Thanks Tom E. That's whittling to a fine point! We need to stop seeing God as a mortal being is, filled with too human emotions.

I think this is a model quote on the subject:

"Satan works through the elements also to garner his harvest of unprepared souls. He has studied the secrets of the laboratories of nature, and he uses all his power to control the elements as far as God allows. When he was suffered to afflict Job, how quickly flocks and herds, servants, houses, children, were swept away, one trouble succeeding another as in a moment.
It is God that shields His creatures and hedges them in from the power of the destroyer. But the Christian world have shown contempt for the law of Jehovah, and the Lord will do just what He has declared that He would--He will withdraw His blessings from the earth and remove His protecting care from those who are rebelling against His law and teaching and forcing others to do the same. Satan has control of all whom God does not especially guard. He will favor and prosper some, in order to further his own designs; and he will bring trouble upon others and lead men to believe that it is God who is afflicting them."
{CH 460.2}

Let's do some surgery on this verse:

Luke 14:26 If any man come to me, and hate not.....his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.

It becomes clear that here "hate not" means "not regarding as superior, too precious or too important to be in God's control."

It's about keeping Commandment #1 in place #1.
It's about not keeping self as king, always right and never being humbled.

The Bibles says we are created in His image. If that be the case then emotions are just as much a part of God as it is for us.

Presently in our world we may have a distorted understanding of emotions. Emotions are not to rule our faith, nor be an instrument in which to understand truth.

Emotions:

conviction, contempt, despondency, disappointment, disgust, envy, fear, humility, hate, joy, love, loyalty, regret, revenge, sorrow, grief.

God does have emotions, perfect emotions. Gen 6:6 states that it grieved Him in His heart.
Neh 8:10 The joy of the Lord is your strength.

We must not confuse our experience with emotions on the same level of the emotions that God does have to express Himself.

In any understanding of Scripture we must put aside emotions and read the Bible in logic. We also are told that all Scripture must be read literal unless otherwise symbolic in nature.

The concordance states hate 8130/3404 as to hate, to persecute, to detest, to love less. The dictionary gives more: to dislike intensely, detest, abhor, loathe, abominate.

In our understanding of God we must look at God beyond our emotions and distorted concepts. God is love. We must separate what God is to what emotions He can feel, which is love, hate, joy and sorrow as different parts to what makes up God.

Many who say that God's love is unconditional must ask themselves even if we picked the least discription of hate as "to love less" come face to face that God's love must be conditional or else God could not love less. In unconditional love God could not love less.

Daryl:

Like you I have never had a child and never will. Can a person who has never had a child be able to ask and/or answer your question?

What I can do is answer as a child of parents who abused me. Hate and love are emotions. They have their high and low points in our experience. They can change because they are not absolute and are ever changing.

I wanted my parents love, but I got abuse instead. I hated them all my life for what they did to both my sister and me. The difference between my father and my mother is that I was able to learn to love my mother. Why? Because she near the end of her life realized that she was an abusive parent and repented of her deeds. With that healing and forgiveness we were able to reach out and touch each other and love grew between us.

My father on the other hand never repented that I know of and told his family that my sister and I were liars. Therefore my contempt and hate towards him is still there. At one point in my life I went to my fathers grave to forgive him, not for him, because he would not know anyway, but for me.

The hate I felt towards him was consuming me and I had to release it before it destroyed me completely. I still hate him for what he did to us, how it messed up our lives and relationship with others, including God. By doing what I did that day I was able to release all that pain and give it to God. I leave to God his judgment of my Father.

If in God's justice and mercy my earthly Father will be with me for eternity I will accept that because God is perfect and does not make mistakes. It is God's wisdom I trust.

There are good and bad emotions and there is also good and bad understanding and use of emotions. For some Christians it is all to easy to make romantic emotions of our understanding of God. For some it goes against their fear that they are not loved by God, so some have come up with this term, "unconditional love," because they fear that God could reject them if His love was not unconditional.

