Category: Exegesis

Does God Only Love “Love” & Always Hate “Hate?”

 

They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.

Edmund Burke

“To idolize love as an absolute value without defining this love in relation to God’s Law is no other sin than Adam’s: to decide for ourselves, arbitrarily, what is good and worthy of being loved, and what is not. Do to so is to put ourselves in the place of God and to confuse all values; it is to put good and evil both beneath the foot of equality. And in this sense, equality — a great idol of our time — abolishes the difference between God and man, between good and evil, and even between creatures themselves, all created by God to respect the place that our Lord and King has assigned them.”

 

Jean Marc-Berthoud

In Defense of God’s Law — p. 10-11

In the above we find the response to those sodomites and others who argue in defense of sodomite marriage that “you have no right to determine who people are allowed and are not allowed to love.” It is true I as the creature have no right to determine who people are and are not to love but God does have that right and as God as assigned sodomy as evil we must hate sodomite marriages and sodomites because of our Love to and for God and for the godly.

Consider God’s Word which underscores my point;

Romans 12:9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.

Cleaving to that which is good is commended with abhorrence of that which is evil. The one cannot be done without the other. The strength of our love for good measures itself by the energy with which we hate evil. This is the great failing of the modern Church. The modern Church along with the rest of the culture bemoans “hate” and comes up with stupid little phrases like “Love wins” and that quite apart from any consideration of what is being hated and what is being loved. A rightly directed hate is every bit as loving as a wrongly directed love is hateful. It is not love which is good and hate that which is evil. Love and hate can each be a virtue or vice, depending upon the objects to which they attach themselves. And what ultimately differentiates good from evil — in love or hate — is the very person of God, His eternal nature, and Holy character. Further, as God’s Law is a reflection of God’s character we likewise can determine our proper loves and proper hates by looking to God’s law as the norm that norms all our norms of love and hate.

Once Reformation falls again upon the West it will be typified by the elimination of non-discriminating love — which is idolatry — and the embrace of a discriminating law-defined hate.

Genesis 1 Contra Polytheism

What Genesis 1 is undertaking and accomplishing is a radical and sweeping affirmation of monotheism vis-a-vis polytheism, syncretism, and idolatry. Each day of creation … dismisses an additional cluster of deities… On the first day, the gods of light and darkness are dismissed. On the second day, the gods of sky and sea. On the third day, earth gods and gods of vegetation. On the fourth day, sun, moon and star gods. The fifth and sixth days take way any associations with divinity from the animal kingdom. And finally human existence, too, is emptied of any intrinsic divinity — while at the same time all human beings, from the greatest to the least, and not just pharaoh, kings, and heroes, are granted a divine likeness and mediation.

H. Conrad Hyer
Biblical Literalism: Constricting the Cosmic Dance — pg. 101

Deuteronomy 21:18 … The Rebellious Child

Deut. 21:18 “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and who, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them, 19 then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city and unto the gate of his place. 20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, ‘This, our son, is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ 21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones so that he die. So shalt thou put evil away from among you, and all Israel shall hear and fear.

The graciousness of God’s law

1.) Note that this law ends the idea that children are absolutely owned by the parents to do with what they will. Instead, the Parent must go to a larger deliberative body in order to convict the child. The law thus gives the child a higher court outside the home where he would essentially be able to appeal a wicked parents desire to kill him. Remember, the way the pagans treated their children. This law is a safeguard against that.

2.) Clearly, this law applies to an older adolescent or young adult child still living in the home. Toddlers aren’t prone to be drunkards. We are likely looking at an adult child who has established a pattern of rebellion and criminality.

3.) Allowing such a delinquent child to live would be to allow the leaven of wickedness to infect the whole social order. One unrepentant adult child allowed to exercise their sovereign will over God’s will would breed more of the same and eventually, the whole Godly social order would be overthrown. Stoning such a guilty offspring is thus grace to the whole covenant community.

4.) I find it beyond astonishing that a culture that is so glib about torturing and killing the unborn as followed by selling the unborn body parts on the free market finds the ability to be outraged over a God who would legislate the death penalty for an adult child who has set a pattern of rebellion and criminality. Modern man complaining about the God of the Bible being cruel is like Miley Cyrus complaining about Madonna’s lack of virtue.  Clearly, we see here that this commandment is graciousness to God’s covenant community.

5.) Finally, there is no record in Scripture of this ever happening.

Mary’s Magnificat and the Liberation Theology Narrative

he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
    and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
    and the rich he has sent away empty.

Luke 1:52f

The position of Mary (or Zechariah, or Simeon, or Anna, etc.) is not important because they were low on the social ladder but because they were saints of God despite their poverty and oppression. Poverty as poverty doesn’t score you any points in the Kingdom of God if one doesn’t belong to Christ and the people of God. The antithesis of the Scripture is not between rich vs. poor but between the Seed of the Serpent vs. The seed of the woman. This is underscored also in Dr. Luke’s parabolic account of the rich man (Dives) and Lazarus. Lazarus is not in Hades because he was rich and Lazarus is not in Abraham’s bosom because he was poor. Dives is an occupant of Hades because he would not listen to Moses and the prophets regarding the Messiah while Dives did listen. God does not hate the rich because they are rich and He does not love the poor because they are poor.

The emphasis in Mary’s Song is that God remembers His people who are being oppressed by the wicked mighty. The whole thrust of Luke’s songs is to demonstrate that God has not forgotten His people despite the fact it might look that way and despite the fact that they are being oppressed by wealthy wickedness in high places (Herod, Augustus Caesar etc.). The fact that the Lord Christ is born among the lowly does not prove that lowliness as lowliness is a virtue. After all, Jesus was born of the line of great King David and God includes the High Born in the nativity story by including visitation from the Kings of the East. In Scripture, God esteems those in Covenant, rich or poor, and destroys those outside of covenant, rich or poor.

