How to Hate Your Sin

July 25, 2024 Pastor Chris Oswald

Thesis You learn to hate sin by cultivating love for God through meditation on the cross, which is the only motivation sufficient to kill sins resistant to self-preservation and love for others.

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What's in this sermon

The shape of the argument

24 units across exposition, application, illustration, theological claim, and conclusion. The pastor's argument is built from these moving parts.

Pastoral correction · unit #18

"Provides the single practical method for cultivating love for God: frequent meditation on the cross, where God's love and hatred of sin are simultaneously visible, quoting Spurgeon as authority for this practice."

Doctrinal loci· 10 surfaced

Sanctification · 11 Hamartiology · 8 Anthropology · 4 Soteriology · 4 Christology · 3 Theology Proper · 3 Bibliology · 1 Doxology / Worship · 1 Ethics / Moral Theology · 1 Providence / Sovereignty · 1

Bible citations· 11

Illustrations· 5

personal story · unit #4 — Personal story of recurring nightmares about violently defending his children reveals the disturbing intensity of protective hatred that flows from deep love.
cultural reference · unit #8 — Illustrates the love-hate connection through controversial cultural examples showing how people defend what they love by hating what threatens it.
hypothetical · unit #14 — Illustrates the limitation of love-for-others motivation through the example of harsh words in the home that produce invisible cumulative harm.
personal story · unit #15 — Personal story of overcoming sermon procrastination through love for congregation illustrates how love for others can successfully motivate hatred of sins of omission when deadlines make consequences proximate.
cultural reference · unit #19 — Uses Isaac Watts's hymn to illustrate how meditation on the cross simultaneously reveals God's love and generates contempt for sin.

Theological claims· 6

Hate and love are two sides of the same coin—we hate what threatens what we love. unit #3
Biblical hatred is always the protective response flowing from deep love, not merely opposition to evil. unit #7
Love for self-preservation is insufficient for hating sin because many sins do not produce immediate consequences that hurt you. unit #10
Love for others is a better motivation than self-love for hating sin, but it remains insufficient because many sins against others don't produce obvious harm. unit #13
Love for self and love for others are both insufficient motivations for hating secret sins because these sins produce no visible harm and confession may cause more pain than the sin. unit #16
Love for God is the only motivation sufficient to hate the secret, persistent sins that love for self and love for others cannot reach. unit #17

Quotations· 6

"if you remove any one of these ingredients, you don't have repentance" — Thomas Watson (unit #1)

"repentance is like a medicine that is made of six essential ingredients: the sight of sin, sorrow for sin, confession of sin, shame for sin, hatred for sin, and turning from sin" — Thomas Watson (unit #1)

"Courage in wartime flows not so much for the hatred of the thing in front of you, but the love for what is behind you, the love for what you're defending" — G.K. Chesterton (unit #7)

"it's ok to be dangerous, it's good to be dangerous" — Jordan Peterson (unit #7)

"Look to the cross and hate your sin for sin. Nailed your well beloved to the tree. Look up at the cross and you will kill sin for the strength of Jesus. Love will make you strong to put down your tendencies to sin." — Charles Spurgeon (unit #18)

"When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of glory died. My richest gain I count but lost and pour contempt on all my pride." — Isaac Watts (unit #19)

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0 · Establishes the unplanned but timely focus on repentance and introduces the specific topic of hating sin as the subject for this teaching

Welcome to the Providence podcast. My name is Chris Oswald, Senior pastor at Providence Community Church. Well, I had no intention of making this repentance week quote unquote, but that was the theme of our sermon last Sunday and we followed that up with a second podcast. Hopefully you've listened to by now. We have one more particular issue I think would be beneficial to discuss while we are in the mindset of thinking about repentance, and that is the idea of being angry with our sin or to hate our sin.

