Part IV: The Biblical Evidence — God's Emotions in Scripture

Chapter 18

The Hatred of God

What God Cannot Tolerate

Introduction: The Most Uncomfortable Divine Emotion

"God hates." Of all the statements we could make about God's emotional life, this one may be the most uncomfortable. We are perfectly at ease saying "God loves." Most of us can accept "God grieves" or "God is angry." But hatred? Doesn't love rule out hatred? Can the God who is love (1 John 4:8) also be a God who hates? The very idea sounds like a contradiction. It feels wrong. It makes us squirm.

And yet the Bible says it — repeatedly, clearly, and without apology. God hates evil. God hates injustice. God hates deception, violence, pride, and cruelty. In some texts, God even says He hates evildoers — not just their actions, but the people who commit them. This is difficult terrain. But if we are going to take the biblical testimony about God's emotional life seriously — if we are going to listen to what God says about Himself rather than just what we are comfortable hearing — then we cannot skip over divine hatred.

The thesis of this chapter is straightforward: while love is God's defining characteristic, the Bible also portrays God as hating evil, injustice, and the harm it causes His children — and this hatred is itself an expression of His love. Far from contradicting God's love, divine hatred is love's necessary companion. A God who loves children must hate child abuse. A God who loves justice must hate injustice. A God who loves truth must hate lies. A God who loves His people must hate whatever destroys them. To put it simply: God's hatred is love in its reactive, protective mode.¹

I believe that understanding divine hatred correctly is one of the most important things we can do as we work through the full range of God's emotional life. If we leave hatred out, we end up with a sentimentalized God — a God who smiles at everything and tolerates everything, who has no backbone and no standards. That is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible loves fiercely, and because He loves fiercely, He hates fiercely. His hatred is not the opposite of His love. It is the dark underside of His love — the fire that burns when something threatens what He treasures most.

In this chapter, we will examine the Hebrew and Greek vocabulary for hatred, walk through the key biblical texts where God expresses hatred, wrestle with the difficult question of whether God hates sinners or just their sin, and explore how divine hatred fits into the passibility/impassibility debate. Along the way, I think we will discover something surprising: divine hatred, rightly understood, is actually one of the most reassuring things we can learn about God. It means that evil does not leave Him cold. It means that injustice is not a matter of indifference to the Creator of the universe. It means that when innocents are harmed, God does not look away with serene, undisturbed composure. He hates what is destroying His children — and that hatred is the other side of His love.

Defining Hatred: What Do We Mean?

Before we dive into the biblical material, we need to make sure we understand what hatred actually means in Scripture. In everyday English, the word "hate" gets used in many different ways. We say "I hate to bother you" or "I hate flying" when all we really mean is that we find something mildly unpleasant. In those everyday uses, "hate" is an exaggeration. It is hyperbole — a dramatic way of saying "I don't enjoy this." Nobody who says "I hate flying" is expressing the kind of deep emotional revulsion that the word "hate" normally carries.²

But when the Bible talks about hatred — and especially when it talks about God's hatred — something far deeper is in view. In Scripture, to hate something means to feel strong dislike or disgust toward it. Synonyms include loathe, detest, abhor, and despise. As David Lamb notes, on Robert Plutchik's well-known "wheel of emotions," the closest emotional category to hatred starts with boredom, intensifies to disgust, and reaches its peak in loathing.³ When the Bible says God hates something, we are not in the territory of mild annoyance. We are dealing with a deep, visceral, powerful emotional response — a response that involves evaluation, judgment, and revulsion.

This is important for the passibility debate. As we explored in Chapter 2, emotions are not just raw feelings; they involve cognition, evaluation, and intentionality. Hatred is a prime example. To hate something is to judge it as deeply wrong, harmful, or repulsive. It is to see something clearly for what it is and to respond with moral revulsion. When God hates, He is not having a mindless emotional outburst. He is making a moral evaluation — a perfectly accurate assessment of the destructiveness and ugliness of evil — and responding to that assessment with an emotional intensity that matches the reality. God's hatred of evil is the perfectly appropriate emotional response to genuine wickedness. Far from being a deficiency, it is a form of moral perfection.⁴

The Hebrew Vocabulary of Divine Hatred

The Old Testament uses a relatively small number of words for hatred, but the ones it uses are powerful. Two Hebrew terms are especially important for understanding what God hates and how He hates it.

Sana' (שָׂנֵא) — "To Hate"

The primary Hebrew word for hatred is the verb sana' (שָׂנֵא), which simply means "to hate." It appears 148 times in the Old Testament.⁵ Most of the time, sana' describes human hatred — one person hating another. Joseph's brothers hated him because their father loved him more (Genesis 37:4–5, 8). Amnon hated Tamar after he assaulted her (2 Samuel 13:15). These are examples of sinful, destructive human hatred.

But sana' is also used of God. And here is where things get interesting — and uncomfortable. God uses this word to describe His response both to evil actions and, in certain passages, to evil people. In Amos 5:21, God declares, "I hate (sana'), I despise your feasts" — expressing His revulsion toward Israel's empty religious rituals. In Hosea 9:15, God says of His unfaithful people, "All their evil is in Gilgal; there I began to hate them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of my house. I will love them no more." Here, the hatred is directed not just at the behavior but at the people themselves — "I began to hate them."⁶

The related noun sin'ah (שִׂנְאָה), meaning "hatred," appears much less frequently. It is used primarily of human hatred, as in Psalm 139:22 where the psalmist declares, "I hate (sana') them with complete hatred (sin'ah)." Interestingly, the noun form is used of God only in two passages (Deuteronomy 1:27 and 9:28), and in both cases it is not God actually hating but rather the Israelites accusing God of hating them: "Because the LORD hated us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 1:27). This is a false accusation — the people misinterpreting God's discipline as hatred — but it shows how powerful and unsettling the language of divine hatred was even in ancient Israel.⁷

To'evah (תּוֹעֵבָה) — "Abomination" or "Detestable Thing"

The second key Hebrew term is to'evah (תּוֹעֵבָה), usually translated as "abomination" or "detestable thing." This word means something disgusting, something that is offensive to one's sensibilities, something that provokes revulsion.⁸ For something to be a to'evah to the Lord means that it is not merely prohibited — it is repulsive to God. It offends His very nature. The word carries an emotional weight that goes beyond legal prohibition. It tells us that God does not simply forbid certain things from a position of cool detachment. He finds them disgusting. They are offensive to His moral sensibilities.