In the final judgement and before the second death the wicked shall bow before Him and acknowledge that God was indeed just, loving, fair and perfect. This will not be a heart, but a head acknowledgement of God for all to see. That is why they will be destroyed.

Liane

I agree with you that we are created in God's image, and He like us (or perhaps, more accurately, we like Him) has emotions. I agree that God hates. I just don't believe that God hates (in the sense of detest) His children. He hates the sin which destroys them. He "hates the sin, but loves the sinner."

Regarding the word "hate", I provided proof that the word may mean, depending on the context "prefer less". I gave a couple of texts which show that, and if you look at Strong's definition of the word itself, it will tell you that. It doesn't always mean "detest".

God detests wickeness, but not the wicked. God gave His Son that the wicked (which includes us) might be justified by faith.

Perhaps this text will shed more light on God's love for everybody in this world:

quote:

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2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

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The Lord doesn't want anybody to perish.

He wants everybody to repent.

Such love for everybody as demonstrated in the above text.

Then there is also the mysterious side of God as revealed through His strange act.

Hi Tom,

The Bible "directly" says that God hates the wicked. However it also says we are to love the sinner. I have thought about this for a long time wondering how to put the two together. The Bible never says that God hates the sinner. Nor have I found that He loves the wicked.

So I can only be let to believe that there has to be a difference between the wicked and the sinner. The only difference I can see is that there is hope for the sinner, but the wicked are sealed as such and will never change. When this happens in one life I am not sure we know. But I do know that if at any time we want to except Christ then we can not be sealed yet. Being sealed in wickedness can only mean that we have come to the point of commiting the un-pardnable sin by a long time of turning the Holy Spirit away.

God's love will draw the sinner, but I don't feel this is done for the wicked for they no longer will change due to their own choice.

I don't know if this thought has been presented before, but it is the only way I can understand what otherwise does not agree in the Bible. I feel there is always agreement in the Bible, we just need to understand.

The Bible "directly" says many things. It says that God creates evil. It says God killed Saul. It says God moved David to number Israel. It says that God created a covenant that leads to bondage. We need to read the Scriptures intelligently, considering what we know of God's character, especially as revealed in Jesus Christ, in coming to decisions.

For example, we know when the Bible says God killed Saul, it must mean He permitted Saul to kill himself, even though it "directly" says that God killed Him.

So how do we understand that God hates the wicked? In Romans 4 and 5 we are told that God loves His enemies, sinners, and justifies the ungodly. I think you're going to have a difficult time making a case that God hates the wicked while loving enemies, sinners and the ungodly.

The truth is all of us are wicked. It is only by the grace of God that any of us has any righteousness at all. It would be just as appropriate for us to pray, "God, be merciful to me, a wicked person" as to pray, "God, be merciful to me a sinner."

It makes much more sense to me to understand that God's hates the wicked in the sense that He hates sin, and the wicked have identified themselves with sin. But as to the actual wicked person, He continues to love them. When they die, He will cry out, "How can I give you up?" He will lament, as Jesus did for Jerusalem. After all, God loves the wicked so much He sent His Son at the risk of failure and eternal life.

If one of our children, or a spouse, or a parent, were to totally reject Christ, so they are "wicked", would we quit loving them? Is God any less loving than we are?

We Tom, are not to ever judge anyone as "helpless" and as one gone over the line, regardless of what it may seem. This line when crossed is only known to God. It is not shown to us and there is a good reason for that. God only knows the heart. He only knows the future of that person. Never should we cut someone off, it is not our job to judge people in this.

Amen, Marie!

I don't think anybody is questioning that fact.

Frm reading Tom's post, I thought of other interesting texts quoted below where it says in Exodus 8:32 that Pharoah hardened his own heart and then in Exodus 9:12 that God hardened Pharoah's heart.

quote:

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Exodus 8:32 And Pharaoh hardened his heart at this time also, neither would he let the people go.

Exodus 9:12 And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had spoken unto Moses.

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So which is it? Did Pharoah harden his own heart, or did God harden Pharoah's heart?

This may help us to better understand the love-hate aspect of this topic on whether or not God's love is conditional or unconditional.