1 · Introduces Thomas Watson's six-ingredient framework for repentance and identifies hatred for sin as the commonly missing element preventing genuine turning from sin

Thomas Watson says that there are six essential ingredients to repentance. He says that repentance is like a medicine that is made of six essential ingredients: the sight of sin, sorrow for sin, confession of sin, shame for sin, hatred for sin, and turning from sin. And as he makes the comment, he says that, you know, if you remove any one of these ingredients, you don't, you don't have repentance. So I want to talk today about hatred for sin, number five on his list. Many times when someone is struggling to follow through, to really turn from their sin, you can find the other ingredients present. You can find that they see the sin as sin. You can see that there is some sorrow for that sin. There is a confession of sin, There is shame for sin. But the one elusive ingredient seems to be the hatred of sin.

2 · Establishes biblical warrant for hating sin by surveying Old and New Testament commands connecting the fear and love of God with hatred of evil

First of all, let's lay some biblical groundwork down that this is a thing that the Bible calls us to hate sin. Proverbs 4:13 says, the fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. In Amos 5:15, we are told to hate evil and Love good. Psalms 97:10 says, O you who love the Lord, hate evil. Both Ephesians 4:26 and Psalm 4, 4 say, Be angry and do not sin. And finally, in Romans 12:9, we are told to let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good, and the word abhor. There is just another way of talking about hate. So that's what we're going to talk about, how to hate our sin.

3 · Establishes the fundamental psychological and moral principle that hate is intrinsically connected to love as its protective counterpart

The first thing we might want to do is just to understand what hate entails. There's simply a connection. The best way to understand hate is just to see it as the other side of the coin with love, other side of the same coin. Hate and love have a. Have a connection, an unbreakable connection. We tend to hate those things that threaten or hurt what we love.

4 · Personal story of recurring nightmares about violently defending his children reveals the disturbing intensity of protective hatred that flows from deep love

Long before the John Wick type films came on the scene, I used to have a nightmare pretty regularly when I was relatively new dad about people breaking into my house and trying to hurt my kids. And the nightmare was never about the break in itself. I'm a superhero in my dreams. I imagine some of you are as well. And I was never scared of the actual threat. I was actually. I feel like these turned into nightmares because every single time I had one of these dreams where someone would break in to steal a child or something like that, I would absolutely murder that individual with my bare hands. And this is what would wake me up, this sick feeling in my stomach, this sense that I had this level of aggression in me, that I could just honestly sit on top of someone and, you know, crush their windpipe with my hands. And that was very disturbing to me. I thought, you know, what is going on here?

5 · Interprets the nightmare experience as discovery of how deeply he loved his children, manifested through the protective hatred he felt toward imagined threats

And it took me a while to realize that as a man, I was just figuring out the dimensions of love for my kids. You know, men tend to not be completely even aware of half the things we're feeling. And I didn't necessarily feel this immediate, like kind of positive, absolute love for my kids in some way that I was aware of now. I did feel it, I just wasn't aware of it. And what I think I was doing in those nightmares was just navigating this relationship between love and hate and understanding that for me, a fundamental expression of love is a protection and being a ruination to those who would hurt the things that I love.

6 · Reassures listeners that the capacity for protective aggression is morally good when properly aligned with love, resolving the ethical tension in the nightmare illustration

Now you'll be happy to know that it's been as soon as I kind of realized it's okay to be dangerous, it's good to be dangerous, as Jordan Peterson would talk about. It's good to have the capacity for danger when it's aligned properly with love.

7 · Establishes that righteous hatred always flows from love for what is threatened, not merely opposition to evil itself—a principle that will ground the sermon's teaching on hating sin

Chesterton, he talks about courage in wartime. Courage in wartime flows not so much for the hatred of the thing in front of you, but the love for what is behind you, the love for what you're defending. And so that's sort of important to understand as we discuss how to hate sin. Hate is just, you know, positive hate, Biblical hate, good hate is always the flip side of a deep, deep love.