As Jesse Morrell points out, for anything to be an abomination to the Lord presupposes that the Lord can be pleased or displeased, that He has what Morrell calls "the necessary sensibilities or tastes for such an occurrence."⁹ An impassible God — a God who cannot be emotionally affected by anything — cannot truly find anything "detestable." Detesting something is an emotional response. It requires the kind of inner life that strict impassibility denies to God.

To'evah is used of practices God finds utterly repulsive: idolatry, injustice, deceit, violence, and moral corruption. In Proverbs 6:16, it appears alongside sana' — "There are six things the LORD hates (sana'), seven that are detestable (to'evah) to him." The pairing of these two words creates a powerful picture: God both hates and finds repulsive the behaviors listed in that passage. His response to evil is not merely intellectual disapproval. It is emotional revulsion.

The Greek Vocabulary of Divine Hatred

Miseō (μισέω) — "To Hate"

In the New Testament, the primary Greek word for hatred is the verb miseō (μισέω), which means "to hate" or "to detest." It appears about forty times in the New Testament, usually describing human attitudes toward other people.¹⁰ But two uses are especially important for our purposes.

First, in Luke 14:26, Jesus uses miseō in one of His most provocative statements: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate (miseō) his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." This is clearly hyperbolic — Jesus is not literally commanding His followers to hate their families. The parallel passage in Matthew 10:37 clarifies the meaning: "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me." In Luke's version, "hate" is used hyperbolically to mean "love less" — to express the demand for supreme, undivided allegiance to Jesus. This use of miseō is instructive because it shows that the word "hate" in a Semitic context can sometimes carry a comparative meaning rather than a meaning of absolute revulsion.¹¹ We will return to this insight when we consider the Malachi 1:2–3 passage below.

Second, and more directly relevant to divine hatred, miseō appears in Revelation 2:6, where the risen Christ tells the church at Ephesus: "Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate (miseō)." Here, Jesus — the incarnate God, the one who said "whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9) — declares that He hates. He hates the destructive practices of the Nicolaitans, and He commends the Ephesian Christians for sharing His hatred. If Jesus reveals the heart of the Father, then this text tells us something about God's own emotional life: the Father, too, hates what is evil.¹²

The Biblical Evidence: What Does God Hate?

Now that we have our vocabulary in place, let us turn to the specific biblical texts that describe divine hatred. We will move through the evidence carefully, allowing each text to speak on its own terms before drawing broader theological conclusions.

Proverbs 6:16–19 — God's "Least Favorite Things"

Perhaps the most famous catalogue of things God hates is found in Proverbs 6:16–19:

There are six things the LORD hates (sana'), seven that are detestable (to'evah) to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers. (ESV)

This passage is structured using a numerical pattern common in Hebrew poetry — "six things ... seven" — where the author first states a number and then adds one more. As Old Testament scholar Derek Kidner notes, this device is a way of showing that the list is specific but not exhaustive.¹³ God does not hate only these seven things. These are representative examples of a broader category: things that harm people and destroy community.

What is striking about this list is that the objects of God's hatred are described through body parts. Lamb observes that the detestable list includes five organs, starting at the top of the body (eyes and tongue, v. 17), moving to the middle (hands and heart, vv. 17c–18a), and ending at the bottom (feet, v. 18b). As the list concludes, it broadens from specific body parts to a whole witness (v. 19a), which involves multiple organs working together, and then to a whole person — "one who sows discord among brothers" (v. 19b).¹⁴

Why body parts? Because God created every part of our bodies and called them good (Genesis 1:26–31). When our body parts are functioning as they were designed, they would not provoke divine hatred. The text adds a description to each body part explaining why God finds it detestable in this context. The problem is not the eyes, the tongue, the hands, the heart, or the feet. The problem is what these body parts are doing: the eyes are looking down on others with pride; the tongue is lying; the hands are shedding innocent blood; the heart is plotting wickedness; the feet are racing toward evil.¹⁵

Notice the pattern. Every single item on this list involves harming other people. Pride puts others down. Lying cheats and damages others. Violence causes pain, suffering, and death. Wicked schemes exploit the vulnerable. Eagerness for evil multiplies suffering. False testimony perverts justice and destroys the innocent. Discord tears apart communities. As Lamb rightly observes: "The reason God hates these seven evil things is that they all harm people made in his image. The hatred of God is motivated by the love of God."¹⁶

This is a crucial insight. God does not hate these things arbitrarily. He does not hate them because He is a cosmic killjoy who enjoys making rules. He hates them because they destroy what He loves. His hatred is protective. It is the hatred of a Father who cannot stand to see His children harmed. And that means God's hatred, at its very core, is an expression of love.

Psalm 5:5 — "You Hate All Evildoers"

If Proverbs 6:16–19 is about God hating evil actions, Psalm 5:5 pushes us further into uncomfortable territory:

The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. (ESV)

This is one of the most striking and uncomfortable statements in the entire Psalter. The text does not say God hates the deeds of evildoers. It says God hates the evildoers themselves. This raises an obvious question: Does God hate persons, not just actions?

Several interpretive options have been offered. Some scholars argue that this is hyperbolic or poetic language — that the psalmist is exaggerating for rhetorical effect, much as Jesus uses "hate" hyperbolically in Luke 14:26. On this reading, what the psalmist really means is that God strongly opposes evildoers and will not tolerate their presence before Him. Others argue that "evildoers" here functions as a metonymy — a figure of speech where the person stands for the evil they practice. On this reading, God hates "evildoers" in the sense that He hates the evil they embody and perpetuate.¹⁷

A third option — and I think the most textually honest one — is to take the statement at face value while holding it in tension with the rest of Scripture. The psalmist is not speaking carelessly. He genuinely means that God's hatred extends to the people who persistently, deliberately, and unrepentantly practice evil. But this does not mean God's hatred is His only response to such people. God can simultaneously hate a person's wickedness and love that person as someone made in His image — just as a parent can love a child and hate the child's destructive behavior. The hatred is genuine, but it operates alongside love, patience, and the desire for repentance. We will return to this tension below.

