“For you are not a God who is pleased with wickedness; with You, evil people are not welcome.” (Psalm 5:4 NIV)
Consider for a moment, how vastly different the God of Israel was from the false gods of the ancient world. Make required child sacrifice: passing children through fire for financial prosperity. Baal begged for self-injury in his presence. Asherah worship require prostitution and immoral sex acts. All the idols were pleased with wickedness, delighted in evil.
Set apart in high contrast: Yahweh was put off by wickedness. The One True God hates sin because it separates Him from His people. We forget this in our modern church culture. We’ve whitewashed conviction and confession with oversimplification: God is love. And He is, but He is also just. He hates sin so much that He sent His Son to pay the price so that when we encounter Him we can repent and express belief in His sacrifice; then and only then are we are forgiven and restored.
In our restored state, we mustn’t forget: God still hates sin. When we love Him, we learn to hate sin as He does. We begin to see clearly how damaging sin is to our spirits, our frames, our relationships and our world.
“No one who lives in Him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen Him or known Him.
(1 John 3:6 NIV)
Our despise for sin is evidence of our allegiance to God.
Sin is the most destructive force on the planet. In order to belong to God, we must recognize it and be repulsed by it. We must confess our contribution and learn to walk in the way of holiness alongside our Savior.
When we pretend people aren’t sinning, we are pretending they aren’t dying. It does them no good. The truth is the cure they require: you are lost in sin but there is a Savior.
Lord, we live in a culture that hates truth almost as much as it loves sin. Let our lives demonstrate the power of surrender to a holy God. Eradicate sin from our systems as we seek to live enamored with You. Grant us the strength to tell the truth and set others free through our testimony. Amen.