All of the Attributes of God Are Perfect, Even His Hate

God is perfect in every way. God is perfect in His hatred for the wicked. God hates sin. The perfection of God was once defined by Ravi Zacharias as follows: “God is the only being in existence whose reason for existence is within Himself.” God never changes. Things only change because they’re not perfect. They change to move closer to perfection. If something or someone is perfect it doesn’t need to change. God is perfect in every one of His attributes. God is not a lot of love and a little righteousness. He is not a lot of hate and a little grace. He is perfect in everything. We often think of God as perfect in love and not in hate, but God is perfect altogether.

We live in a culture that celebrates a universal fatherhood of God and speaks of God’s universally equal love for all. I’ve heard presidential hopeful Mitt Romney repeatedly say that, “We’re all children of the same god.” He means it. Mr. Romney is Mormon not Christian. These are romantic notions that are not wise to put on God. Voddie Baucham said it well: “If God loves everyone the same then God’s love is meaningless.” God has a special love for His elect like I have a special love for my wife. God is not the Father of all men. Creator does not equal Father. Scripture says that Christ’s own were adopted by God in Galatians 4:4-5. Adoption is a reality because we were not God’s from birth. He made us His children by adoption.

God is so perfect in His hate towards sinners that He remands them to hell for eternity and never changes His mind about it. That’s a perfect hate. It’s not like a sinner’s hate. While I would attempt to convince anyone of the reasonableness of God’s hate by painting the correct picture of our impiety, or expounding to anyone that such things must be the case because of God’s goodness and justice, the bottom line sometimes is that we’re simply idolatrous. We don’t want a God who is responsible for hell so we paint ourselves a new one. We act as if the devil created hell. We don’t want a God who’s perfect in hate, just one who’s perfect in love and so we paint a new one.

God is perfect in everything good. It is a very good thing to hate evil. No one attribute of God is God’s defining characteristic and none should be exalted to the exclusion of the others. Is your God a God of hate? Is He a just judge who is angry with the wicked every day? Psalm 7:11. Is your Jesus coming to thrash people, “In flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ?” 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9. Is your Jesus the one who Himself treads the winepress of the wrath of God and strikes the nations? Revelation 19:14-15. Is your Jesus one who skips on the Mount of Olives delivering sermonettes about our best lives now, or the one with dirt under His nails that speaks as God and hates iniquity enough to beat away thousands of people in the temple with a whip in zealous anger? John 2:15. I’m no Westboro, but if my God is not furious with this world then I’m not a Christian.

A simple word search on hate:
(Psalm 5:5, 11:5; Hebrews 1:9 from Psalm 45:7; Romans 9:13; Revelation 2:6; Revelation 2:15 (NKJV); Hosea 9:15; Deuteronomy 12:31; Deuteronomy 16:22; Proverbs 6:16; Isaiah 1:14; Isaiah 61:8; Jeremiah 44:4; Amos 5:21; 6:8; Zechariah 8:17; Malachi 1:3; 2:16).

Hatred of evil is an attribute that children of God are to be moving toward. This sometimes translates into a hatred for the sin of not loving our enemies as we should. We’re not perfect in our hatred of evil because we’re not holy. We have to change to get better. I wish I hated my sin as much as God does. Psalm 97:10; 119:104; Proverbs 8:13; 13:5; Amos 5:15.

How God perfectly loves and redeems those He perfectly hates is a wonder hidden in Christ and shown in the cross that, Lord willing, I’ll spend the rest of my life understanding.