SIN-HATED

On unbelievers, He will pour our His wrath because of their unrepentant hearts. On behalf of believers, He has already punished Jesus for our sins. His holy character demands that He hate sin, judge sinners, and pour out His wrath on those who sin. When we realize how much God hates sin, we will grow in our hatred for it, too.

Karl Graustein

Excerpted from: Growing Up Christian, P&R, 2005, p. 182-183. Used by Permission.

I go further and say that there is a great need in the contemporary world for more Christian anger. We human beings compromise with sin in a way in which God never does. In the face of blatant evil we should be indignant not tolerant, angry, not apathetic. If God hates sin, His people should hate sin too. If evil arouses His anger, it should arouse ours too. What other reaction can wickedness be expected to provoke in those who love God?

John Stott

Oh cursed sin! It was you who slew my dear Lord! For your sake He underwent all this! If your vileness had not been so great, His sufferings had not been so many. Cursed sin! You were the knife which stabbed Him! You the sword which pierced Him!

John Flavel

The Fountain of Life, 1671.

If my father were weeping on his knees before me and my mother hanging on my neck behind me, and my brothers and sisters and kin howling on every side to retain me in some sinful course, I would fling my mother to the ground, I would run over my father, I would despise all my kin and I would tred them under my feet that I might run to Christ.

Jerome

Throughout Scripture, God is seen as a faithful, devoted Husband who is intensely jealous for an exclusive relationship with His wife… The next time you sin, picture your husband (spouse) locked in a passionate embrace with a woman he met over the Internet… Try to feel the intensity of the shock, the rejection, the pain, the anger that would well up from the innermost part of your being upon discovering the truth. Then realize that what you would experience would be just a minuscule glimpse of the way God feels about our sin.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Holiness, The Heart God Purifies, Moody Publishers, p. 73.

We are ever prone to regard sin lightly, to gloss over its hideousness, to make excuses for it. But the more we study and ponder God’s abhorrence of sin and His frightful vengeance upon it, the more likely are we to realize its heinousness.

A.W. Pink

The Attributes of God, chapter 16.

The glum, sour faces of many Christians. They rather give the impression that, instead of coming from the Father's joyful banquet, they have just come from the Sheriff who has auctioned off their sins and now are sorry they can't get them back again.

Helmut Thielicke

How can we love sin, when we remember that because of our sins Jesus died?

J.C. Ryle

The Cross: A Call to the Fundamentals of Religion.

A person who has been born again, or regenerated, does not habitually commit sin. He no longer sins with his heart and will and whole inclination. There was probably a time when he did not think about whether his actions were sinful or not, and he did not always feel grieved after doing evil. There was no quarrel between him and sin; they were friends. But the true Christian hates sin, flees from it, fights against it, considers it his greatest plague, resents the burden of its presence, mourns when he falls under its influence, and longs to be completely delivered from it. Sin no longer pleases him, nor is it even a matter of indifference to him; it has become a horrible thing which he hates.

J.C. Ryle

Are You Born Again?

Surely that man must be in an unhealthy state of soul who can think of all that Jesus suffered, and yet cling to those sins for which that suffering was undergone. It was sin that wove the crown of thorns; it was sin that pierced our Lord’s hands and feet and side; it was sin that brought Him to Gethsemane and Calvary, to the cross and to the grave. Cold must our hearts be if we do not hate sin and labor to get rid of it.

J.C. Ryle

Holiness.

Let us ever learn from the story of the passion, to hate sin with a great hatred. Sin was the cause of all our Savior’s suffering. Our sins platted the crown of thorns. Our sins drove the nails into His hands and feet. On account of our sins His blood was shed. Surely the thought of Christ crucified should make us loathe all sin. Well says the Homily of the Passion, “Let this image of Christ crucified be always printed in our hearts. Let it stir us up to the hatred of sin, and provoke our minds to the earnest love of Almighty God.”

J.C. Ryle
Commentary, Matthew 27.

O Lord our God, grant us grace to desire Thee with our whole heart; that, so desiring, we may seek, and seeking find Thee; and so finding Thee may love Thee; and in loving Thee, may hate those sins from which Thou hast redeemed us.

St. Ansel

We are to find as much bitterness in weeping for sin as we ever found sweetness in committing it.

Thomas Watson

We must keep from sin. If Christ has indeed saved us from sin, we cannot bear the thought of falling into it. Those who take delight in sin are not the children of God. If you are a child of God, you hate it with a perfect hatred, and your very soul loathes it.

C.H. Spurgeon

Spiritual Warfare in a Believer’s Life, Sermon Matthew 4:4.

The truly loving child of God, though he knows sin is there, hates that sin; it is a pain and misery to him, and he never makes the corruption of his heart as an excuse for the corruption of his life; he never pleads the evil of his nature, as an apology for the evil of his conduct. If any man can, in the least degree, clear himself from the conviction of his own conscience, on account of his daily failings, by pleading the evil of his heart, he is not one of the broken-hearted children of God; he is not one of the tried servants of the Lord, for they groan concerning sin, and carry it to God’s throne; they know it is in them – they do not, therefore, leave it, but seek with all their minds to keep it down, In order that it may not rise and carry them away.

C.H. Spurgeon

Indwelling Sin, Sermon from Job 40:3-4.

