Craig T. Owens

This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.

Love Comes With Hatred

     Love to be anything at all must be personal; to love without hating is an impossibility, and the stronger and more emphatic the love, the more intense its obverse, hatred. God loves the world so much that He hates with a perfect hatred the thing that switched men wrong; and Calvary is the measure of His hatred. The natural heart of man would have argued—“God loves the world that of course He will forgive its sin”: God loved the world that He could not forgive its sin.

From Biblical Ethics

God had to allow Jesus to become all of your sins and my sins, so that those sins which He hates so much could be nailed once for all to the Cross. Without the Cross, there could be no forgiveness.

Because He hated sin so much, Jesus chose to personally identify with us, and carry our sins away from us. God could not merely look away from our sin, so He allowed Jesus to take away our sin.

Such perfect hatred … such wondrous love!