Psalm 11:5 — "His Soul Hates the Wicked"

Psalm 11:5 reinforces and intensifies the language of Psalm 5:5:

The LORD tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence. (ESV)

Several things stand out here. First, notice the phrase "his soul hates." This is remarkable. The Hebrew word translated "soul" is nephesh (נֶפֶשׁ), which refers to the whole inner self, the seat of emotions and desires. The psalmist is saying that God's hatred of the wicked comes from His innermost being. It is not a superficial, external response. It comes from deep within God Himself. If we take this seriously, it means that God's emotional life includes genuine, deeply felt revulsion toward those who persistently practice wickedness and violence.¹⁸

Second, notice the contrast: God "tests" the righteous but "hates" the wicked. There is a real emotional differentiation in how God relates to different people based on their moral character. This is not the picture of a God who relates to everyone with the same undisturbed equanimity. God's relational states genuinely differ depending on the moral condition of the people He encounters. He responds differently to the righteous and the wicked — not merely in His actions, but in His emotional engagement. As we argued in Chapter 12, this kind of genuine relational responsiveness is at the heart of what it means for God to be passible — genuinely affected by and responsive to His creatures.

Morrell makes a helpful observation here. He notes that the Bible affirms not only that God has a soul — an inner emotional life — but that He has "very strong emotional opposition to sin, so much so that sin wearies and troubles Him."¹⁹ God does not merely decide that wickedness is wrong as a matter of abstract principle. Wickedness disturbs Him. It offends Him. It provokes a deep, felt response from the core of His being. An impassible God — a God who cannot be emotionally affected by anything — could not be said to have a soul that hates. The language of Psalm 11:5 presupposes a God with genuine affective states, a God who is emotionally engaged with the moral condition of His creatures.

Amos 5:21 — "I Hate, I Despise Your Feasts"

In Amos 5:21, God directs His hatred not at violent wickedness but at something that might surprise us: religious worship.

"I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." (Amos 5:21–24, ESV)

This text is explosive. God is not talking about pagan worship or idolatry. He is talking about Israel's worship — the feasts and sacrifices that He Himself had commanded. And He says He hates them. He despises them. He refuses to accept them. He will not even listen to their music.

Why? Because the worship is disconnected from justice. The Israelites were showing up at the temple, going through the motions of piety, singing their songs, and offering their sacrifices — while simultaneously oppressing the poor, perverting justice in the courts, and exploiting the vulnerable. Their worship had become an empty performance — a religious facade that covered up social injustice. And God finds this detestable.²⁰

What God demands instead is "justice" and "righteousness" — social equity and moral integrity. The message is clear: God would rather have no worship at all than worship that comes from people who trample on the poor and ignore the suffering of their neighbors. As Isaiah 1:14 puts it in a parallel passage: "Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they are a trouble unto me; I am weary of bearing them."

Notice again the emotional language. God does not merely reject these empty rituals as procedurally deficient. He hates them. They are "a trouble" to Him. He is "weary" of bearing them. This is the language of emotional exhaustion — a God who is tired of the hypocrisy, who is drained by the disconnect between pious words and unjust deeds. As Morrell notes, for God to say He is "weary to bear them" presupposes that He has the emotional sensibilities that can be wearied, troubled, and burdened.²¹

Hosea 9:15 — "There I Began to Hate Them"

Another deeply challenging text is Hosea 9:15, where God declares:

"Every evil of theirs is in Gilgal; there I began to hate them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of my house. I will love them no more; all their princes are rebels." (ESV)

This verse is remarkable for several reasons. First, God says He "began to hate them" — using the verb sana'. The hatred was prompted by their evil actions at Gilgal. God's hatred is not arbitrary or random. It is a response to specific evil behavior. The people provoked it by their wickedness.²²

Second, notice the astonishing statement: "I will love them no more." This is one of the most emotionally raw declarations in the prophets. God is saying that His relational stance toward these people has changed. He once loved them — they were His covenant people, His chosen nation, the recipients of His affection and care. But their persistent, unrepentant wickedness has provoked a shift in His emotional engagement. He will no longer extend to them the emotional delight and affective warmth that "love" implies.

Does this mean God stops caring about them entirely? I do not think so. The broader context of Hosea makes clear that God's heart remains torn — as we see in Hosea 11:8, where God cries out, "How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? ... My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused" (discussed in detail in Chapter 15). God's hatred for His people's wickedness and His love for His people as His covenant children exist in agonizing tension. But the point of Hosea 9:15 is that God's emotional engagement is genuinely responsive to what His people do. Their behavior provokes real emotional change in God. This is precisely what passibility means: God is genuinely affected by His creatures.

Morrell draws out an important implication. If the "love" in this passage is contrasted with "hate," and the hatred spoken of is emotional, then the love must also be emotional. God's love for His people was not merely a matter of cold, volitional commitment — it involved genuine emotional delight, pleasure, and affective warmth. When that love is withdrawn and replaced by hatred, what changes is God's emotional state. The wicked have become "odious" to Him, "abhorrent to His sensibilities."²³

Isaiah 61:8 — "I the LORD Love Justice; I Hate Robbery and Wrong"

Not every hatred text is as emotionally charged as Hosea 9:15. Some are more straightforward declarations of God's moral commitments. Isaiah 61:8 is a good example:

"For I the LORD love justice; I hate robbery and wrong; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them." (ESV)

Here the structure is simple and illuminating: God loves justice, and therefore He hates its opposite — robbery and wrong. The hatred flows directly from the love. God's hatred of injustice is not an independent emotion operating in isolation. It is a consequence of His love for justice. As Lamb observes, God hates evil "because he loves justice (Isaiah 61:8; Amos 5:15), because he loves good (Amos 5:15), and because he loves righteousness (Psalm 45:7). God's hatred of these things is part of what makes him good."²⁴

This is a principle we see again and again throughout the biblical witness: God's hatred is always motivated by His love. He does not hate in a vacuum. He hates because He loves, and the things He hates are the things that threaten, corrupt, and destroy the things He loves. Hatred and love, in God's emotional life, are not opponents. They are partners. They are two sides of the same holy coin.

