Passage Read: Psalm 15-18
Meditation Verse: 15:4
Thought
The man who is welcome in God's dwelling and may live forever with Him, among other things, hates the reprobate but honors those who fear the Lord. It is not merely that he hates the evil deeds of the wicked man, or loves the righteous deeds of the godly man, but he hates the wicked man himself and loves the righteous man. That seems wrong to my modern ears. "Hate the sin, love the sinner." But God's wrath doesn't fall only on the evil deeds of the sinner, but the sinner himself is the object of God's wrath! A man who hates God and wants nothing to do with Him and His ways, God's soul hates and so should mine. Jehoshaphat was rebuked for loving those who hated God. He should not have partnered with them or accepted them as his own flesh and blood. He should have kept his distance, as a rebuke to them. Better yet, he should have actively called them to repentance and refused to help them until they repented.
Application
I need to distinguish between the righteous and the wicked. I am called to love my enemies and pray for those who persecute me, but that doesn't mean I should hate their sinfulness less or minimize their status as enemies. I hate the reprobate because of his rebellion against and rejection of God, whom I should love more than that man, which creates an impossible divide between us. To minimize that is to blind myself to the desperation of his need to repent. If I can get along and be good friends with him, what pressure is there to call him to repent and flee to Christ for salvation? "What fellowship does light have with darkness?" None. If I want to be close to a lost man, I can't minimize the gulf between us. I can't minimize my hatred of wickedness and those who love wickedness. They need to fear their own wickedness even as I hate it. Putting their deeds in a right context for myself and for them is genuine compassion, that hopefully also moves me to call them to believe in Jesus, that they might be transformed to light, so I can have unhindered fellowship with them as members of the same family. I need to care more about a person's status with God than with whether I can get along with them.