How can we compassionately warn the sinner about that horrific place where sin takes people?
We live in such a secular.. professionally therapeutic culture that seems determined to redefine God's love and sin right out of existence. Adultery is reframed as a sex addiction. Drug and alcohol abuse are labeled as mere diseases like there were no choices to become abusive with it.. like those involved aren't guilty or culpable. Violence is blamed on those with white privilege and on weapons of self-protection more than on the individuals wrongly wielding them. We excuse, rename, and minimize sin until personal responsibility is lost in a fog of alleged cultural compassion.
This trend has seeped into the church, where the familiar phrase, "Love the sinner, hate the sin," is frequently quoted but often misapplied.
Should We Show Love Toward the Sinner via Service and Hate the Sin? A Biblical Call for True Love and Holy Clarity
God loves you just as you are but so much more than that because He firmly refuses to leave you as you currently are..if you're willing to believe and ditch all your sinning.
It's a phrase that rolls off the tongues of well-meaning Christians so easily like honey fresh off the comb. Let's be careful here. Beneath the sweetness lies a spiritual risk in not explaining things are they really are. Are we telling half the truth here, and leaving people with a full-blown misunderstanding?
We live in a therapeutic culture that loves to reclassify sin. Adultery becomes a "sex addiction." Substance abuse? A disease. Even murder is often blamed more on guns than the heart pulling the trigger. And in the middle of this rebranding of rebellion, the Church—intended to be the pillar and foundation of truth—has absorbed the language of culture.
The Cliché of "Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin"
This phrase, though catchy, smuggles in an ancient heresy. It echoes the dualism of first-century Gnosticism, where the body and spirit were divorced. Gnostics taught that what you did with your body had no bearing on your soul. Sound familiar?
The world says: Let's just sever sin (it's a sickness) away from the sinner. Yes, minus any repentance on their part, but the Bible doesn’t say that.
God doesn't send the sin to hell; He sadly sends the stubborn sinner there who refuses to know Him.. who refuses to come on His terms.
"The arrogant cannot stand in your presence. You hate all who do wrong; you destroy those who tell lies. The bloodthirsty and deceitful you, Lord, detest." Psalm 5:5-6 niv
"The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity. 6 Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing: the Lord will abhor the bloody and deceitful man." kjv
"Therefore, proud sinners will not survive your searching gaze, for how you hate their evil deeds." Psalm 5:5 tlb
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’" ~Jesus, Matthew 7:21-23
So, should we show love to a sinner while hating their sin? Absolutely. But biblically. Not sentimentally.
Loving a lost person what they really need to hear.. means telling them at the right time the whole truth about their eternal condition. It is not loving to pat someone on the back while they sleepwalk their way right into hell.
"Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful." Proverbs 27:6:
God's Love: It's Never Been Merely One-Dimensional. You Can't Just Separate His Love From His Other Attributes Like Justice or Holiness.
There are few things more dangerous than Christian preachers proclaiming that God loves everybody unconditionally. Do they stop as saying God loves people. Why can that be dangerous? Because this is what many sinners hear and then think, "I don’t need to change at all or become willing to be changed from the inside out. God loves me just the way I am. No repentance or saving faith is necessary. Maybe I can just voice a religious-sounding prayer and walk away. Who would know?"
Yes it's true that Scripture speaks of God’s benevolent kind of love toward all people.
"..so that you may [show yourselves to] be the children of your Father who is in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on those who are evil and on those who are good, and makes the rain fall on the righteous [those who are morally upright] and the unrighteous [the unrepentant, those who oppose Him]." Matthew 5:45 amp
But His biblically salvific, covenantal love is reserved for only those in the Christ Jesus of the Bible.
"The person who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who [really] loves Me; and whoever [really] loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and reveal Myself to him [I will make Myself real to him].” John 14:21 amp
Hey sport, the Kingdom of God is not Sesame Street, or Pee Wee's Big Adventure, or Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.
The Danger of Over-Sentimentalizing God's Kind of Love
The Apostle Paul in Romans 1:18 reminds us, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men."
We are not calling sinners to tea and cookies, but to repentance and surrender. Hebrews 10:31 warns us: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." The apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:11, "Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." This is not fearmongering. It is love unafraid to tell the truth.
Explaining the Gospel minus Ever Talking about the Wrath of God is Not the Gospel. We can appreciate the Good News when we've First Heard the Bad News.
All have sinned, are headed towards that lake, and need a Savior.
To hide God’s holiness and wrath in order to make the gospel more "palatable, or appealing" is to gut the gospel entirely. No one has ever come to Christ who did not first realize they needed saving from Him.
Without hearing the bad news of sin and it's consequences first, the good news of grace can so easily become meaningless.
What Real Love Looks Like.. Jesus Christ (Yep, One Could Put His Name In Where Love Appears.. How About Your Name In Or Mine?).