The Most Difficult Case: "Jacob I Loved, but Esau I Hated" (Malachi 1:2–3)

Of all the divine hatred texts in Scripture, none has generated more controversy and confusion than Malachi 1:2–3:

"I have loved you," says the LORD. But you say, "How have you loved us?" "Is not Esau Jacob's brother?" declares the LORD. "Yet I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated (sana'). I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert." (ESV)

God's declaration that He "loved Jacob but hated Esau" has troubled readers for millennia. Jacob and Esau were twin brothers, the sons of Isaac and Rebekah, and the grandsons of Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 25:19–26). Why would God hate one twin and love the other? Does this mean God arbitrarily chooses to love some people and hate others? Is this proof of an unconditional predestination to destruction? What are we supposed to do with this text?

Lamb identifies three interpretive options, and examining all three helps us understand what is going on.²⁵

Option 1: "Hate" Means "Love Less"

The first option is that "hate" here is a Semitic idiom meaning "love less by comparison." This use of "hate" has a clear parallel in Jesus' command to "hate" one's family in Luke 14:26, where the meaning is clearly "love less than me." On this reading, God is saying that He chose Jacob over Esau — He gave Jacob a greater role in salvation history, a greater measure of covenantal privilege. He did not literally despise Esau. He loved Esau less.

This interpretation finds support in the broader Genesis narrative. Esau was indeed a flawed person — he despised his birthright (Genesis 25:29–34) and plotted to kill his brother (Genesis 27:41). But God still blessed him. God promised that Esau would become a great nation (Genesis 25:23). Esau's descendants became the nation of Edom, and God gave them the land of Seir as their possession (Deuteronomy 2:4–6). When Jacob and Esau were reconciled, Esau testified that he had abundant possessions — blessings presumably received from God (Genesis 33:9). Based on these texts, it is quite reasonable to say that God loved Esau less than Jacob, but still genuinely loved and blessed him.²⁶

Option 2: "Hate" Means "Not Choose" (Covenantal Rejection)

The second option draws on Paul's use of this passage in Romans 9:13. In that context, Paul is making a point about God's sovereign freedom in election. Before the twins were born, God selected the younger (Jacob) over the older (Esau) — reversing the normal birthright customs. Paul uses the Malachi quotation to illustrate that God's covenantal choice was His sovereign prerogative. On this reading, "hated" means "not chosen" or "rejected" in a covenantal sense — not that God felt personal animosity toward Esau, but that He did not select Esau for the same covenantal role He gave to Jacob.²⁷

Lamb notes that several New Testament scholars take this reading, arguing that the divine hatred in Malachi is not emotional but is focused on will and election. However, as Lamb pointedly observes, they provide no actual support for the idea of a hatred completely devoid of emotions. There is nothing in Malachi 1 itself that suggests the hatred is non-emotional. In fact, the context speaks not only of hate but also of love (mentioned three times) and wrath (Malachi 1:4). As Lamb puts it, stripping the emotional content out of "hate" in this passage has no textual warrant.²⁸

Option 3: "Hate" Means "Judged" — The Contextual Reading

The third option — and the one that best fits the immediate context of Malachi — is that "hate" here functions as a synonym for judgment. In Malachi's day, Jacob and Esau no longer refer to the individual patriarchs but to their descendants: the nations of Israel and Edom. And the focus of Malachi 1 is on what God has done to Edom: "I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert" (v. 3). The text goes on: "'They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the Wicked Land, a people always under the wrath of the LORD'" (v. 4).²⁹

The reason for this judgment is clear: the Edomites were wicked. The books of Amos and Obadiah describe the hatred, cruelty, and lack of compassion that Edom showed toward their brother nation Israel (Amos 1:11; Obadiah 10–14). God judged Edom because of their evilness. As Lamb summarizes it, hatred is used in Malachi as a synonym for judgment — "Esau I have judged."³⁰

This fits the pattern we have been seeing throughout this chapter. God's hatred is motivated by His love. He hates it when people are being harmed or oppressed. God does not sit by as a dispassionate spectator watching evil unfold. Evil prompts an emotional response of hatred, which leads Him to judge and then to punish.

Two further points about Malachi 1:2–3 are worth making. First, as Lamb observes, even divine judgment carries a redemptive dimension. Later in Malachi, God declares His willingness to withhold judgment when people repent (Malachi 3:5–7; 4:5–6). "When people ask for mercy, God's hate is overcome by his love."³¹ This is an incredibly important pastoral point. God's hatred of wickedness is real, but it is not His final word. His love is deeper than His hatred. His desire for redemption is stronger than His desire for punishment.

Second, the emotional dimensions of Malachi 1:2–3 should not be minimized. Morrell helpfully observes that the same Greek word (miseō) used in the Septuagint rendering of Malachi 1:3 and in Paul's quotation in Romans 9:13 means "to detest" and carries the connotation of finding someone odious or abominable. This is emotional language. The Edomites had become detestable to God because of their persistent sinfulness. As Morrell puts it: "God finds sin to be emotionally unpleasant and troublesome."³²

Revelation 2:6 — The Hatred of Jesus

When we turn to the New Testament, we find that divine hatred does not disappear. It appears in one of the most striking passages in the book of Revelation, where the risen Christ addresses the church at Ephesus:

"Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate." (Revelation 2:6, ESV)

This brief verse carries enormous theological weight. Jesus — the incarnate Son of God, the one who is love personified, the one who died for sinners — says that He hates. He hates the works of the Nicolaitans. And He commends the Ephesian believers for sharing in that hatred.

Who were the Nicolaitans? Scholars have debated this question, but most believe they were a heretical sect involved in immorality, false teaching, and participation in idolatrous practices such as eating food sacrificed to idols.³³ Their practices were destructive to the faith community — leading people away from the truth and into moral compromise. And Jesus hated what they were doing.

