I recently posted online about an article I was reading with a list of "church sounding phrases" that many assume come from the Bible but are actually from other literary or cultural sources. This list contained many of our favorite phrases like "God helps those who help themselves" and "God never gives you more than you can handle". Each of these phrases have their own merit, but they are exactly scriptural truth.
One phrase that caught my eye was "Love the sinner, Hate the sin". Many assume this is based on scripture, but it misses the mark just a tad.
When most people utter this phrase, they are talking about the many unvirtuous behaviors we see in the world around us. Many Christians will clutch their pearls in horror when they see normalization of homosexual lifestyles or open acceptance of world religions. We huddle in our churches and wag a judgmental finger at the society which as "lost God". That's always been a weird reaction from the church, don't you think? I mean, is the church supposed to expect a fallen world to suddenly start acting pious all on its own?
9 I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. 10 I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters; otherwise you would have to leave the world. 11 But actually, I wrote you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister and is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or verbally abusive, a drunkard or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person. 12 For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders? Don’t you judge those who are inside? 13 God judges outsiders. Remove the evil person from among you. (1 Cor 5:9-13)
Paul offers harsh words against those who proclaim to be a part of the body of Christ, but notice that he doesn't really concern himself with "the world". He explicitly states "for what business is it of mine to judge outsides?" This starts to make sense when we see Christ start differentiating between the spiritually blind and those who can see. In verse 41, he says "if you were blind, you would not have sinned. But now that you say 'we see', you sin remains".
Clearly we shouldn't be worrying ourselves about "hating the sin" because it's bluntly not any of our business to judge a world that is still blind to the Gospel! Christ, himself, took the attitude that our posture towards the blind world should be one of compassion, not judgment... "for I did not come to judge the world, but to save it." (John 12:47)
So maybe the phrase "love the sinner, hate the sin" fixates just a bit too much on the "sin" part of the equation. If there is any sin we should be concerning ourselves with... it's our own. This is why the author I was reading adapted the phrase to be a little more scripturally accurate:
Love the sinner; hate your own sin.
Well played.
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