Very interesting dialogue, Lance. I appreciate you sharing it with us.
There is much more that can be developed here. The concept of love the
sinner but hate the sin is problematic in certain contexts, but it is not
entirely a logical contradiction. The reason is that the concept of
"sinner" is not fixed in stone when it comes to humans. A sinner today
may
not be a sinner tomorrow. This is because of grace and the work of Christ
to transform a sinner into a righteous saint who obeys the commandments of
God.
I have to address this issue often when I preach on the homosexual
deception
that is sweeping across this world. I find myself needing to communicate
my
love for the homosexual person but my hatred for the sin of homosexuality.
How can I do this? Because I believe that homosexuality is preventable
and
curable. It is a sin problem that is solved by faith in Jesus Christ. I
have no hatred in my heart toward most of those who consider themselves to
be a homosexual. In fact, sometimes I am confronted by homosexual
virgins,
and I have to tell them that from my perspective they are not yet
homosexual
if they have never had any sexual relations with other men. God does not
condemn a person based upon their inner desires or temptations, but rather
he condemns them for sinful actions.
A few weeks ago, a student attempted to point out this logical
inconsistency
mentioned below, that if I truly hated homosexuality, then I would have to
hate the homosexual. I agreed with him, but with a caveat, that only in
the
case of the homosexual who would not or could not repent. If a person has
given himself completely over to sin such as homosexuality, then yes, I
should hate that homosexual because he is an abomination in the eyes of
God.
It is only in this way that I can love those whom he is hurting by his
sin.
However, many of the homosexuals on campus are not in this category.
There
is time for them to repent and be transformed by the grace of God.
Concerning those homosexuals, I love them, and it is my love for them that
causes me to sacrifice in order to deliver the message of repentance and
hope to them.
There is one other contextual issue here as well, and that is that I am in
need of grace as much as any homosexual. Therefore, I cannot sit in
judgment upon his sin without putting myself in jeopardy. In other words,
if my attitude is not one of love when I call for his repentance, but
rather
is accusatory and judgmental, then how can I expect to receive mercy
myself?
No, what I must do is give the message of how repentance is apprehended in
Jesus Christ, through confession of sin and a turning away from all that
offends God. I do this as one who has experienced this work of grace. I
testify to its work and exhort others to experience it as well.
Therefore,
there is a love in me for that person who is still able to repent and find
Christ. It is in this context, with these other considerations, that I
can
say that I love the person who calls himself a homosexual because of the
present philosophy in the world today, but hate the sin of homosexuality
and
call upon him to forsake it and abandon it.
David Miller.
----- Original Message -----
From: Lance Muir
To: TruthTalk@mail.innglory.org
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 5:31 AM
Subject: [TruthTalk] Fw: excerpt redux
----- Original Message -----
From: Debbie Sawczak
To: 'Lance Muir'
Sent: March 14, 2006 22:04
Subject: excerpt redux
Lance, I was just printing out the next raw chapter (on "Two Kinds of
Righteousness" and "A Meditation on Christ's Passion") in preparation for
editing, and my eye lit on this portion at the end. I'm sending it to you
raw, because being at the end of a 24-page chapter it'll be a while till I
get to it in the editing. It's Q&A, and the point I was noticing was that
sin has no existence apart from sinners, two interesting ramifications of
which are (a) that Christ, in becoming sin, became sinner, and (b) that
the
aphorism, "hate the sin but love the sinner" is problematic. I think of
both
of these in relation to recent (well, not so recent anymore, perhaps)
threads on TT.
Any thoughts? What do you do with this hatred thingy?
D
[Question: I was just thinking about Christ being sinner or sin. And just,
without having thought about it too much, it makes sense that he would
have
to be a sinner if he was being punished in proxy for humanity, because God
was punishing – or God needed to punish – humanity, because they, as a
collective whole, were sinners, so God was punishing sinners. So unless
Christ became a sinner, then it wouldn't be a perfect substitution. If God
was never interested in punishing sin …]
That's exactly right.
[… he was punishing sinners. So if all of a sudden you're just punishing
sin, it would be different. It wouldn't be the same.]
You can't punish sin. You can only punish sinners, because sin has no
existence apart from sinners. Sin doesn't exist apart from sinners.
Therefore to me, to say that Christ became sin but not sinner makes the
same
mistake, it falls into the same error. In the same way, when we speak of
the
love of God, what we really mean is God himself loving us at this moment.
The love of God is God himself loving us. It isn’t that God is here, and
he
visits us with his love, you know, his love is detachable from him. That's
not what we mean. Calvin will say, the person of God is found in all the
acts of God. That's right: the person of God is found in all the acts of
God. That's just another way of saying, God's judgement is God judging us.
God's love is God himself loving us. Well then to say, to relate all of
this
to sin, is to say that we always live at the realm of the person and
personhood. It's rather that what we call sin is highly abstract. The
person
of the sinner and the person of God are highly concrete. And it's at the
level of the concrete that redemption always has to occur, not the level
of
the abstract.
Clay?
[Question: So that when people are discussing homosexuality, abortion,
whatever the case may be, to take the line that, well, you know, we hate
the
sin but we love the sinner, that's sort of, off target?]
Yes, it is. I've always said, in my first-year systematic theology class,
that the old Christian aphorism, we have to love the sinner but hate the
sin, is logically impossible. Sin has no existence apart from sinners. You
can't hate sin, love sinners. You can only love and hate the sinner
himself
at the same time. I recognise the danger, oh, man, I recognise the danger,
because if we ever legitimate the church's hatred of sinners, can you
imagine what's going to happen tomorrow? But logically, you can't love
sinners and hate sin, sin has no existence. This is safe in the hands of
God, not safe in our hands, because Scripture, if you read Scripture with
one eye open, what you find that God is a terrific hater, terrific hater.
And at the same time, the hatred of God is always a manifestation of the
love of God. And that's where it's safe in God but not safe in us, because
Stephen's hatred here, Stephen's hatred of the homosexual isn't a
manifestation of his love for him. It's just hatred, unqualified hatred.
And
that's why, on the one hand logically I want to say, you can't love
sinners
and hate sin, but on the other hand I'm so reluctant to say, we have to
love
and hate the sinner at the same time (as God does), because in our
depravity, we don't do it as God does. God's love for the sinner will
always
be greater than his hatred for the sinner, but ours might not be, because
his hatred only seeks to bring the sinner to the end of herself. But it
won't always be the case with us. It's like saying, I hate adultery, but I
can still find it in my heart to love people who commit adultery. Adultery
has no existence apart from the person who does it. Strictly speaking,
there's no such thing as adultery, there's simply a person who does it.
And
that's what we're always dealing with.
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"Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may
know how you ought to answer every man." (Colossians 4:6)
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