Notice that Jesus does not merely disapprove of the Nicolaitans' practices or judge them to be wrong. He hates them. The verb is miseō — the same word used for hatred throughout the New Testament. Jesus is not detached. He is not observing the situation from a state of serene, untroubled composure. He is emotionally engaged. He finds the Nicolaitans' practices repugnant, revolting, and detestable.

Lamb makes an important observation about the historical context. There were several decades between when Paul first wrote to the Ephesians (urging them to put on "the full armor of God" to "resist in the evil day," Ephesians 6:13) and when John recorded Christ's letter to the Ephesian church in Revelation 2. During that period, the Ephesians apparently learned to use their spiritual armor — especially the offensive "sword of the Spirit" — in their resistance against evil, including their hatred of the Nicolaitans' destructive practices.³⁴

The theological implications are significant. If Jesus hates — and if Jesus reveals the Father — then the Father also hates. The God revealed in Jesus Christ is not an emotionally inert deity who surveys evil with unruffled tranquility. He is a God who is moved to hatred by evil. And this hatred, like all of God's emotions, is perfectly appropriate, perfectly righteous, and perfectly aligned with His love.

Luke 14:26 — "Hate" as Hyperbole

Before we move to our theological analysis, we need to pause and consider one more text that uses the language of hatred — not to describe God's hatred, but to help us understand how the word "hate" functions in a biblical context:

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:26, ESV)

As we noted briefly in our vocabulary discussion, this is clearly hyperbolic language. Jesus is not commanding His followers to feel animosity toward their families. The parallel passage in Matthew 10:37 makes the meaning clear: Jesus is demanding supreme allegiance. He must be loved more than anything and anyone else, and in a Semitic idiom, "loving less" can be expressed as "hating."³⁵

Why does this matter for our discussion of divine hatred? Because it reminds us that "hate" in a Semitic context can carry a range of meanings — from absolute revulsion (as in Psalm 5:5 or Amos 5:21) to comparative preference (as in Luke 14:26). This gives us an important interpretive tool. When we encounter a "hatred" text, we need to pay careful attention to the context to determine what kind of hatred is being expressed. Some texts describe God's deep emotional revulsion. Others may describe a comparative relational stance. And some may function as synonyms for judgment or punishment.

But here is the crucial point: even in the comparative or hyperbolic uses, the language of hatred still implies genuine emotional engagement. Jesus is not using "hate" as a dead metaphor. He is using it because love and commitment are emotional realities, and prioritizing one love over another involves real emotional cost. The language of hatred, even in its less intense forms, presupposes a God and a Savior with a rich inner emotional life.

Ecclesiastes 3:8 — "A Time to Hate"

One additional text deserves mention because it provides a broader framework for understanding divine hatred. In the well-known "a time for everything" poem of Ecclesiastes 3, the author includes this line:

"A time to love, and a time to hate (sana'), a time for war and a time for peace." (Ecclesiastes 3:8, ESV)

Love and hate are placed side by side in the divinely ordered structure of the universe — alongside birth and death, killing and healing, weeping and laughing, war and peace. Just as there is a proper time for each of these things, there is a proper time to hate. The author of Ecclesiastes does not spell out exactly when that time is, but the rest of Scripture fills in the picture: the time to hate is when evil threatens the things God loves.³⁶

The inclusion of hatred in this list is significant. It suggests that hatred is not inherently evil or inappropriate. In its proper time and directed at its proper object, hatred has a legitimate place in the moral universe. Ecclesiastes presents hatred not as a vice to be eliminated but as an appropriate response to certain realities — a response that, like love, has its time and season. If this is true of human hatred rightly directed, how much more is it true of divine hatred — the perfectly calibrated, perfectly righteous response of a holy God to the reality of evil?

"Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner"? Examining the Tension

Having surveyed the biblical evidence, we must now tackle what may be the most difficult theological question raised by these texts: Does God hate sinners, or only their sin? The popular saying "hate the sin, love the sinner" has become so common in Christian circles that it almost functions as a creed. But does it accurately capture the biblical data?

The tension in the biblical evidence is real. On the one hand, some texts clearly say God hates sin — evil actions, wicked practices, unjust behaviors. Proverbs 6:16–19 lists things God hates, most of which are actions, not people (lying, shedding innocent blood, devising wicked plans). Isaiah 61:8 says God hates "robbery and wrong." Amos 5:21 says God hates empty religious rituals. In these texts, the object of God's hatred is behavior.

On the other hand, some texts clearly say God hates evildoers — people, not just their actions. Psalm 5:5 says, "You hate all evildoers." Psalm 11:5 says, "His soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence." Hosea 9:15 says, "There I began to hate them." Even in Proverbs 6:19, the list of things God hates culminates with a person — "one who sows discord among brothers." The text moves from hating body parts engaged in evil to hating the whole person who stirs up conflict.³⁷

So what do we do with this tension? Lamb identifies three problems with the "hate the sin, love the sinner" formula, and I find his analysis compelling.³⁸

First, the saying has become a cliché. When an expression is overused, it loses its power and becomes trite. Jesus never spoke in platitudes. He used provocative, even shocking language — "hate your family," "cut off your hand," "take up your cross" — that forced people to think. Clichés have the opposite effect: we hear them and tune out. The saying "hate the sin, love the sinner" often functions as a conversation-stopper rather than a genuine engagement with the complexity of sin and evil.

Second, the saying subtly implies that some people are especially bad sinners — people different from "us" who need "our" love. It is usually deployed in contexts where we are looking at people whose sins are different from ours. But Scripture makes clear that all of us are sinners (Romans 3:23). All of us commit acts that are detestable to God. The distinction between "sinners" and "the rest of us" is artificial. As Lamb notes, we should be more aware of our own participation in sin before we start categorizing others as "sinners" who need our condescending love.

Third — and most importantly — the saying does not fully capture the biblical data. The Bible does not merely say God hates sin. It says God hates evildoers. And while we can and should hold this in tension with the equally biblical truth that God loves sinners (John 3:16; Romans 5:8), we should not resolve the tension by simply denying one side of it. The biblical portrait is more complex than "hate the sin, love the sinner" allows.

