January 4
“Hate evil, you who love the LORD, Who preserves the souls of His godly ones; He delivers them from the hand of the wicked.” Psalm 97:10
I think it is mostly true, perhaps always true, that whenever we sin we are enticed and interested in doing the thing that is sin. We view it as positive, or fun, or not that bad, or in some way beneficial, or even good. Sometimes we are so deceived by the Enemy of our souls that we think we have to do the thing or that God expects us to do this or that thing that others would say (or we too would say in more sober moments) is sin. But in all these cases, when we sin we are not hating the sin.
We can become callous and soft toward evil. Thoughts and behaviors that at one point in time would have shocked and repulsed us now don’t have that affect at all. We may even enjoy thinking about or viewing a particular thing that God detests. Take immorality portrayed in movies, for instance. Sometimes the person committing immorality is portrayed as good in heart and abused by their spouse, so the adultery is softened and even made out to be good. We empathize to the point where we no longer are grieved by the immoral behavior. Pornography, such a common stumbling block to the world and ever more God’s people also, is another example of how we can end up eagerly viewing the shameful deeds of darkness with favor and anticipation.
When we get angry at someone and lose our temper in an outburst, are we thinking about the long term damage to the relationship and emotional stress that we are causing the other person? Are we concerned about grieving the Holy Spirit and hindering what He wants to do through us and in the lives of others? Probably not. We so easily become accustomed to sin, and we have lost our abhorrence of it.
We are commanded to hate evil, but how can we do this? How can we regain or achieve for the first time the shock and sadness and grief that God experiences every time He sees these deeds of darkness? Well, several things come to mind. First, we need to cry out to God to ask Him to give us a hatred for sin, our sins that we don’t seem to be overly concerned about. This sensitivity to sin, this gut wrenching revulsion to it, is also a gift from God and is something that should be treasured and guarded carefully. I think that this is another critical, fundamental aspect of regularly overcoming temptation that cannot be overly stressed.
The second thing related to hating evil that we should daily cry out to God to give us we will talk about tomorrow.