The Weight...Pt 2 of 2

The Weight

Consider the effect of hate in an individual. It takes away a person’s

satisfaction with himself. It shows frailty. It threatens them with everlasting

torments for their self-exaltation. Moral weakness, selfishness and

greed…just a fleeting shadow. Enmity against God is the principle from

whence all acts of sin flow. Why would the chief of the disciples deny knowing

Christ? There were two main reasons why Peter denied Jesus: weakness

and fear. The weakness born of human frailty. The world hated Jesus, and

Peter found that he was not prepared to face the ridicule and persecution

that Jesus was suffering. Jesus had warned Simon Peter that a test of faith

was coming. He was put in the same predicament as Job. The accuser

wanted to shake Peter’s faith so forcefully that he would fall, proving that

God’s faithful servant was lacking. Peter was unaware that he had been

sifted. It was not just Peter who was in danger, though. The word for “you”

in the verse is plural and italicized. Jesus was speaking to the whole of his

election. The enemy wants to shake us apart. God’s purpose is that the

violent sifting would remove all impurities that cling to the heart. Jesus’

interceding prayer and questioning are to strengthen us all. It takes faith in

the wisdom and mind of Christ to see things as they are, else we see them

as we are. Our true faith and perseverance are revealed not in a walk of

sinless perfection but in repentance and restoration. That is why hatred is

self deception about other people. Think about how propaganda is so much

more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to foster friendly

feelings. When men deceive others they may know it, but when they deceive

themselves, they know it not. People have a conspicuous tendency to

rationalize their questionable actions and attitudes. For instance, when they

are vengeful and envious and hate-filled, they often think it is only just

resentment of the injuries they have suffered. They deny responsibility for

their moral defects and transgressions. Hatred demonstrates no

devotedness of heart to God; no exercise of any love to God. Those that hate

do not realize that He is so holy a God as He is. They do not realize that God

has such a hatred of sin as indeed He has. They seek to find such a hatred

against that god which they have formed, to suit themselves. But what they

fail to reason is that whatever piety and moral behavior that continues in the

world is thanks to God’s restraining hand, which is holding back human

iniquity from creating a hell on earth at this time. There is no innate human

goodness in the world today, there are divine limitations on human evil.

the world

The open expression of human hostility to God in this world is the result of sin

itself showing human hatred in open display. In a sense, their opposition to

God prevents people from being conscious of any hatred. While at the same

time, some people’s belief in future judgment has done a great deal to

restrain human enmity from breaking out into public view. But surrounding

influences have loosened the restraint upon the wickedness of the world. The

ultimate proof of this hostility was the murder of God’s Son. As then, there

are too many in this nation that are imbruing their hands in his blood through

the showing of hatred. On top of that, the fury, the rage, the choler narrative

shows them carrying the murder out with the utmost malice and cruelty

against other human beings. Human hatred has a powerful noetic effect.

Man, when opposed to reason in any aspect, is carnally a miserably

darkened and blind creature and his blindness chiefly consists in two things;

his ignorance of God in His divine excellency and next to that, man is most

ignorant of himself. As a result, hatred grows as a fallen person or a falling

person refuses to see the truth of the plainest thing in the world because sin

bids him to shut his eyes.

shut his eyes

Willful sinners tend to believe what they want to believe, often without even any pretense of rationality. This is the ruination of human reasoning...a great tragedy in the human story. Now overborne by

the power of strong preconceptions and evil inclinations, human reasoning

has been seriously corrupted and perverted. This is observed in the way that

people are so sudden and thoughtless in the judgments which they pass

upon things.

God’s purpose so counters this human perversity in His calling to election

those whom He knows are of faith. These know that biblical belief is

eminently and exceptionally reasonable. The power of faith today in the word

of God sustains us. Sin, in the beginning appeared in the form of

disobedience. Sin now assumes the very substance of hatred and it infects

and perverts practically everything that people do. Many professing believers

derive their thinking on hatred from trends in contemporary academia and

the mass media. Despite being God’s special creation, human to human

violence exceeds what can be found among animals. Hatred gives rise to

much self deception about the presence or absence of real faith in God. Let’s

call this spiritual numbness. Spiritual numbness is when you stop hearing

God, stop hearing from God, stop being open to God, and stop being honest

with God. Where there is spiritual numbness, there is spiritual blockage. Hate

historical roots

is toxic no matter what the motivation. And to abandon historical roots is

apparently a bridge too far. Thus, hatred is taught to the children as though

it is an heirloom of humanity.

We are in the most dramatic moments for the people of God. There is a

situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two or more

alternatives. One is how to love in the face of hate. The other is to hate the

fact that we are to love even our enemy. Another is being troubled by a deep

antipathy to hatred. There are times when seeing self as God’s love sees us

is a difficult if not near impossible task. There are times when seeing others

as love sees them is a difficult and nearly impossible task. Faith is that which

sustains us in the darkness, carrying us through hate and into love. Humanity

is likewise facing a darkness that is shadowed by a brokenness based on

the false superiority of one group over another. We are never to become

hateful ourselves towards those who espouse such behavior. We are to

make lovingness a habit. Kindness, compassion, listening, learning that

accepts the plurality and diversity of others and is content with complexity

and difference. Hatred denies God’s creation. A loving heart and mind of

Christ are to be open to the diversity that is the nature of the world and the

nature of who we are. Hatred pulls us back into an imagined world that

bleeds all the colors out of the rainbow and leaves only a grey sameness

and conformity, a world that will collapse into itself.

hatred bleeds all the colors out of the rainbow

Two poisons begin their work within the person that explodes outward in a

hateful behavior. These are “malice” and “envy”. It is an attitude of

wickedness as an evil habit of one’s mind. Malice describes a vicious

intention and expresses the desire to hurt another and rejoices in it! Envy is

resenting someone who has some excellence that is wanted. Without

question a vicious, virulent spirit of hatred is on the loose in this country.

