types and stripes—manipulate people towards hatred to bring power to their causes. Whipping people up into a frenzy makes money. People even get a kind of anger high by watching media that pushes their buttons in these over-the-top ways. And every single one of these influencers, no matter what sides they represent, sin against God when they do this.

But there are other reasons why we can descend into hatred. Physical and emotional abuse from those who are supposed to love and care for us can hurt deeply. Experiencing injustice in the workplace or through the legal system can cause great anger and resentment. Envy and a sense of entitlement drives many to despise and wish suffering on those that have more or better circumstances. And every single time anyone succumbs to hatred they commit evil in their hearts and often in their words and actions as well.

Be Aware of the Evil of Hate

Hatred is the antithesis to love. To hate is to refuse to forgive, to hold grudges, to live in resentment, to desire evil upon those that have hurt us. When mankind brought sin into God’s perfect world, things radically changed. Sin, suffering, and death entered the world bringing much pain and sorrow. Pride, selfishness, abuse of power, injustice, and envy were born. Relationships of every kind since have been strained because of sins against one another. Hatred is one major source of evil (see The Value of a Life).

Be Set Free from Hate

In Titus 2, the apostle Paul wrote of how “the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.” Those who have received God’s saving grace have been set free to live new lives no longer enslaved to their sinful passions. Through Christ we can be delivered from hatred.

Paul went on to say that those who have had this life-changing experience through Jesus Christ are now “waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of the great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people zealous for good works” (2:11-14).

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