Morrell offers a helpful framework here. He suggests that God's benevolent love relates to His will — His settled intention to seek the good of all people, even those who are sinning (John 3:16; Romans 5:8). God's hatred, by contrast, relates to His emotions — His felt abhorrence and disgust toward evil behavior and those who embody it. If we understand the distinction this way, we can see how God's love and hatred for sinners "are not opposed one to another but are perfectly compatible and coexist at the same time. God is emotionally disgusted and abhorred by sinners while simultaneously He has a benevolent care and concern for them, willing their repentance and salvation for their well-being."³⁹

I find Morrell's framework helpful, though I would state it slightly differently. I do not think we should separate love and hatred so neatly into "will" and "emotion." God's love is also emotional — as we saw in Chapter 12, God's love involves genuine affection, delight, and tender feeling, not just a cold act of the will. And God's hatred is also volitional — it involves a deliberate, purposeful moral judgment, not just a feeling that overwhelms Him involuntarily. Both love and hatred involve the whole of God's being — His will, His intellect, and His emotions. The point is that they can coexist because they are directed at different aspects of the same person: God loves the person as someone made in His image and created for relationship with Him, while He hates what that person has become and is doing through deliberate, persistent evil.

The Hatred of Hypocrisy: A Recurring Theme

One pattern that runs through the divine hatred texts deserves special attention: God's intense hatred of hypocrisy — the pretense of piety without the substance of righteousness. We have already seen this in Amos 5:21 ("I hate, I despise your feasts") and Isaiah 1:14 ("Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates"). But this theme runs much deeper.

In Zechariah 8:17, God declares: "Do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these things I hate, declares the LORD." In Malachi 2:16, God expresses hatred toward faithlessness in marriage, which is itself a form of hypocrisy — breaking a covenant while pretending to maintain it. Throughout the prophets, God's most intense emotional revulsion is directed not at the pagan nations who never knew Him, but at His own people who claim to know Him while living in ways that contradict everything He stands for.

This is deeply significant for our understanding of divine hatred. God's hatred is sharpest when it is directed at the gap between profession and practice. He does not merely dislike hypocrisy — He hates it with the kind of intensity that suggests it strikes at something central to His character. And this makes sense when we remember that God is truth (John 14:6) and that He Himself is utterly transparent — there is no gap between what God says and what God is. Hypocrisy is the antithesis of God's own character, and it is the ultimate form of taking His name in vain.

The theological implication is clear: God's hatred of hypocrisy is yet another expression of His love — love for truth, love for integrity, love for genuine relationship. A God who tolerated hypocrisy with serene indifference would be a God who did not care about truth. And a God who did not care about truth would not be worthy of worship.

Psalm 139:19–24 — Human Hatred and the Call for Heart Purification

While this chapter is primarily about God's hatred, we cannot ignore a powerful text where a human being expresses hatred that is modeled on God's own — and then immediately asks God to examine his heart. Psalm 139 is one of the most beloved psalms in the Bible. It describes how God knows us intimately, how His Spirit is always with us, and how He made us "fearfully and wonderfully" (vv. 1, 7, 14). But the end of the psalm takes a dramatically darker turn:

Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me! They speak against you with malicious intent; your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate (sana') them with complete hatred (sin'ah); I count them my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! (Psalm 139:19–24, ESV)

The psalmist's prayer is shocking in its intensity. He hates the people who hate God — "with complete hatred." He calls for God to slay the wicked. This is imprecatory prayer at its most raw and unfiltered.

Lamb draws out three things that distinguish the psalmist's hatred from the hatred of evildoers, and all three shed light on what righteous hatred looks like — both for humans and for God.⁴⁰

First, the object of the hatred matters. The wicked hate a righteous God because He restricts their ability to do harm. Their hatred is motivated by selfishness. The psalmist, by contrast, hates people whose violence and deception are harming others. His hatred is motivated by righteousness and by a desire to see justice done.

Second, the psalmist immediately follows his imprecation with a prayer for heart purification: "Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!" As Gordon Wenham observes, imprecatory psalms "teach their users to reflect on their own complicity in and responsibility for violence and oppression."⁴¹ The psalmist knows that hatred is dangerous. He knows that human hearts are easily corrupted. So he asks God to search his heart and make sure his hatred is motivated by justice, not vengeance. This is the difference between righteous hatred and sinful hatred: righteous hatred submits itself to God's examination.

Third, the only action the psalmist takes in response to his hatred is prayer. He does not take up a sword. He does not go out for revenge. He brings his hatred to God and trusts God to judge and act. As Lamb writes, "If one truly believes God is sovereign, the most powerful action one can take to stop evil and wickedness is to cry out to a God who hates evil behavior."⁴²

This model of hatred — an intense emotional response to evil, submitted to God's examination, expressed through prayer rather than revenge — is deeply relevant for understanding divine hatred. If even human hatred can be righteous when properly directed and submitted to God, how much more is God's own hatred of evil perfectly righteous, perfectly measured, and perfectly calibrated?

The Passibility Implications of Divine Hatred

Having surveyed the biblical evidence, we are now in a position to draw some important conclusions about what divine hatred tells us about God's emotional life and the passibility debate.

Divine Hatred Requires Genuine Emotional Engagement

Lamb puts it powerfully in his discussion of the divine hatred texts: "If Scripture merely said God judged evil, few would be troubled by that. Wicked behavior needs to be judged, and who better to do that than a righteous God?" But Scripture says more than that. It says God hates evil. "Evil behavior elicits a highly negative emotional response from the God of the universe. God cannot remain dispassionate about wickedness."⁴³

This is a direct challenge to strict impassibility. If God cannot be emotionally affected by anything outside Himself — if He exists in a state of undisturbed serenity that nothing in creation can touch — then the language of divine hatred is simply false. A truly impassible God does not hate anything. He may judge things, prohibit things, punish things. But He does not hate them, because hatred is an emotional response that presupposes being affected by the thing that is hated. As we discussed in Chapter 3, strict impassibility requires that all biblical language about God's emotions be interpreted as mere metaphor — anthropomorphic projections that describe God's actions but not His inner experience. But as we argued in Chapter 6, explaining away over four hundred passages of Scripture as "merely metaphorical" is an extraordinarily heavy burden to bear, and the anthropomorphism objection does not succeed.⁴⁴