"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away." 1 Corinthians 13:4-9 nkjv
Real love does not smile and wave at sin. Real love pleads with the sinner to flee from it. Real love confronts, convicts, and calls to repentance. And real love always points to Christ—the only One who bore the full fury of God's wrath so that sinners could be saved.
There are different types of love in the Greek New Testament - eros, phileo, storge, and God's kind of selfless giving love is agape.
True love, the kind that flows from Calvary's hill, loves God and hates personal sin. It does love the sinner enough to hate their sin and call them to a Savior on the spot. It, in love clearly warns them instead of looking down or speaking down to them. We don't seek to reform them. We are into "guilting and condemning people, making them feel bad." We simply share the truth and our testimony, as we let the Holy Spirit work in their lives to convict them. This is much different.
"Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling."
I want to tactfully, respectfully, gently witness with grace and truth to the sinners I meet, because I am a saved sinner... and not due to any goodness or noble deeds of my own. I want to show God's love toward all people, no matter where they've come from. I want to some common interests if I can. I want to build a bridge instead of burn a bridge into a pile of worthless relational ashes.
While rooted in truth, that familiar statement risks becoming a cheap Christian cliché that separates sin from the sinner in a way Scripture does not support. True biblical love never ignores or excuses sin—it pointedly, clearly, specifically confronts it compassionately.
Not a New Problem with That Statement: Does It Echo of Gnosticism?
Yes, this attempt of well-meaning believers to divide who someone is from what they do often mirrors ancient Gnosticism. First-century Gnostics claimed that the material world (including the body) was evil, while the inner spirit was good. As a result, they believed that bodily sin had no effect on the spiritual life and they could gladly proceed in their sins. The apostle John wrote his first epistle as a direct refutation of such heresies.
"So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth. 7 But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts." 1 John 1:6-10 nlt
Likewise today, the idea of loving the sinner while overlooking their open sin fosters a similar dualism really. But Scripture doesn’t allow us to separate people from the weight of their destructive actions.
The Apostle Paul in Romans 3:23 says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," and Romans 6:23 warns, "The wages of sin is death." And it's only right for us in love to warn people as well. Eternity is long and there are two destinations.
Biblical Love Is Honest and Redemptive
True love doesn’t wink at sin and just ignore it. No, no. People might be hurt. Love in me would listen to people, but love also speaks the truth with grace (Ephesians 4:15). Love warns of danger ahead. Ignoring sin is not compassion—it’s heartless neglect. As Proverbs 27:6 reminds us, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy." But Kurt, my boss doesn't allow me to witness on the job site. Can you warn off the job site?
In the church, we believers are called to wisely win people to Christ and to also restore sinners gently.. but truthfully.
"Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself." Galatians 6:1 nlt
Jesus Himself modeled this outreach when He told that woman caught in adultery, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more” (John 8:11). He extended grace but did not at all dismiss her sin.
Church Discipline: What is It? It's Love in Action
Biblical Church discipline is an essential act of love. In Matthew 18:15–17, Jesus outlines the clear steps for confronting a brother or sister in sin. The goal is always their restoration. I'd hate to see anyone get judged, experience wrath, or be punished.
Christian discipline given out in the right kind of way expresses the deepest kind of love, love that refuses to do nothing to rescue a brother from unrepentant sin and its painful consequences.
Doing nothing when your friend keeps sinning is sin. Tolerating sin under the banner of love weakens the church and distorts the gospel. Aren't we to follow the model of Jesus regarding wrongdoings? Yes. Hebrews 12:6 reminds us, "The Lord disciplines the one he loves."
Do Statistics Speak?
A 2022 Barna Group study showed that only 23% of practicing Christians believe in absolute moral truth, and nearly half see no problem with cohabitation before marriage. That popular cultural shift away from holy biblical standards isn’t just outside the church—it’s inside to. Should it be addressed. Yes and I know many pastors and Christians do address this.
Without loving accountability that is biblical, the church risks becoming irrelevant, lacking the moral backbone and clarity needed to offer real hope and transformation. We each must maintain integrity and credibility. What's more...
According to Barna Research (2023), only 27% of Christians believe in hell as a real place.
58% of self-professing Christians believe God accepts all religions and all behaviors equally.
Who Has Affirmed The Gospel Truth?
Charles Spurgeon said: "If you love sinners, you will hate their sins, and you will never be content until they are delivered from them."
He also says: "There is no love where there is no truth."
A.W. Tozer said: "We must have a new reformation. There must come a violent break with that irresponsible, amusement-mad, paganized pseudo-religion which passes today for the faith of Christ."
"God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation each day." Ps. 7:11 Berean Bible
"God is a just judge, and God is angry with the wicked every day." nkjv
John Stott said: "Sin and the child of God are incompatible. They may occasionally meet; they cannot live together in harmony."
