So I decided to talk about the old adage of "love the sinner, hate the sin". Here goes.
Baby, Don’t Hurt Me:
Aristotle defined love as, “To seek the good of another.” [Rhet. ii, 4] From that starting point we can see some of the basics. It is good to not be starving. It is good to be healthy. It is good to not be ridiculed. Stuff like that.
But the question becomes more uncertain as you zoom out. Eventually you reach a point where you ask, what is the ultimate good of a human being?
Onto the scene steps Augustine of Hippo. Throughout much of his life he lived as a pleasure-seeking playboy. He tasted all the finest wines, enjoyed great riches, and bedded beautiful women. In the end he found himself empty and unhappy. Then he read the letters of Saint Paul, converted to Christianity, and concluded: "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." [Confessions 1:1]
Augustine saw clearly that the ultimate good of a human isn’t to maximize pleasure before death, but to be a saint. The final good of a human is union with God, and true love can never draw a person away from that end.
Loving Sinners, Hating Sin:
We’ve all heard the saying, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” The phrase is a staple of Christian culture. However, many people see it as an excuse to mercilessly harp on people while still claiming to love them. Thus, they ask, “Why is it even your business to hate the sin? Why can’t you be happy loving the sinner?”
Imagine that a friend of yours has cancer. You probably don’t see the cancer as a valid part of the person’s body. Rather, the disease is an attack on your friend’s body. As you see your friend suffer, your love for your friend will lead you to experience intense hatred for his cancer.
The two feelings will be directly proportional to one another. The more you love your friend, the more you’ll hate the cancer. Why? Because loving a person naturally leads us to hate everything that harms him.
Likewise, sin is not part of who we are. Sin harms us and distorts the person we are supposed to be. Pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust – these are all poisons for the soul. They are chains that bind us and prevent us from attaining true freedom.
One Compels the Other:
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus dragged the Pharisees over the coals for their tyranny and shallowness. He called them things like “white-washed tombs” and “hypocrites”. However, those harsh words were simply what they needed to hear. Jesus loved them just as much as He loved the woman caught in adultery, to whom He said, “Nor do I condemn you, go and sin no more.”
Hating the sin without loving the sinner turns a person into a pious, arrogant referee. Like the Pharisees, it means you are more interested in having a sterile moral environment than bringing people to God.
On the other hand, love for the sinner without hatred for sin reduces love down to a polite sentimental niceness. It flies the banner of love while abandoning the person’s highest good.
In reality we cannot separate one from the other. Both elements are necessary to form genuine Christian love.
Practice Makes Perfect:
But what does this look like in practice? Is it a license to badger people about their faults in the name of helping them? No, we're warned specifically against that. [see Matt 7:3-5]
Instead, we must follow what Paul said to the Corinthians about love. It is a love which is patient and kind. One which is neither boastful or arrogant, ill-mannered or self-interested. A love which takes no delight in harm, but rejoices always in the truth. A love which endures all things, never loses hope, and never fails. [1 Cor. 13:4-8]
A love which ultimately draws us up to the God who is love.
Thank you for joining me.
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