8 · Illustrates the love-hate connection through controversial cultural examples showing how people defend what they love by hating what threatens it

And we can see this not only in the Christian world, we can just see this in general. When we see someone find that their sacred reproductive rights are threatened, well, they love abortion. They love abortion. And so what comes out of them when that is threatened is hate. When someone is addicted to homosexual behavior and they are told that that's wrong, what you'll see is that they love that sin so much that they hate the truth. And so there's a humanity wide connection between love and hate. When the thing that we love is threatened, we can hate whatever is threatening it.

9 · Introduces the first of three loves that can generate hatred for sin—love for self-preservation—and establishes its biblical legitimacy through texts showing God appealing to self-interest as a motivation for obedience

So how does this work with sin? How are we supposed to hate sin? Well, it's tied. I think biblically there are three loves that can teach us to hate sin. And I'll rank them in what I would consider to be the order of good, better and best. Three loves that can make us hate sin from good, better and best. So the first one would be a love for your own well being a love for your own self in some respect. Ephesians 5:29 says that nobody ever hated their own body, but nourishes and cherishes it. We tend to think that people have a problem with self love. The Bible says the opposite. The Bible teaches that there is no problem with self love in the human. The problem is actually with an inordinate self love that over time can turn into all sorts of toxic doubts and insecurities because you are simply not an object sufficient of total love. But people love themselves and the Bible takes this into account and routinely will offer a call to obedience simply for the sake of self preservation. That's what Jesus is doing in Mark 8:26 when he says, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul? He's counting on people having a self preserving instinct and that they would learn to, they would want to obey because of this self preservation kind of instinct. Deuteronomy 30:19 says, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life that you and your offspring may live.

10 · Explains the fundamental limitation of self-love as a motivation: it only generates hatred for sins that produce obvious immediate consequences

Now this is a biblical approach, but I want to explain why I rank it as the least superior. It's still biblical, but it will turn out to be insufficient for certain sins. You will typically learn to hate sin when you see a consequence hurting something you love. It's the basic math of this. And so one of the problems with being motivated to hate sin because of a love for self preservation is that not all sins tend to bring immediate consequences that hurt you.

11 · Identifies sins of omission as the primary category of sin resistant to self-love motivation because they often produce short-term peace rather than immediate pain

Basically almost all sins of omission are like this when we fail to do the thing we're supposed to do. And we'll usually find more peace in the short term by not doing the thing that we're supposed to do now, over time, eventually this kind of sin, the sin of omission, will actually hurt you, but it takes a long time. And so your actual kind of human reasoning and the feedback loop is so long and extended that you don't really see real harm being done. To yourself in many sins of omission. In fact, many times sins of omission kind of give a short term benefit. When you don't correct that child that you really needed to correct. The short term benefit is that you get peace. You don't have to ruin your evening and deal with the whole thing and have this whole drama unfold and so forth. There's really no indicator in the short term that you're hurting yourself. Of course, over time that will come to be seen, but in the short term, you will often choose the path of least resistance, which involves a sin of omission. You should get in there, you should correct that, but you often will not because there's just not a sufficient motivation to do that. It's not clear to you that this is actually going to cause you any problems in the short term.

12 · Extends the limitation of self-love motivation to include private sins, mental sins, and sins of the heart, concluding that most Christians never grow beyond sins that lack immediate painful consequences

Now, again, we're just talking about sort of human senses. Obviously, if you just believe the Bible, you would understand that that's a very hateful thing to do to fail to discipline your son and it's a very hateful thing to do to him and a hateful thing to do to you in the long run. But in the short term, you don't see things like that. So one of the areas where we won't really learn to hate our sin and sins of omission if we're just motivated by love for self. There's just not an obvious connection between the sin and the hurt. There are other sins like this as well, some sins of commission, some sins that we actively do. These would be private sins, secret sins, sins of the heart, sins of the mind. These are very common, of course, and it's really hard to hate those sins out of a love for self, because again, you're not really seeing immediate consequences to these sins, in my opinion. The average Christian often never grows in holiness or hatred for sins that don't hurt them. And a great number of the sins that they continue to walk with are the sins that don't show any sort of obvious immediate pain. So I would say that hatred for sins due to the love for self is an insufficient love to really get us to hate sin in all of its forms.