Abraham Heschel's concept of divine pathos is particularly relevant here. Heschel argued that the God of the prophets is not an Aristotelian unmoved mover — not a God of self-contained perfection, detached from the tumult of human affairs. Rather, the prophetic God is one whose inner life is genuinely affected by human actions. God's pathos — His emotional involvement with His creation — is not a weakness but a revelation of who He truly is. When the prophets proclaimed God's hatred of evil, they were not projecting human emotions onto a dispassionate deity. They were communicating genuine revelation about the inner life of God.⁴⁵

Divine Hatred Is Responsive — Therefore God Is Passible

Several of the texts we have examined make it clear that God's hatred is responsive — it arises in reaction to specific human behaviors. In Hosea 9:15, God says, "Because of the wickedness of their deeds ... I began to hate them." The hatred is caused by human wickedness. In Amos 5:21, God's hatred of Israel's feasts is provoked by their hypocrisy. In Proverbs 6:16–19, God's hatred is directed at specific human behaviors. In every case, God's hatred is not a self-contained, eternally static disposition. It is a genuine emotional response to something creatures have done.

This is precisely what passibility means: God is genuinely affected by the world. His emotional states are not pre-programmed, eternally fixed, and unresponsive to creaturely reality. They genuinely respond to and are influenced by what happens in creation. When creatures act wickedly, God's emotional engagement shifts — He moves from love and delight to hatred and revulsion. When creatures repent, His emotional engagement shifts again — from wrath to mercy, from hatred to renewed love. This is not instability or weakness. It is the strength of a God who is alive, engaged, and relational.

As we will see in Chapter 23, Mullins develops a powerful argument that divine wrath demonstrates God's passibility: if wrath is a genuine emotional response to sin, and sin is caused by creatures, then God's wrath is caused by creatures — which means God is passible. The same argument applies with equal force to divine hatred. If hatred is a genuine emotional response to evil, and evil is caused by creatures, then God's hatred is caused by creatures — and God is passible.⁴⁶

Divine Hatred Is Controlled — Therefore Impassibility Contains a Grain of Truth

But we must immediately add a crucial qualification. While divine hatred demonstrates passibility — genuine emotional responsiveness — it does not demonstrate that God is out of control, overwhelmed, or destabilized by His hatred. God's hatred, like all His emotions, is perfectly calibrated, perfectly righteous, and perfectly under His sovereign control. He hates the right things, in the right way, for the right reasons, in the right measure.

This is where the mediating position I have been advocating throughout this book comes into play. God is genuinely passible — He truly feels, including the emotion of hatred. But He is not passible in the sense that His emotions overwhelm, destabilize, or control Him. His hatred never becomes vindictive cruelty. His revulsion never becomes irrational rage. His emotional responses are always measured, purposeful, and aligned with His perfect character.

In this qualified sense — and only this sense — there is a grain of truth in the classical impassibility tradition. The classical theologians were right to insist that God is not subject to involuntary, uncontrolled, destabilizing passions. They were right to distinguish divine hatred from the kind of human hatred that leads to malice, cruelty, and destruction. But they were wrong to conclude that God therefore has no emotional engagement with evil. The biblical evidence simply does not support that conclusion. God's hatred is real, but it is sovereign — freely chosen, perfectly righteous, and fully under His control. As Rob Lister would put it, God is both "impassible and impassioned" — impassible in the sense that His emotions do not overwhelm or destabilize Him, but genuinely impassioned in His hatred of evil and His love for justice.⁴⁷

God's Hatred and God's Love: Partners, Not Opponents

Throughout this chapter, I have repeatedly argued that God's hatred is not the opposite of His love but its necessary companion. Now let me develop this point more fully, because getting this right is essential to understanding the full range of God's emotional life.

Consider the analogy of a parent. A good mother loves her child fiercely. And precisely because she loves her child, she hates anything that threatens, harms, or destroys her child. She hates the disease that makes her child sick. She hates the bully who torments her child on the playground. She hates the addiction that is pulling her teenager into a spiral of destruction. Her hatred of these things is not a contradiction of her love. It flows from her love. It is love in its protective, reactive mode.

Now imagine the opposite. Imagine a parent who did not hate anything that threatened her child. Imagine a mother who watched with serene indifference as her child was bullied, exploited, or abused — who felt no revulsion, no anger, no urgency to intervene. We would not call that parent loving. We would call her negligent. We would call her cold. We would question whether she loved her child at all.

Lamb makes this point with vivid force: "Imagine how you would feel if someone were physically striking a beloved family member — punching your daughter or son, beating up your spouse, attacking your parent — how would you feel? Would it be good for this evil behavior to not affect you? We would call someone with no emotions at this point cold-blooded, dispassionate, non-human."⁴⁸

And then he delivers the punch line: "The fact that the God of the universe is affected by evil — he hates it — means that he cares deeply. Ultimately, he hates intensely because he loves intensely."⁴⁹

This is one of the most profound theological insights in the entire divine emotion debate. God's hatred is not a problem to be explained away. It is a window into the depth of His love. The intensity of His hatred is directly proportional to the intensity of His love. Because He loves people with infinite passion, He hates what destroys them with infinite revulsion. A God who did not hate evil would be a God who did not love people. And a God who did not love people would not be the God of the Bible.

What Does This Mean for the Impassibility Debate?

The evidence we have surveyed in this chapter adds significant weight to the case for divine passibility — God's genuine emotional responsiveness to His creatures. Consider what we have found:

First, the biblical vocabulary of divine hatred (sana', to'evah, miseō) is deeply emotional language. These words do not describe abstract judicial verdicts or detached policy decisions. They describe felt revulsion, visceral disgust, and intense moral outrage. If these words mean what they normally mean, then God has genuine emotional responses to evil.

Second, God's hatred is responsive — it arises in reaction to specific creaturely behaviors. This is the hallmark of passibility: God's emotional states genuinely change in response to what happens in the world.

Third, God's hatred is varied — it is directed at different objects (actions, practices, people) with different intensities and in different contexts. This suggests a rich, complex inner life, not the simple, undifferentiated emotional landscape that strict impassibility would predict.

