sin

¿ Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin ?

¿ Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin ?

Half-Truths - Part 5
(based on the book by Adam Hamilton)

August 3, 2025
with special guest preacher: Rev. McKenzie Sefa

Matthew 7:1-5, Matthew 9:9-13
see also: Romans 14:4-13, Acts 11:2-18



Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged. You’ll receive the same judgment you give. Whatever you deal out will be dealt out to you. Why do you see the splinter that’s in your brother’s or sister’s eye, but don’t notice the log in your own eye?

Matthew 7:1-3

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Of all the “half-truths” or statements of “Bumper Sticker Christianity” we have talked about, this one feels the most right.

God hates sin. God loves sinners. So why shouldn’t we do the same?

Unfortunately it’s a bit more complicated than that.

Let’s take the statement apart piece by piece.


1. Hate the Sin.

Yes, of course we must hate sin… all sin. Sin breaks God’s heart and leads to destruction. Sin causes harm to ourselves and to others. There is nothing good about sin. The problem is that we rarely use this statement as a declaration against the sin in our own lives. Paul writes that we have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23) and countless scriptures warn us about judging others because we cannot see clearly with the log of sin in our own eye (Matthew 7:4-5).

Generally this is a statement we use to justify our judgment of people who “sin differently than we do.” We will not say we “hate the sin” of the gluttonous person who eats four desserts at a church potluck, but we are quick to “hate the sin” of the homosexual teenager who never comes to church anymore because everybody glares at him with holier-than-thou stares, which we see as perfectly justified.

Yes, we should hate sin, but we must always begin with our own. Do we truly hate the sinful attitudes and behaviors and habits in our own lives? Do we hate the times we sleep in when we don’t feel like going to church? Do we hate the countless excuses we use for avoiding Bible study or times of prayer? Do we hate the ways we avoid difficult conversations about God with people who need to hear the Good News of the gospel? Do we hate the lustful thoughts that pop in our minds out of nowhere? Do we hate the anger and resentment that fills our heart toward that person we just can’t forgive because “they hurt us so deeply?”

Until we hate the sin in our own hearts enough to repent and change, we have no business calling out the sin in others who sin in ways that may not be a temptation for us.

2. Love the Sinner

The problem here is that it is not our place to decide who is a “sinner” and who is not. As we’ve already seen, we are all sinners. At best, this statement is simply redundant. Love the sinner = love everyone because everyone is a sinner. Why not simply say it the way Jesus said it… Love your neighbor (the fact that they are a sinner is irrelevant to the way we are called to love them). When we say “sinner”, we usually have a specific person or specific characteristic in mind. If we are all “sinners,” we have no business singling out people who struggle with specific types of sin.

Secondly, Jesus never actually called anyone a “sinner.” He called people to repent of their sins, and the sins that most angered him were the sins of the religious crowd who should have known better. But remember, it was the Pharisees and Sadducee's who condemned him for “eating with tax collectors and sinners.” Jesus simply saw them as people who God loved that happened to be caught up in sin. He offered them forgiveness and a fresh start. He loved them even before they “repented” or cleaned up their act. He loved them even when they walked away and refused to repent. Their sin did not have any impact whatsoever on his love for them.

Likewise, someone else’s sin should not be a factor in how we treat them and how we love them.

There is really only one part of this statement that needs to be said.

LOVE.

Period.

Nothing else matters. We are all sinners and we are all loved by God.

While we were still weak, at the right moment, Christ died for ungodly people. It isn’t often that someone will die for a righteous person, though maybe someone might dare to die for a good person. But God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

Romans 5:6-8

Stop worrying about whether you think somebody is a “sinner”. Just love.

We Want a King

We Want a King!

October 6, 2024
Judges 21:25, 1 Samuel 8:1-22 (especially v. 5, 19-20)

In those days there was no king in Israel; each person did what they thought to be right.

Judges 21:25

But the people refused to listen to Samuel and said, “No! There must be a king over us so we can be like all the other nations. Our king will judge us and lead us and fight our battles.”

1 Samuel 8:19-20

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We no longer cry out for a King, but we are still crying for our leaders to fight our battles for us.  We expect our politicians and our military leaders to protect us from other nations, to protect our jobs and our bank accounts, to keep us healthy and well-fed and educated, to maintain a comfortable infrastructure of roads and schools and public servants, etc., and to uphold a particular moral and ethical code for society to function freely.

Though we all have different ideas about how our leaders should go about meeting these needs, how they should fund their projects, and how involved they should be in our everyday life... we are all ultimately  asking for... or voting for the same thing.... We want leaders who will make us strong and competitive like "other nations" and who will "fight our battles for us".... whether our battles against foreign governments, against poverty, against sickness, against crime... against anything that may disrupt our comfortable lives.

Israel’s rejection of God was to have a King like other nations which had ultimate authority over them to  protect them as he saw fit, just like other kings did.  Our leaders are not so powerful... there are limits... checks and balances built into the system... and we view our "kings" as representative of our interests, no matter how diverse and even incompatible those interests may be.

By expecting our leaders to represent us and rule based on what "we the people" deem right and wrong, have we actually reverted to the period of the Judges?

Is it possible that a government "for the people, by the people" is just another way of saying that "each person does what is right in their own eyes..." and that we legitimize it by seeking political representation to make law reflective of what "is right in our eyes".

If this is indeed the case, might our pride and our failures in the American experiment of "self-government" simply be the result of our original sin.... the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and our innate desire to decide for ourselves.... above any king or ruler.... and even above God himself, what is good and evil... and what is right and wrong for us?

And so we find ourselves at a crossroads.  We are living in crisis much like the children of Israel and we have a choice to make.  Will we continue to cry out for a King... whether absolute or merely representative of our own opinions and desires or will we accept that we have had the perfect King all along... that God’s covenant with us still stands... that God has invited us to become citizens of a Divine Kingdom which is not of this world.... and that our very lives depend not on who is in charge of the laws on earth, but rather on how well we obey the laws of Heaven!

Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will be done... on earth as it is in Heaven.  Amen.