13 · Introduces the second love—love for others—as a superior but still insufficient motivation because many interpersonal sins don't produce obvious visible harm

Secondly, slightly more superior would simply be that something I talked about in the previous podcast, which would just be to learn to hate your sin sin because it hurts the people you love. This would be hatred for sin as an expression of love for others. This connection will help you more than the other. For this reason, I say it's better, it's better than good. But it's still not best because a lot of the times, even sins that we commit against others don't seem to yield enough hurt to sort of move the needle.

14 · Illustrates the limitation of love-for-others motivation through the example of harsh words in the home that produce invisible cumulative harm

You can really fall into a climate in your home where harsh words are spoken and everyone just adjusts to that environment and everybody toughens up and, you know, there's no obvious blood on the field. You really are hurting people with your harsh words, but it's not obvious. And so you may know that harsh words are sinful often, and you may understand that that's true. But how do you hate that sin when it doesn't really hurt you and it doesn't really hurt the people that you love in any way? That's just, like, obvious and alarming. Again, this particular love, love for others is not always sufficient for all the sins that we need to hate now.

15 · Personal story of overcoming sermon procrastination through love for congregation illustrates how love for others can successfully motivate hatred of sins of omission when deadlines make consequences proximate

It does include a greater circle, though. I think a lot of the sins of omission that we struggle with, we eventually get over just because we don't want to let people down. We don't want to hurt them. We don't, you know, and so on and so forth over the years, you know, every week I. Well, you know, I spend about two weeks thinking about a sermon, and the final week I spend writing it. And so that's really, you know, I'm spending a lot of plates all the time to sort of deliver this 40 minutes of Bible encouragement, Bible light, every week. And one of the things that, you know, I learned relatively early in life was if I don't do like, I can potentially. What's the word? I can potentially procrastinate throughout the week and then be caught in what they call the Saturday Night special, where you're stuck at your computer and you're trying to develop some kind of content. But at some point when I was young, I realized, man, what a terrible thing I would be doing to people if I didn't put real work into this. So I found sort of a way to hate procrastination out of my love for people. I want to make sure that I deliver something to them that is worked on and thought about and prayed over and so on and so forth. So some of your sins of omission will find proper framing just by your love for others. A lot of those have to do with just keeping up with the duties in life and so on and so forth. You can learn to hate procrastination just from your love of others, so long as there's some kind of immediate deadline or consequence that's close enough.

16 · Concludes the examination of love for others by showing its limitation: secret sins remain untouched because they harm no one visibly, and sometimes confession would hurt others more than the sin itself

You know, I confused my dog this morning. We have this whole routine where he goes outside, goes to the bathroom, and then he comes in and gets a treat. And the treat is really to condition him to just get the bathroom stuff done as quickly as possible and then to come back in the house as quickly as possible. That's what that treat is for. And so he came in, ran and got into the kitchen. And he was kind of up in my business as I was getting the treats. And I said, hey, sit. And you know, he sat, but then he stood and sat and stood. And he's just confused. He's a good sitter. Normally I was interrupting one reward circuit with another command. You know, we are people that are easily conditioned by such things. And so I say that your love for others can help you to hate, for instance, the sin of the omission, sin of procrastination. Only if you've got something like I've got, where if I get up on a Sunday and I haven't done the work, the deadline is seven days, right? The deadline's always seven days. And so I can see clearly how if I don't do a good job, the payoff, the consequences of that, it's just seven days away. People are going to have to patiently sit through something that isn't as well structured as they deserve for it to be, isn't as well thought out, isn't as prayed over and as rooted in the word and so on and so forth. And so for me, you know, seven days is okay. Like, I can overcome that particular sin tendency just by seeing, like, yeah, if I don't get this done, people are going to be hurt by it. So that's one area where a love for others has helped me over hate a particular sin. But that still doesn't help us with these very private sins that maybe nobody knows about. These are much more difficult because in some respects, your love for others can even keep you from handling those sins. It can be a catch 22, where you need to confess something while simultaneously realizing that the confession itself would be quite hurtful. Point. The point is, is that in these secret sins, love for self and love for others is an insufficient motivation.

