That’s Offensive! Week 7: Hatred

1 John 2:3-11 

Our love for God and our belonging to God, our identity in Christ, are both demonstrated by our obedience to his commands.  There is no other way to show it.  We can’t send God a nice gift basket, so we show our love by doing his will. 

John tells us to, “Live your life as Christ did.”  So, I guess we should work awhile as a carpenter, then become a traveling preacher, and call 12 disciples, right?  No.  The question is, “What would Jesus do if he was living in your life?”  He would love others sacrificially.  He would speak the truth.  He would do all the good he could, in whatever ways he could.  He would seek to know and do the Father’s will.  He would build up the faith of others and encourage them to know and do God’s will.  So, we should do those things in the context of our life.   

John tells us that this command to love others is both old and new.  And it is.  It’s old.  It was part of the Old Testament Law.  Leviticus 19:17-18 says, “You must not nurse hatred in your heart,” and, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  But it’s also a new command in Christ.  In John 13, Jesus says, “A new command I give you:  Love each other as I have loved you.”  Jesus is now the standard for our love.  He loved sacrificially.  He served others.  He laid down his life for others.   

Love is not the same thing as niceness.  Maybe we reduce the Christian life to just being a “nice person.”  Well, Jesus spoke harshly to the Pharisees and others at times.  He gave them a wake-up call.  There is no love in failing to speak the truth to those who are going the wrong way in life, even if they don’t want to hear it.   

But we must not hate others.  If love is defined by choice and actions, then hate is the same way.  Feelings are secondary.   

It’s a fact of life that there are going to be people for whom we have feelings of dislike.  Personality clashes are part of life.  But also, if someone has wronged us in the past, we may struggle to have positive feelings toward them, maybe for a long time.  But in any case, we are called to love others:  To pray for them, serve them, help them in their time of need, and even sacrifice for them.   

If we refuse to do these things, that is hatred.  Love seeks what is good for others.  Hatred does not.  Wishing harm, or hurt, or disaster on another is hatred.   

And we should notice here that John portrays relationships in terms of either/or.  He doesn’t leave a middle ground.  There’s no place for “I don’t hate that person.  I just don’t want anything to do with them.”  Neglect and contempt are just varying degrees of hatred.   

We’re all going to have people in our lives that we would rather not deal with.  We don’t actively wish harm on them, but we just don’t want to have any dealings with them.  We are still called to love those people.  We are called to pray for them, serve them, and help them when they are in their time of need.   

When Jesus was asked what it meant to love your neighbor, he told the parable of the Good Samaritan.  The highway robbers obviously hated the man, since they stole his money, beat him up, and left him for dead.  The priest and the Levite didn’t actively hate him, but they neglected him.  They were unwilling to act for his benefit.  And by Jesus’ definition, that is hatred.  They were not actively seeking his good, so they were not loving him.  The Samaritan man probably wanted to just keep walking, the same as they did.  Given the history between Jews and Samaritans in the first century, he probably didn’t want to stop and help.  But he did it anyway.  That is love.   

When you see your neighbor in need, don’t keep walking.  Love your neighbor, as Christ loved you.