Hannibal Barca was one of the
greatest, if not the greatest,
military general of all time. You may
know him as ‘Hannibal the Annihilator’ or ‘Hannibal the Conqueror’. He was the general of the great and storied
world empire of Carthage in Northern Africa.
Rome nearly fell two hundred years before the ministry of Christ because
of Hannibal’s rabid military pursuits against it. Against all odds, Hannibal nearly destroyed
the great empire of Rome. How was the
mighty general Hannibal so driven to defeat the Roman Empire? It was because as a sacrifice to pledge to
the Carthaginian god, Hannibal’s father made Hannibal vow to hate Rome forever and never surrender to it.
To Christians who are born again
into God’s family (Jn. 3:3; Gal. 3:26-27), the heavenly Father charges to hate evil and never surrender. In describing characteristics of mind and
action that are to characterize Christians, Paul declared, “Abhor what is
evil. Cling to what is good” (Rom. 12:9).
Children of God are to imitate the heavenly Father who is pure,
holy and good by His very nature.
Because God’s nature is such, anything contrary to His nature is wholly
against Him. Therefore, Christians
should be wholly against those things.
It is rather interesting in this chapter, immediately following a
command to love is a command to hate. It
is a praiseworthy and necessary thing
to hate evil and to hate sin if one so desires to please God. The hate stems from a love for God.
Love is not a blind sentiment. On the contrary, it is discerning. It commits itself to the good of the other
regardless of the cost to self. This
love is so passionately devoted to its beloved object that it hates every evil
that is incompatible with His highest welfare.
No doubt, whoever does not hate evil cannot love or retain virtue. One has said, “Refusing to condemn evil in
whatever form it takes or tolerating evil for whatever reason when there is
within our power the ability to do something about it, is no longer love.” For the person that would love God, there
must be a healthy hatred of moral evil and sin wherever it is to be found.
So it is true that to hate evil and
hold fast to that which is good is something much more than a generic
platitude. It is a cultivation of a love
for God that can only grow in the garden of obedience to His word. When it comes
to loving God, we have to find out what He hates (i.e. evil, those things
contrary to His nature) and what He loves (i.e. good, those things consistent
with His nature).
The problem is that the line between
good and evil is blurred in the minds of many.
Many seem to fail step number one; i.e. identifying what is evil and
what is good. I fear that many today,
because of ignorance, believe they are pleasing God (or at least the God is
unconcerned) with their lifestyle, when in fact they are invoking His wrath. Isaiah pronounced doom to those who “call
evil good, and good evil” (Isa. 5:20).
Because of this danger, the Christian must learn to discern the Lord’s
will. To discern between good and evil
requires disciplined training in God’s word: “But solid food is for the
mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and
evil” (Heb. 5:14). We are to “test
all things” and “hold fast what is good” (1 Thes. 5:21). Once we discern what is evil, we must
cultivate a hatred for that evil. Just
like we can grow in our love for God, we can grow in our hatred for sin.
We
must all understand that hating evil and cleaving to good are both necessary
sides to the “loving God” coin. They are
a package deal. You cannot have one
without the other. One cannot adequately
appreciate, associate and cling to that which is good without a bitter disdain
for evil. One cannot have a proper loathing for evil without bonding to virtue. Yet, it would appear that many today claim to
“love God” but do not so much as blush at the gross immorality that it taking
place all around them. We only deceive
ourselves if we claim to love God when we will not feel even the least bit of
righteous indignation when His goodness is scandalized.
May
we all so have the mind of Christ that we learn to develop a bitter hatred for
sin and evil and the desire to be bonded to the good.
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