17 · Introduces the third and supreme love—love for God—as the only motivation sufficient to generate hatred for the persistent private sins resistant to the other two loves

So there is one love, though, that you can develop that will help you to hate your sin. And that is just the love of God. At some point in the Christian life. Most of the sins that have brought kind of immediate consequences and immediate pain both to us and to our loved ones, at some point we handle those. But there's still these private things that are still are very much just in us and maybe don't even get expressed very often in the world. And if so, very secretly. It's hard to hate those sins because you love yourself or love others. There has to be a third motivation, and that motivation is the love of God. That's made explicit in a number of these verses. For instance, in Psalm 97:10, you who love the Lord hate evil.

18 · Provides the single practical method for cultivating love for God: frequent meditation on the cross, where God's love and hatred of sin are simultaneously visible, quoting Spurgeon as authority for this practice

As you know, I'm all about efficiency. I'm always looking for that 80, 20 kind of practice where we can put 80% of the effort in and get put 20% of the effort in and get 80% of the results. And I think that when it comes to dealing with sins, we just need to learn to love God. This is a huge thing. It's not the only solution, but it is the solution that covers all the bases at some level or another. How do we learn to love God? Well, let me just give you one point today, and that would be to you learn to love God by meditating on the cross of Jesus Christ. And what I'm talking about here is a frequent, regular mental visitation to the scene of the cross and to see the one who did not deserve to suffer suffering for you, the one who did deserve to suffer, and to see God's wrath against your sin poured out on Christ. To see the misery of the cross, to understand how unfair, unjust and cruel it was to make frequent visits to the cross, is to see both God's love for you and his hatred of sin. So this is really where we want to go time and time again as we're trying to handle some of the sins that have seemed resistant to other loves. Love for self or love for others will not be resistant ultimately to the love for God that is developed when you look at the cross. Charles Spurgeon put it this way. Look to the cross and hate your sin for sin. Nailed your well beloved to the tree look up at the cross and you will kill sin for the strength of Jesus. Love will make you strong to put down your tendencies to sin. Let me read that one more time. I know you're maybe doing things right now, but let me grab your attention. Just hold still for a second if you can. Look to the cross, Spurgeon says, and hate your sin for sin. Nailed your well beloved to the tree look up to the cross and you will kill sin for the strength of Jesus. Love will make you strong to put down your tendencies to sin.

19 · Uses Isaac Watts's hymn to illustrate how meditation on the cross simultaneously reveals God's love and generates contempt for sin

In his hymn When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, Isaac Watts says, when I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of glory died. My richest gain I count but lost and pour contempt on all my pride. When you look at the cross, you see the love of God and you also see just the absolute disgusting nature of your sins, which could not be satisfied in any other way but in Jesus dying for them.

20 · Grounds the call to meditate on the cross in 1 John 4:9-10, establishing that God's love is definitively revealed in sending His Son as propitiation for sin

So if you look to the cross, you'll learn to love God first. John 4:10 says, in this is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. It is this love. In this is love. Sorry, guys. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation of our sins. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

21 · Synthesizes the sermon's three-love structure and issues the central application: you must fall in love with God and stay in love with God to hate resistant sins

So what we're saying in this brief podcast is, is that you've got to learn to hate your sin. The way you learn to hate a sin is to attach it and see its connection to something you love. The Bible offers three potential loves. The first is a love for self preservation, the second is a love for others, and the third is a love for God. You need all three. But ultimately there will be some sins that are resistant to killing and resistant to hating. Until your love of God increases sufficiently, you really do have to just fall in love with God and stay in love with God and friends.

