Many years ago, while walking down the hallway in a building hosting the 1992 Louisiana Baptist "Super Summer Youth Camp," I heard a roomful of teens singing the following lyrics: "Jesus loves me when I'm bad, / Even though it makes Him sad."

The day before that, I had read in a local newspaper a letter to the editor from someone who claimed, "Being gay, I know one thing certain. My God loves everyone, even homosexuals . . . In my reading of the Bible, Jesus loved everyone equally . . . God loves us all equally."

Let me get this straight: God loves everyone EQUALLY Ä loves the sex pervert just as much as He loves the saints Ä loves the disobedient just as much as He loves the obedient?

Maybe this sodomite's "god" does such a thing, but the God of the Bible does not love everybody "equally"; in fact, there are some people He actually hates.

"God Is Love"

The doctrine that God hates certain people is not palatable in this Laodicean age of "Smile! God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life."

Inevitably, evangelicals, neo-evangelicals, or charismatics who dislike such a concept will run to 1 John 4:8 to disprove it: "He that loveth not, knoweth not God: for God is love."

But these same people seem to overlook verses like Hebrews 12:29: "For our God is a consuming fire."

Yes, God is love. But God is also much more than love. God is a complete Being with a balanced personality: He is merciful, but He is also just; He is long suffering, but He is also wrathful; sometimes He speaks in a "still small voice" (1 Kings 19:12), but at other times He "Thundereth marvelously with his voice" (Job 37:5).

Just as the Calvinist gets into trouble because he emphasizes God's sovereignty over His other attributes, so many others get into trouble by emphasizing God's love over His other attributes.

God's Standards vs. Ours

We need to pause a moment to remember that Godly hatred is vastly different from human hatred (see Isa. 55:8-9), because God has higher standards than the world does.

For example, when God overthrew the army of Pharaoh in Exodus and "slew famous kings," He acted in mercy (Ps. 136:15-20). Likewise, when Jesus returns, the "mercies" and "lovingkindnesses of the LORD" (Isa. 63:7) will be connected with God's emotions of "vengeance" and "anger" and "fury" (Isa. 63:3-6). In fact, the love demanded by God is so high that the world perceives it as hatred (Luke 14:26).

Keeping God's higher standards in mind, we realize that just as the "foolishness of God" is infinitely wiser than any human wisdom (1 Cor. 1:25), so the hatred of God is infinitely higher than any human love. The hatred of God is a symptom not of unrighteousness on His part but of His holiness (Rom. 9:13-14).

The Hatred Of God

The Bible makes it all too clear that God indeed hates (and has hated) certain people:

"The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity." (Psalms 5:5)

"The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth." (Psalms 11:5)

"These six things doth the LORD hate: . . . a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren". (Prov. 6:16-19)

"Mine heritage is unto me as a lion in the forest; it crieth out against me: therefore have I hated it." (Jeremiah 12:8)

"All their wickedness is in Gilgal: for there I hated them: for the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of mine house, I will love them no more: all their princes are revolters. (Hosea 9:15)

"I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob, And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness." (Malachi 1:2- 3)

"As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid." (Romans 9:13-14)

So why is this doctrine of the hatred of God difficult to accept? In part it is because such a doctrine is not "politically correct" in the early 21st century, but for many Bible-believers the "problem" with accepting this doctrine is not its truthfulness but the difficulty of reconciling it to verses such as John 3:16.

Reconciling The Hatred Of God And The Love Of God

Nowhere in the Bible is the love of God ever spoken of as separate from God's judgment (cf. Deut. 18:10; Ps. 146:8; Prov. 15:9) Ä never is it spoken of as separate from the judgment of our sins on Christ at Calvary.

Notice that John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world" (my emphasis) Ä past tense ("loved"), not present tense (Loves" or "loveth"). That verb tense is the key to reconciling the love of God and the hatred of God.

As I heard one Bible teacher well explain it, God loved the world and showed His love at Calvary.

Though He still is merciful, gracious, and good, right now in the 21st century, after having seen His only begotten Son murdered (Acts 7:52), God loves only His Son and those people who love His Son: "The Father loveth [present tense] the Son" (John 3:35); "he that loveth me [present tense] shall be loved [future tense] of my Father, and I will love him" [future tense] (John 14:21); "The Father himself loveth you [present tense], because ye have loved me" (John 16:27, my emphaThough lost people may still experience God's mercy and grace, they will not experience His love apart from Calvary.

Lost People And

The Love Of God

Concerning the lost, Jesus said on the night before He died, "I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me" (John 17:9). According to the apostle John, "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 John 2:15).

The apostle Paul said that the lost have "no hope, and [are] without God in the world" unless they come to Calvary to experience the love of God by having their sins cleansed and being reconciled to God (Eph. 2), and if they are not careful, they may find themselves facing a God who "will laugh at [their] calamity" (Prov. 1:24-33).

How To Experience The

Love Of God

The only way for a lost person to come out from under the wrath of God and to experience the love of God is for him to get saved.

When by grace through faith he accepts Jesus as his savior, he is put into Christ Ä he becomes part of Christ's body (1 Cor. 12:12-14; 2 Cor. 5:17). Because the Father loves the Son, anyone who is in Christ experiences that love; those of us who are saved have been made "accepted in the beloved" (Eph. 1:6, my emphasis) and are "brethren beloved of God" (2 Thess. 2:13, my emphasis).

God chastens those whom he loves, yet the Bible makes clear that He chastens only His children (Prov. 3:12; Heb. 12:1-8).

Yes, God is a God of love Ä but His love is perfect, and it is balanced against His holiness and righteousness. Only if God imputes His righteousness to you will you ever know His love (Ps. 146:8; Prov. 15:9) Ä and only if you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior will that righteousness ever be imputed to you (Romans 3:21-31 and 4:11 and 10:1-10).