Because hate is not a reaction to a particular slight, but a reaction to bad

character revealed in a history of bad action, this country’s state of affairs

accompanies a situation where circumstances have a past and a present

effect on its consequences. These particular circumstances are the

consequence of a myriad of previous situations and present influences of

such extreme hatred, and are so striking that discriminant power against

another desires that they cease to exist. There are those who thrive on the

joy of hate. But there is hope. Greater is He that is within us…

If God would show us why there is so much evil and hate, then we would be

able more fully to know Him and thank Him and trust Him and love Him and

join Him in His purposes for the world. The bible teaches that God governs

the world with all-embracing, all-pervading, meticulous providence. Nothing

lies outside the rule of God. He allows all He does to establish His purposes.

God’s allowance is always owing to a purpose. We ask for a biblical vision of

why God allows hate. This kind of world exists because God planned a

history of redemption before the world existed. And then according to that

plan, God permitted that sin enter the world. This allowance was according

to plan, and that plan was so that there could be a history of merciful

redemption from sin. God has a people being made manifest that He called

with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own

purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world

began. Hate exists because of sin. God ordained that there be sin. It is not

sin to will that sin be. That’s a heavy statement. It is not sin for God to will

that sin happen. Some are coming to faith through Jesus Christ and his work

on the cross because in eternity past God gave grace to us. God subjected

the natural world to futility in hope. We are in a drama of the horrors of sin.

This is a signpost to show how outrageous sin and hatred against God is.

signpost

Hate is rejecting God’s wisdom, God’s love. There is a present vanity to

which the creature, by reason of the sin of man, is made subject. The

immense hatred is what the creation has waited upon for the revealing of the

sons of God. God designed this hope in this hate-filled world. This is our

purpose for hastening the day of God. The bible tells us that the world hates

us…it hates Jesus, and it hates God. The reason this world of evil and hatred

exists is so that we who are the chosen of Jesus would be able to experience

and display the profound, God-honoring reality that Christ is more precious

than everything we can lose in this world. And we show this by our love by

not murmuring or complaining or seeking vengeance, but rather resting in

him and trusting in him and treasuring him. Love is better than hate. And our

love for God and for our brothers and sisters is to be so powerful as to render

our hate for sin just as powerful as our love to hate sin will do what the love

of God did for the world…as Jesus died for our sins, that love will cause hate

to cease. This is the true path of love that leads to the joy of heaven. Hate is

permitted so that the greatest act of love in the history of the world could

happen - that is, so that Christ could perfect a people who would love as he

loves. If there was no hate we could not exemplify the character of Jesus

Christ to the world. There’s no other way that godly love could be shown so

fully. God has not wasted the sufferings and the hate of this world. He

planned it to fall on his Son, and He purposed it to come to its full and to its

end in our day. What does reason say…for of a truth against thy holy child

Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel,

were gathered together, for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel

determined before to be done. God had predestined this.Christ was not

hated by accident. This is not just a chance of history, just a

turning of the world’s affairs, a people possessed with violent hate. This had

been planned since before the foundation of the world. This is central to the

reason for all existence. The Son of God bore the suffering and the hate of

the world in order to lift sin from all who would trust him and bring them into

everlasting joy, glorifying God for His power and wisdom and grace and love.

That’s the reason this kind of world exists. Be made strong in this. Thousands

will not rise to life from their sleep this night. And God would have done

nobody any wrong. Hatred is just the forerunner of the calamity that is

coming. We sorrow in hope. As we are hated for Christ’s sake, we will rejoice.

Our faith must not be periodic…it must be perpetual. We are not to sequence

life. Because Jesus was the satisfying sacrifice, we can be the satisfying

righteousness of God in him. When hate dies love lives. When enmity is

emptied from the heart, faith fills the void. Ours is an eternal arrangement

with God. God chooses His people in such a way that there is no connotation

of deserving in the presence of God. All recognition is to Christ for our faith.

He is the determined and purposed cause. It is faith that is going to mark us.

That will be our insignia. We get to wear that likeness. And we don’t deserve

any of it. A moment of pause. In the hate the world shows us they will see

our love reflected. It matters not how deep their hate…our love goes deeper.

We understand that it is sin that drives hate. In our love we are caused to

cosmic destiny

rise to our cosmic destiny.

This is built on our discipline of never forgetting,

never daring let ourselves forget, our shared belonging to God. Hate is as

vicious and pointed as the murderous violence human beings are capable of

directing at one another, or as ambient and slow-seething as the deadly

disregard for the creation of God’s universe of non-human lives with which

we share this fragile creation. Hate is a message of saying that we do not

know where we belong. They, those, them, who hate are their own. They

have not considered eternity. They do not know God. Those of today are

destined to die twice. Them who stood and hated His cross, thrice.

The truth is, hate is natural…but love is supernatural…for God is love. Hate’s

origin is founded in fear. Satan fears us. He knows we are God’s better thing

to bring perfection to every faithful one. We are to exhibit the God-kind of

love that wins over hatred, that speaks blessings instead of cursing, that

offers life instead of death, and hope instead of despair. And there are fellow

beings who hate us because we are chosen of God. In too many people fear

creates hate and that brings violence. Every time with intended or unintended

consequence. Hate, anger, rage is a right…love is our responsibility.