The point in Luke’s Songs is not that God favors poor wicked people over righteous rich people. The point is that God has remembered Israel and He has remembered Israel despite her captivity and the low status she has sunken into. This is Redemptive History and what is being accentuated is God remembering His promise to raise up a Messiah. The character of God is what is being put on display, not the status of those whom He is remembering. What is not being accentuated is that God is social class conscious. Believe me, if the nativity story were written today, given how much the Wealthy are hated by our current Cultural Marxist clergy, God would have His Messiah born among the rich and royal to add the factor of “isn’t God amazing that He brought His Messiah among such ignoble filthy rich people.” However, what we don’t see in the nativity narrative of the cultural Marxist clergy is the amazing God who keeps His promises no matter what. No, what we see are the amazing poor people who, “naturally enough” are lifted up. Given their noble poverty they deserve it after all.

Does God bring down all the “Mighty” from their thrones? Did God bring down Job? Abraham? David? Are Zaccheus or Joseph of Arimathea to be counted as inferior saints in the New and Better covenant because they were wealthy? Is the New and Better covenant characterized now by God hating all wealthy people and loving all poor people regardless of their faith or lack of faith in Christ? Has the lack of wealth now become the new standard of inherent righteousness? Is God now for the proletariat and against the Bourgeois? Did God inspire Das Kapital?

This preoccupation of the Church in the West with Marxist categories completely flummoxes me. God loves the righteous in Christ regardless of their socio-economic status and he hates the wicked outside of Christ regardless of their socio-economic status… even if they are as poor and wretched as Dicken’s Fagin.

Why is it that we seem to think that God loves the impoverished more than the wealthy simply on the basis of their impoverishment? God loves His people in Christ. It is a certainty that the wealthy saints have a charge to keep in terms of their brethren of low estate but those of low estate are not superior to those of wealth if they are both looking to Christ and resting in him, just as the wealthy are not superior to those of poverty in terms of status before God just because they are wealthy.

God hates the unrighteous wealthy wicked because they do tend to oppress the poor but he equally hates the unrighteous impoverished wicked because they do tend to envy the rich. It strikes me that we have made the envious unrighteous wicked poor some kind of gold standard to aspire to. This is not what Scripture teaches and it is all very strange.

This then is the verdict – the light has come into the world, but men have hated the light because their deeds were evil. If you walk in the light as he is in the light, then they will hate you too, regardless of your socio-economic status. Oppression is due to the gospel and very often the estimable poor are poor due to their righteousness eliciting persecution and not because the in Christ wealthy are keeping them down.

Ezekiel 33:11 … It Doesn’t Mean what the Non-Calvinists say it Means

Say unto them: ‘As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?’

Ezekiel 33:11

This passage is often presented by non-Calvinists of various hues and stripes to try and prove that Calvinism is all wet with its affirmation of God’s total Sovereignty. The idea as presented by the Arminian is that here in Ezekiel we find God wanting something (the wicked turning) that He can’t get. Poor God, frustrated by the sovereign will of the Arminian and Molinist wicked.

However when we read this text as against other passages we know that a frustrated God, who can’t get the wicked to turn, is not an option.

Psalm 115:3 But our God is in the heavens;
He does whatever He pleases. 

Psalm 135:6 Whatever the Lord pleases, He does,
In heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps.

Daniel 4:35 “All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, But He does according to His will in the host of heaven And among the inhabitants of earth; And no one can ward off His hand Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’

So, how do we read this Ezekiel 33:11 so as to eliminate the idea that there is a contradiction here while at the same time frustrating Arminian and Molinist misconstructions?

The answer is to read the Ezekiel text in light of another text that explicitly says that there are some deaths of some people over which God does delight,

Psalm 116:15 Precious in the sight of the Lord
Is the death of His godly ones.

God does not delight in the death of the wicked. God does delight in the death of His saints. It would seem what we must conclude is that whether or not God delights in the death of someone is determined by their covenant standing with Jehovah. If one is part of the covenant community then God delights (and ordains) their death. If one is not part of the covenant community God does not delight (but does ordain) their death. So, God not delighting in the death of the wicked does not speak to a frustrated God but does speak to a God who delights in His people’s deaths because they are covenantally related to Him, but who does not delight in the deaths of those not His people because they are not covenantally related to Him and His wrath lies upon them. God not delighting in the death of the wicked then is a covenantal pejorative. It is as if God says to the wicked dying, “You’re outside the covenant. I could care less about your death.”

This would be consistent with God’s character we find elsewhere in Scripture. God is the one whom wicked men are to fear,

Luke 12:5 But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear the One who, after you have been killed, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear Him!

He (God) has brought back their wickedness upon them
And will destroy them in their evil;
The Lord our God will destroy them. (Psalm 94:23)

So, we see here that essential to God’s character marker of being Just is His absolute delight in defending His name against rebels by exercising Justice and Vengeance against the wicked. He does not delight in the death of the wicked because in the death of the wicked His disposition is Wrath against them as not being covenantally united to Christ.

So, what the Arminian has done with this text is to make it teach the opposite of what it does teach. The Arminian has a nasty habit of this kind of “exegesis.” The Arminian or the Molinist has to overturn the perspicuous plain teaching of countless Scripture in order to read this passage the way they do and they are perfectly willing to do so in order to get a frustrated God who wants to save the wicked but can’t and  then loses sleep over their loss.

Of course, this text is good news to the wicked because it reminds them again that there is only one solution to God’s lack of delight in their death and that is for them to repent and trust Christ who is the assuagement of God’s just anger against the wickedness.

Hat Tip Dan Brannan for putting me on this.