Like some more? "He who is not angry with sin does not love God." —J.G. Machen
"The gospel is only good news when we understand the bad news." —R.C. Sproul
Here Are Some Lyrics That Echo Love For God and Hatred Of Sin
"Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me." —John Newton
"Let us love and sing and wonder, let us praise the Savior's name; He has hushed the law's loud thunder, He has quenched Mount Sinai's flame."
Come Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy. It's Time To Hate Sin (Joseph Hart)
"Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream; All the fitness He requireth is to feel your need of Him."
Jesus Paid It All. (Elvina Hall)
"Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow."
Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee. (Augustus Toplady)
"Be of sin the double cure, save from wrath and make me pure."
These hymns remind us that "God is love" even though Love is not God. Even that feeling of love is not God (not a bad feeling to have really). God's love is not at all a license to go sin, but the very power to be cleansed and changed. God's love warns sinners to turn away to Him.
Are we to love the sinner but hate the sin?
What does it mean that Jesus is a friend of sinners?
How can a loving God send someone to hell?
Why do I face the consequences of Adam's sin when I did not eat the that fruit?
Is God's love conditional or unconditional?
What does it mean that while we were still sinners Christ died for us?
Isn't it unloving to tell someone he or she is sinning..and please stop that?
"The fact that some sinners are not elected to salvation is no proof that God's attitude toward them is utterly devoid of sincere love. We know from Scripture that God is compassionate, kind, generous, and good even to the most stubborn sinners. Who can deny that these mercies flow out of God's boundless love? Yet it is evident that they are showered even on unrepentant sinners.
I want to acknowledge, however, that explaining God's love toward the reprobate is not as simple as most modern evangelicals want to make it. Clearly there is a sense in which the psalmist's expression, "I hate the assembly of evildoers" (Ps. 26:5) is a reflection of the mind of God. "Do I not hate those who hate Thee, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against Thee? I hate them with the utmost hatred; they have become my enemies" (Ps. 139:21-22). Such hatred as the psalmist expressed is a virtue, and we have every reason to conclude that it is a hatred God Himself shares. After all, He did say, "I have hated Esau" (Mal. 1:3; Rom. 9:13). The context reveals God was speaking of a whole race of wicked people. So there is a true and real sense in which Scripture teaches that God hates the wicked.
So an important distinction must be made. God loves believers with a particular love. It is a family love, the ultimate love of an eternal Father for His children. It is the consummate love of a Bridegroom for His bride. It is an eternal love that guarantees their salvation from sin and its ghastly penalty. That special love is reserved for believers alone.
However, limiting this saving, everlasting love to His chosen ones does not render God's compassion, mercy, goodness, and love for the rest of mankind insincere or meaningless. When God invites sinners to repent and receive forgiveness (Isa. 1:18; Matt. 11:28-30), His pleading is from a sincere heart of genuine love. "'As I live!' declares the Lord God, 'I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?'" (Ezek. 33:11). Clearly God does love even those who spurn His tender mercy, but it is a different quality of love, and different in degree from His love for His own." ~ John MacArthur
Love That Wisely Warns and Tells the Truth Makes an Impact
The is an approach.. a timing and tone for this. Yes, we are called to love the sinner and hate the sin the way God does this—but not by separating the two as if one can be saved apart from repentance and faith in Jesus. Our love must be courageous enough to go confront, clearly and gracious enough to help restore, and holy enough to reflect the heart of God. God is ultimately the One who saves and restores people (you and I can't save anyone). And there is no spiritual growth apart from His living Word.
"Love is to be sincere and active [the real thing—without guile and hypocrisy]. Hate what is evil [detest all ungodliness, do not tolerate wickedness]; hold on tightly to what is good." Romans 12:9 amp
A gospel that ignores sin is no gospel at all. But a gospel that hates sin because it loves the sinner enough to seek to win them, or for their restoration—that is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
"Don’t just pretend that you love others: really love them. Hate what is wrong. Stand on the side of the good." Romans 12:9 tlb
"Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly " Romans 12:9 esv
Let's live exemplary lives with good attitudes and selfless deeds. With the holy fear of God, let's let the Spirit biblically lead us day by day, moment by moment in our walk and serving Him. Let's continue to preach the Gospel (of love, of justice) both in season and out, boldly pointing people to Jesus who still saves. It's free, but it will cost them everything. I had to give up my old life, but God graciously gave me some new decent friends when the old friends calling me a Jesus Freak walked on out (not all did that). Let's faithfully call people to make a decision to repent and believe in Him.. to follow Him all the way home.
We must allow God's gracious love and message of righteousness.. of holiness to flow out. We must declare His mercy, but not at the expense of His perfect divine justice. We need to show love to sinners deeply (more than mere words), but never so lazily that we let them go and perish comfortably.
"Repentance is a spiritual medicine made up of six special ingredients:
1. Sight of sin.
2. Sorrow for sin.
3. Confession of sin.
4. Shame for sin.
5. Hatred for sin.
6. Turning from sin.
If any one of these is left out, repentance loses its virtue." ~Thomas Watson
