30 Days of Truth

Day 27 – love the sinner, period

This is a scripture that you may be familiar with, and yet I believe that many Christians who know this scripture are missing the point of it.

Paul is talking to believers and telling us that our love should be genuine for one another. We should hold tight to what is good and hate what is evil.

This has given rise to “Christianese” statements like “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”

While this statement may sound good on the surface, Jesus never intended for us to live this way and we have a really hard time separating the “sinner” that we are supposed to love, from the “sin” that we are supposed to hate.

How then should we interpret both New Testament and Old Testament scriptures that seem to support the “hate the sin” mentality?

It’s not as hard as you might think.

The focus of this “hate for sin” should not be on the sin of others as much as it should be on hating how sin operates in us.

This doesn’t mean that we should be self-absorbed with our sinful mistakes.

The Holy Spirit is constantly reminding us of who we are in Christ, and His righteousness that we are clothed in. We are righteous and irreproachable before God, because of what Christ has done for us, not because of anything that we do or don’t do.

You see, Paul was addressing believers in the church concerning how THEY were supposed to live.

The focus was never supposed to be on the sin(s) of others.

No, Paul is dealing with matters of the spirit in the context of believers.

We have somehow taken scriptures like this and twisted them to make us believe that we are the judges of others and their behavior.

We have excused ourselves to such an extent that we have supported shunning and separating ourselves from those who “sin” instead of embracing them in the love of Christ.

All the while, we have become hypocrites, operating under the Old Covenant which was never our covenant to begin with.

We have placed ourselves under the very laws and traditions that blinded the Pharisees to the truth of God’s love, mercy and grace towards mankind.

We have looked at the sins which are exposed in the lives of others, and we have passed judgment on them.

We have labeled those based on their behavior, instead of looking at them the way that God sees them.

Our religious traditions have taught us that God sees them as filthy sinners that are bound for Hell.

But God doesn’t see them that way.

God sees the potential in them.

He sees the sacrifice of His Son on their behalf.

God sees them with loving eyes, and while God hates what sin is doing in their lives, God doesn’t turn away from them. He gently and lovingly invites them into relationship with Him.

God sent His Son to take care of their sins. He has already forgiven them and forgotten their sins.

It is only their rejection of Him that separates them from being one with Him.

God hasn’t called us to be separate from the world physically, but to be separate spiritually.

We are to be in the world but not of the world.

He wants the love of our soul to be Him alone.

Christians today don’t understand this truth, so they struggle to live in a world that they believe God wants them to be separate from.

The struggle to love a sinner that they believe God is disgusted with.

They struggle to keep themselves holy, when God already told them that they were ALREADY made holy in Christ.

It is truly this quest for holiness that keeps them exalted in themselves; haughty. It is this haughtiness that makes it frustratingly impossible to separate the “sin” from the sinner, and to “hate the sin” but “love the sinner”.

In order to love the sinner, we must look past their sin and see their potential. This doesn’t mean that justice must not have its day when they violate the laws of man.

Yet we condemn sinners that are not criminals. We condemn mothers and fathers, brothers, sisters and co-workers.

We condemn them and believe that we are better than them.

We so easily forget our own sins, and the life of sin that God brought us out of.

We so easily forget that we were once lost.

People that live in a lifestyle of sin, don’t need us to look down on their behavior.

They need us to look at them the way that Christ looked at us; the way that Christ looked at all of mankind.

Love the sinner, period.

John 8:10-11 KJV

[10] When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? [11] She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.