22 · Provides concrete daily practices for cultivating love for God: gratitude, blessing-counting, worship music, conversational prayer, and meditative use of time to keep love for God warm

This is not an easy thing. I think that we have made the love of God loving God rather seem to be some sort of obvious and natural expression. But the truth is, you really just need to, throughout your day, do multiple things to increase and stoke your love for God. You need to look around the world and see the beauty and feel gratitude. You need to thank God for the many blessings he's given you and count his benefits. You need to, you know, get a playlist going of music that you find stirring and edifying and pointing back to God and His worthiness of your love. You need to spend time just praying throughout the day, just conversationally talking to God, both about what you're hearing in these songs. And you want to make melody in your heart, as it says in Ephesians. You really just want to focus on using as much of the day as you can to keep your love for God, not to keep your love for God. Growing warm, staying warm, not growing cold. And I think that as you do that, especially as you meditate on the cross, you will find a love for God, and that love for God will actually create hatred for sin.

23 · Closes the teaching by interpreting the unplanned repentance series as providential direction, urging listeners to receive it as from the Lord and walk in the light

All right, well, that's all I've got for you. And I don't expect to do any more podcasts about repentance for a while, so I pray that this one was useful. The previous podcast was useful, and the sermon last Sunday on false repentance was useful. And friends, let's just make sure. Let's just assume. I certainly didn't plan to do this much on repentance, so let's just take this as sort of a word from the Lord or evidence from the Lord that this is something we want to learn and grow in together. And let's just, you know, walk in the light while there is light. All right, well, blessings, my friend. I can't wait to see you on Sunday and worship our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ together one more Sunday. Be well.

Where this fits

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The three sermons immediately preceding this one in the preaching schedule.

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True repentance from sin requires recognizing that all sin is narcissistic self-exaltation that harms others, and it demands genuine humility before God, who stands as the avenger of those we've hurt but who, unlike us, responds to our brokenness not with cruelty but with compassionate restoration.

July 25 · This sermon

How to Hate Your Sin

You learn to hate sin by cultivating love for God through meditation on the cross, which is the only motivation sufficient to kill sins resistant to self-preservation and love for others.

Take it further

Discuss · apply · pray

Small groups

6 discussion questions

Chris said that hate and love are two sides of the same coin—we hate what threatens what we love. What is something you genuinely love, and…

Daily readings

5-day reading plan

This week we meditate on why love—for God alone—is the only sufficient motivation to hate sin deeply and persistently, beginning with the foundational truth that hate and love are inseparable, and moving toward the daily practices that keep our love for God warm.

Prayer

Prayer for Love of God to Overcome Hidden Sin

Father, we come before You acknowledging that You alone see every secret place of our hearts. We adore You for Your fierce love toward us—a…

Family table

What Do You Love More?

Chris talked about how we hate what threatens what we love most. This prompt invites your family to think about the things they treasure and…

Couples

Learning to Hate Sin Together

When you heard that love for God is the only sufficient motivation to hate secret sin, what sin came to mind—and what does it reveal about w…

Memorize

1 John 4:9-10

This verse crystallizes the sermon's central claim that love for God is the only sufficient motivation to hate secret, persistent sin—and it anchors that love in the cross, where God's love and hatred of sin are most visibly displayed. By meditating on these verses, believers encounter the gospel foundation that alone awakens deep love for God, which then becomes the power to hate sin that self-love and love for others cannot reach.

Small-group discussion

6 questions for your group this week

Chris said that hate and love are two sides of the same coin—we hate what threatens what we love. What is something you genuinely love, and what do you find yourself naturally hating or opposing because it threatens that love?

