And the absolutely perfect love of God demands an absolutely perfect hatred of those things

which are contrary to that love.

God loves perfectly and he hates perfectly.

We love imperfectly and hate imperfectly, but nonetheless it reflects a shadow of what we see

in the perfection of God.

Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.

In a few minutes, John will begin a study from First John Chapter 2. It's a study with a title that

just might surprise you, the love God hates. Well, if you attend church for a few weeks, even one

time, you'll probably hear talk of God's love. It's an aspect of his character that Christians

gladly celebrate and with good

reason. And that being the case, John, I'm wondering why this series, why do our listeners

need to study not only what God loves, but also what he hates?

Wow, I can answer that question so many ways, but let me just kind of play off the contemporary Christian culture.

You would think, if you listen to all the sentimentalism floating around in the name of Christianity,

that God is this loving, sort of forlorn, a beleaguered deity who sits in heaven,

and he's got all this love, and he just wants to dump love on

everybody and he wants to love you unconditionally and it doesn't matter how you live and

he's just so heartbroken because you don't love him back. That is the ridiculous caricature

of God that you can find in many Christian bookstores and in many Christian books.

Let me tell you, there's another side to God. He not only loves, in the way that the Bible says he

loves, but he hates. He hates. He hates with an equal passion, equal zeal, and equal extent.

Anybody who truly loves hates whatever is in opposition to that love.

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