Sin, a little thing? Isn’t it poison? Who knows its deadliness? Sin, a little thing? Don’t little foxes spoil the grapes? Doesn’t the tiny coral insect build a rock which wrecks a navy? Don’t little strokes fell lofty oaks? Won’t continual droppings wear away stones? Sin, a little thing? It girded the Redeemer’s head with thorns, and pierced His heart! It made Him suffer anguish, bitterness, and woe. If you could but weigh the least sin in the scales of eternity, you would fly from it as from a serpent, and abhor the least appearance of evil. Look upon all sin as that which crucified the Savior and you will see it to be “utterly sinful.”

C.H. Spurgeon

Morning and Evening, Morning: March 11.

This day, my God, I hate sin not because it damns me, but because it has done Thee wrong. To have grieved my God is the worst grief to me.

C.H. Spurgeon

Look to the cross, 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.

C.H. Spurgeon

If Christ has died for me – ungodly as I am, without strength as I am – then I can no longer live in sin, but must arouse myself to love and serve Him who has redeemed me. I cannot trifle with the evil that killed my best Friend. I must be holy for his sake. How can I live in sin when He has died to save me from it?

C.H. Spurgeon

If I had a brother who had been murdered, what would you think of me if I…daily consorted with the assassin who drove the dagger into my brother’s heart; surely I too must be an accomplice in the crime. Sin murdered Christ; will you be a friend to it? Sin pierced the heart of the Incarnate God; can you love it?”

C.H. Spurgeon

A sight of His death – if it is a true sight – is the death of all love of sin.

C.H. Spurgeon

We cannot bear sin – when it is near us, we feel like a wretch chained to a rotting carcass; we groan to be free from the hateful thing.

C.H. Spurgeon

Sin to a believer is horrible, because it crucified the Saviour; he sees in every iniquity the nails and spear.

C.H. Spurgeon

I know this, that the death of all that is sinful in me is my soul’s highest ambition, yes, and the death of all that is carnal and all that savors of the old Adam. Oh, that it would die. And where can it die but at the feet of Him who has the new life, and who by manifesting Himself in all His glory is to purge away our dross and sin?

C.H. Spurgeon

Consolation in Christ, 1860.

Every sin, no matter how seemingly insignificant, is an act of rebellion against the sovereign God who reigns and rules over us and as such is an act of treason against the cosmic King.

R.C. Sproul

Cosmic Treason, Tabletalk, May 2008, p. 6, Used by Permission.

In vain will ye fast, and pretend to be humbled for our sins, and make confession of them if our love of sin be not turned into hatred; our liking of it into loathing; and our cleaving to it, into a longing to be rid of it; with full purpose to resist the motions of it in our heart, and the outbreakings thereof in our life; and if we turn not unto God as our rightful Lord and Master, and return to our duty again.

Thomas Boston

The Works of Thomas Boston, reprint Richard Owen Roberts, 1980, v. 11, p. 347.

In our sufferings for Christ there is joy, not so when we suffer for our sins.

John Trapp

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 159.

Think of the guilt of sin, that you may be humbled. Think of the power of sin, that you may seek strength against it. Think not of the matter of sin…lest you be more and more entangled.

John Owen

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 293.

I do not understand how a man can be a true believer, in whom sin is not the greatest burden, sorrow and trouble.

John Owen

Many are ashamed to be seen as God made them; few are ashamed to be seen what the devil hath made them. Many are troubled at small defects in the outward man; few are troubled at the greatest deformities of the inward man; many buy artificial beauty to supply the natural; few spiritual, to supply the defects of the supernatural beauty of the soul.

Abraham Wright

None can hate [sin] but those that love the law of God; for all hatred comes from love. A natural man may be angry with his sin, but hate it he cannot; nay, he may leave it, but not loathe it; if he did, he would loathe all sin as well as any one sin.

Abraham Wright

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 273.

A holy man knows that all sin strikes at the holiness of God, the glory of God, the nature of God, the being of God, and the law of God: and therefore his heart rises against all; he looks upon every sin as the Scribes and Pharisees that accused Christ; and as that Judas that betrayed Christ; and as that Pilate that condemned Christ; and as those soldiers that scourged Christ; and as those spears that pierced Christ.

Thomas Brooks

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 261.

The best evidence that a Christian desires (loves) something more than he desires (loves) God is his willingness to sin against God either in order to acquire that desire. “If you love Me keep My commandments,” Jesus said (Jn. 14:15).

Lou Priolo

The Complete Husband, Calvary Press, www.calvarypress.com, 1999, p. 114.

I'm against sin. I'll kick it as long as I've got a foot, and I'll fight it as long as I've got a fist. I'll butt it as long as I've got a head. I'll bite it as long as I've got a tooth. And when I'm old and fistless and footless and toothless, I'll gum it till I go home to Glory and it goes home to perdition!

Billy Sunday

If ever you wish to see how great and horrid and evil sin is, measure it in your thoughts, either by the infinite holiness and excellency of God, who is wronged by it; or by the infinite sufferings of Christ, who died to satisfy for it; and then you will have deeper apprehensions of its enormity.

John Flavel

As we grow in holiness, we grow in hatred of sin; and God, being infinitely holy, has an infinite hatred of sin

Jerry Bridges

It is evident that our conversion is sound when we loathe and hate sin from the heart.

Richard Sibbes

Will you give your hours to fantasizing about and dwelling on and longing for the vile things that nailed the Lover of your soul to the cursed tree?

Kris Lundgaard

The Enemy Within, 1998, P&R Publishing, p. 97, Used by Permission.