→ How does that example help you understand what it might mean to hate sin as a natural overflow of loving God?
The sermon distinguished between three kinds of love that motivate us to hate sin: love for self, love for others, and love for God. Which of these three motivations do you find yourself relying on most when you're fighting against sin in your own life?
Chris pointed out that love for self-preservation often fails to motivate us to hate certain sins because many sins don't produce immediate consequences that hurt us. Can you think of a sin you've struggled with that doesn't obviously harm you in the short term, and what that reveals about why self-love alone is insufficient?
The sermon suggested that love for others is a better motivation than self-love for hating sin—but it too has limits, especially with secret sins that produce no visible harm. Why is it true that we can be tempted to keep hidden sins hidden even when we genuinely love the people around us?

→ What does that reveal about the spiritual reality of sin that love for others cannot address?
According to the sermon, love for God is the only motivation sufficient to hate the secret, persistent sins that love for self and love for others cannot reach. What does it look like in practice to choose to hate a sin primarily because God hates it and loves you—rather than because of what the sin might do to you or others?

1 John 4:9-10
Chris taught that we learn to love God—and thereby hate sin—by frequently meditating on the cross, where we see both God's love for us and His hatred of sin. What would it look like this week for you to intentionally return to the cross when you're tempted to minimize or hide a particular sin?

Psalm 97:10

→ What practices mentioned in the sermon—gratitude, worship music, conversational prayer, meditation—feel most accessible to you as ways to keep your love for God warm rather than letting it grow cold?

Draft · pending review

Daily readings · Monday–Friday

5-day reading plan

Monday Romans 12:9

Paul's command—"Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good"—sets hate and love in the same breath, not as opposites but as expressions of a unified heart. We see that our capacity to hate sin flows from something deeper: a fierce love that cannot tolerate what corrupts its beloved. This is the scriptural pattern we must grasp if we are to hate sin not from duty but from the overflow of affection.

Tuesday Psalm 97:10

The Psalmist declares, "O you who love the Lord, hate evil!" This is not an arbitrary moral command but an invitation to alignment: those who love God naturally hate what opposes Him. The hatred is not cold legalism but the burning protection of what we cherish most. We learn that to hate sin rightly is to stand guard over our love for the all-glorious God, just as a parent fiercely opposes what threatens their child.

Wednesday Proverbs 8:13

Wisdom declares, "The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil." Notice the shift: not fear of harm to myself, not fear of hurting others, but fear of the Lord—reverence for His character and holiness—is what produces hatred of evil. Self-preservation and concern for others are good loves, but they crumble when sin hides in darkness and threatens no one we can see. Only fear of God, love for God, pierces the veil of secrecy and moves us to repent of what no earthly witness will ever know.

Thursday 1 John 4:9-10

John shows us the source of our capacity to love God at all: "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." When we grasp that God loved us at the cost of His Son's blood, we find a love so immense, so costly, that it reframes every secret sin as a fresh wound to the One who died for us. This vision alone produces the hatred of sin that reaches into hidden places.

Friday Psalm 4:4

The Psalmist commands, "Be angry, and do not sin; ponder in your hearts on your beds, and be silent." Meditation—deliberate, repeated turning of the mind toward truth—is the practice that stirs hatred of sin by warming love for God. We are invited this week to ask: What daily practice could you add to keep your love for God warm? Is it lingering over the cross in prayer? Singing songs that celebrate Christ's sacrifice? Conversing with God about His goodness? The gospel is not a single moment of enlightenment but a truth we must return to again and again, each return deepening our hatred of what grieves the God we love.

Draft · pending review

Pray together this week

Prayer for Love of God to Overcome Hidden Sin

Father, we come before You acknowledging that You alone see every secret place of our hearts. We adore You for Your fierce love toward us—a love so great that You sent Your Son to die for our sins, and a love so holy that You hate every sin that separates us from You. In the gospel, we behold both Your infinite mercy and Your perfect hatred of evil, and we are humbled and amazed.

