If you love good HATE evil

I was reading the Psalms and I read this verse:

"For you, O LORD, are most high over all the earth;
you are exalted far above all gods."

The reference excited me because this is part of a praise song we sing often. It is important that we worship the God who is, the God who rules all the earth, and that we allow nothing to approach His sanctuary in our minds. But then I read the next verse:

"O you who love the LORD, hate evil!"

This is when I realized the truth of hatred.

In the world hatred is something a person throws at anything that really gets in their way. The scripture says that we were once "haters of men" and at the same time we were also "lovers of ourselves". These two phrases mean the exact same thing: because we loved ourselves so much we hated anything that troubled us. Our focus was completely "me-centered"; in our daily planning we were atheists.

The reason our hatred was wrong was because its focus was wrong, just like the reason our love was counted against us was because it was focused on the wrong object. Because we worshiped our own desires we had an uncontrollable urge, something the bible calls lust, to fulfill those desires. Anything that got in our way was hated, but the Christian is different.

The Christian worships God; his love is directed at God and the things of God. We have come to love what is good, but we must recognize the importance of hating evil.

"O you who love the LORD, hate evil!"

This isn't a statement of fact, this verse doesn't assume that everyone who loves God will hate evil. What it is saying is a lesson, a lesson in a single phrase: if you love God learn to hate evil.

The battle with sin is an intense one, one in which we gain many victories and suffer some defeats. In this war sin never relents, it never hides, it never stops advancing. We cannot make peace with this enemy, we can not negotioate or have an "understanding" with it - the only way to live victoriously is to defeat it.

To win against sin we need the proper attitude for victory. Do you have a struggle with a particular sin? Does it seem as if Satan is constantly trying to hammer you in one particular area? Then learn to hate that sin, detest that sin. Learn to see that sin as God sees it. When we do this we begin to walk the path of righteousness.

So let's join the psalmist in his praise, let's see sin for the destructive force that it is.

"O you who love the LORD, hate evil!"