How a Christian Hates and God Does not

The following is a comment I received on Substack and my response. This shows the ingnorance and love of ‘hatred’ that cause many Christians to simply ignore the truth of scripture:

Comment from a person who loves ‘hate’: Just because God is love does not mean He is incapable of hate, God is love but He hates sin. Esau was in constant rebellion towards God and towards his own father Isaac. Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft which God hates. God hated Esau because Esau loved sin. God denied Esau the birthright because Esau didnt want it to begin with, the birthright of Messiah’s lineage not earthly wealth. Yes God literally hated Esau and God is just in His hate because when you are in complete opposition to Him and you love everything He hates, He will hate you. He blessed Esau because He PROMISED that to Abraham showing that even though He hates everything in a person He will still deal with them justly according to His word. Your mistake is thinking God is wrong to hate when He’s not, He is the only being with the right to hate justly.

My response:

Are you serious right now? You seem so determined to turn the God of love into a God who hates that you’ve decided Scripture—and basic logic—simply don’t matter. You keep running to Romans 9:13 (“Jacob I loved, yet Esau I hated”) as if it proves your point, yet you skip the two verses directly before it that explain the entire context. Paul explicitly says in Romans 9:11–12 that God’s declaration about Jacob and Esau was made “before the children were born, before they had done anything good or bad.” In other words, whatever God meant by “hating” Esau, it had nothing to do with Esau’s sin, because according to Paul, Esau hadn’t done anything—good or bad—yet. So your argument that “God hated Esau because of sin” evaporates the moment you actually read the verses you claim to believe. I would love to know how Esau supposedly sinned before he existed. Prenatal wickedness? A time-traveling rebellion? Or maybe Paul is actually making a point about God’s purpose, not God having emotional hatred toward a fetus.

But instead of following Paul’s explanation, you insist that God hates people because of their sin, as if Christ never dealt with sin at all. Have you ever read 2 Corinthians 5:19, or did you tear it out because it ruins your argument? Paul literally says that God was in Christ “conciliating the world to Himself, not reckoning their offenses to them.” According to Paul, God is at peace with humanity—because of Christ’s work. So when you insist that God hates people because of sin, you are openly rejecting the very thing Christ accomplished. You’re claiming God still holds offenses that Scripture says He is no longer counting. That isn’t “biblical theology.” That is unbelief with verses sprinkled on top.

Not only that, but your position directly contradicts the rest of Romans 9. Paul goes out of his way to emphasize that God’s choice took place before birth specifically to prevent anyone from claiming that human behavior—good or bad—was the basis of His decision. Yet here you are trying to smuggle human sin back into the equation as if Paul didn’t write the chapter you keep quoting from. If God made His declaration about Jacob and Esau before either of them acted, then obviously the issue was not moral performance. Paul says it. You deny it. It’s not a mystery who is wrong here.

And beyond all of this, your claim that God hates His own creatures because of sin exposes how little you understand of His character, His sovereignty, or Christ’s finished work. The very thing you say God “hates people for” is the thing Jesus came to take away. To say that God hates sinners because of sin after Christ removed sin is to deny the entire gospel at its foundation. You are attributing to God what Paul calls “the ministry of reconciliation,” you are contradicting the declaration that Christ is the propitiation “for the sins of the whole world,” and you are flattening the radical revelation that God is the Savior of all mankind. You aren’t defending Scripture—you’re contradicting it. And you aren’t defending God—you’re projecting your own hatred onto Him and calling it theology.

If you’re going to argue, at least try reading the verses you quote. Right now, the only thing you’ve proven is that you don’t understand the God you claim to speak for, you don’t understand the cross that removed the world’s sin, and you don’t understand the apostle who gave the clearest revelation of God’s purpose. Your view isn’t biblical. It’s just loud.