We confess that our love for ourselves and our concern for others, though good in themselves, are insufficient to break the grip of our secret sins. Many of us harbor persistent patterns of thought and action that harm no one we can see, that produce no visible consequence, that we rationalize in the darkness. We confess that fear of exposure, rather than sorrow over sin, often drives our repentance. Left to ourselves, we lack the motivation to hate sin the way You hate it.

But the gospel meets us in our poverty. In Christ, we see that You loved us while we were still sinners, and that He bore the full weight of Your righteous hatred in our place (1 John 4:9–10). This good news awakens in us a love for God that transcends mere self-interest—a love that moves us to grieve over sin not because it hurts us or others, but because it grieves Him whom we cherish.

We ask You, O God, to kindle in us a deepening love for Your glory and Your Son. Grant us the grace to meditate frequently on the cross, where we see both Your tender love and Your holy hatred of sin made visible. Teach us to warm our affection for You through daily gratitude, worship, prayer, and meditation on Your Word. Where our love for self and love for others fall short, let our love for You rise to meet the hidden sins we cannot otherwise overcome. We commit ourselves to these practices, trusting that as we draw near to You, You will draw near to us and give us the supernatural hatred of sin that only flows from a heart captivated by Your beauty.

To You alone be all glory and honor, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and forever.

Draft · pending review

Sunday-evening family table

What Do You Love More?

For the parent

Chris talked about how we hate what threatens what we love most. This prompt invites your family to think about the things they treasure and what that tells us about what we're willing to fight against. Listen for where their loves are placed and gently help them see how loving God changes everything.

If you had to pick one thing you love more than anything else—maybe a person, a hobby, something that makes you really happy—what would it be? And what would you do to protect that thing if something was threatening to ruin it?

works for ages 6+ — younger kids need help articulating their answer, but they understand the idea of protecting what they love

Draft · pending review

Couples · three questions over coffee

Learning to Hate Sin Together

When you heard that love for God is the only sufficient motivation to hate secret sin, what sin came to mind—and what does it reveal about where your love for God may have grown cold?
How do we, as a couple, help each other grow in love for God so that we can hate the sins that hide from view? Where do we need to call each other back to the cross?
What daily practice—whether gratitude, worship, prayer, or meditation on Christ's death—could we invite each other into this week to warm our love for God and sharpen our hatred of sin?

Draft · pending review

Memory verse this week

1 John 4:9-10

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Why this verse: This verse crystallizes the sermon's central claim that love for God is the only sufficient motivation to hate secret, persistent sin—and it anchors that love in the cross, where God's love and hatred of sin are most visibly displayed. By meditating on these verses, believers encounter the gospel foundation that alone awakens deep love for God, which then becomes the power to hate sin that self-love and love for others cannot reach.

Draft · pending review

Where this was preached

About the church

Providence Community Church

Lenexa, KS
Sundays · 10:00 AM
About us · What we believe

Plan a visit →

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# Providence Community Church

A church preaching expository sermons through the books of the Bible.

## Sermons
- [Infertility and the Glory of God (2024-07-09)](/ProvidenceLenexa/sermons/2024/07/infertility-and-the-glory-of-god)
- [Pharaoh & the Problem of False Repentance (Exodus 7-14, 2024-07-21)](/ProvidenceLenexa/sermons/2024/07/pharaoh-the-problem-of-false-repentance)
- [The Narcissism of Sin (2024-07-22)](/ProvidenceLenexa/sermons/2024/07/the-narcissism-of-sin)
- [How to Hate Your Sin (2024-07-25)](/ProvidenceLenexa/sermons/2024/07/how-to-hate-your-sin)

## About
- [About the church](/about)
- [Plan a visit](/visit)

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