Fourth, God's hatred coexists with His love, creating genuine emotional tension — as we see especially in Hosea, where God's hatred of His people's wickedness wars with His love for them as His covenant children. A truly impassible God would experience no such tension, because He would have no genuine emotional engagement with His creatures in the first place.

Fifth, the texts we have examined use language that explicitly attributes emotional interiority to God — "his soul hates" (Psalm 11:5), "I am weary to bear them" (Isaiah 1:14), "I began to hate them" (Hosea 9:15). This is language of inner experience, not merely outward action. If we take it seriously, it tells us something about God's actual inner life — not just what He does, but what He feels.

For these reasons, I believe divine hatred provides powerful evidence for the passibility of God. A God who genuinely hates evil is a God who is genuinely affected by evil. And a God who is genuinely affected by evil is a passible God.

Practical Implications: What Should We Hate?

Before we close, we should ask: if God hates certain things, and if we are called to imitate God (Ephesians 5:1), what does that mean for our own emotional lives? As Lamb asks: "What should we hate?"⁵⁰

The answer from Scripture is clear: God is not calling us to hate inconvenience, rudeness, or minor annoyances. He is certainly not calling us to hate other people based on their race, ethnicity, nationality, or social status. And He is emphatically not calling us to hate ourselves. To people who struggle with self-hatred, God says: "You are made in my image" (Genesis 1:26–27). "You are fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14). "Love yourself, just as you love your neighbor" (Leviticus 19:18; Mark 12:31). God loves His people and wants us to love ourselves.⁵¹

What God calls us to hate is what He Himself hates: violence, deception, pride, oppression, injustice, and cruelty. In a word: wickedness. As Lamb writes, "It is easy to become numb to the evils that surround us. We have become immune to the depravity of sin. We should be appalled. But as the people of God love the things that God loves, as followers of Jesus love what Jesus loves, we will hate hatred and evil. It should evoke strong emotions of loathing and revulsion. Injustice should make us sick. Greed should disgust us. Racism should cause us to scream. Sexual abuse should make us furious."⁵²

And what should we do with these emotions? Lamb suggests three responses.⁵³ First, we should express our hatred of injustice to God in prayer — following the model of the imprecatory psalms, bringing our moral outrage before God rather than suppressing it. Second, we should resist evil — not with the kind of hatred that leads to vengeance and violence, but with the kind that leads to prophetic speech, sacrificial action, and courageous stands for justice. Third, we should trust God to judge — believing that He will ultimately set all things right, even when we cannot see how.

This is the practical outworking of divine hatred. Because God hates evil, He calls us to hate it too — and to channel that hatred into prayer, resistance, and trust. The alternative — indifference to evil, tolerance of injustice, apathy in the face of cruelty — is not holiness. It is cold-blooded disengagement from the very things that break God's heart.

Connecting to the Companion Books

Before we conclude, I want to briefly note how the material in this chapter connects to the broader theological project represented by the companion volumes in this series.

In Beyond the Grave, we argued that God's love is relentless and extends beyond the grave. The material in this chapter confirms that the reverse side of that relentless love is a relentless hatred of evil. If God loves people so deeply that He provides opportunities for salvation even after death, then He must also hate the evil that separates them from Him with corresponding intensity. God's postmortem love and His hatred of sin are two sides of the same coin.

In The God Beyond the Clock, we argued that God can experience temporal succession and is genuinely temporal. The material in this chapter supports that conclusion. Several of the texts we examined describe God's hatred as arising in time and in response to specific events: "there I began to hate them" (Hosea 9:15, emphasis added). This language of beginning, of temporal change in God's emotional states, is difficult to square with a strict view of divine timelessness. A God who exists in an eternal, unchanging "now" cannot meaningfully "begin" to hate. The temporal language of divine hatred presupposes the kind of dynamic divine temporality argued for in The God Beyond the Clock.

Finally, in The Incarnation and the Soul, we argued that Christ's human emotions reveal the heart of God. Revelation 2:6 — where the risen, glorified Jesus declares that He hates the practices of the Nicolaitans — confirms this connection. The one who wept at Lazarus's tomb and overturned tables in the temple also hates evil. The emotions of Jesus — explored in full in Chapter 20 — are the emotions of God made visible in human form.

Conclusion: Our God Is a God of Hate — Because He Is a God of Love

We began this chapter by acknowledging that "God hates" may be the most uncomfortable statement in the entire divine emotion debate. Having walked through the biblical evidence, I hope we can now see that divine hatred, far from being an embarrassment, is actually one of the most reassuring truths about God's character.

God hates evil because He loves good. He hates injustice because He loves justice. He hates violence because He loves peace. He hates deception because He loves truth. He hates what harms His children because He loves His children. Every expression of divine hatred in Scripture is ultimately an expression of divine love — love reacting against whatever threatens, corrupts, or destroys what God treasures most.

Lamb summarizes this beautifully: "Part of our discomfort with these divine hatred texts is that the God of love is also a God of hate. But the problem is deeper than that. If Scripture merely said God judged evil, few would be troubled by that. Wicked behavior needs to be judged, and who better to do that than a righteous God? The deeper problem is that evil behavior affects God emotionally. He doesn't just punish evildoers, he hates them. Evil behavior elicits a highly negative emotional response from the God of the universe. God cannot remain dispassionate about wickedness."⁵⁴

And this, I believe, should reassure us rather than trouble us. A God who can be emotionally affected by evil — who hates injustice with passionate intensity — is a God who cares. He is not watching our suffering from a position of remote, undisturbed bliss. He is engaged. He is moved. He is burning with holy hatred against everything that destroys His beloved children. And that hatred, held in perfect balance with His love, His patience, and His desire for redemption, is the heartbeat of a God whose emotional life is as real, as deep, and as passionate as the Bible declares it to be.

As we turn in the next chapter to examine the patience and longsuffering of God (Chapter 19), we will see the other side of this same coin. The God who hates evil with fierce intensity is also the God who is "slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love" — patient beyond all human comprehension, giving sinners every possible opportunity to repent. His hatred and His patience are not contradictions. They are two expressions of the same perfect character: a God who cares so much that He hates what is wrong, and loves so deeply that He waits for what is right.