Perfect Hatred

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Cory J. Mahler. And I'm woe. He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be sins, for unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices. It fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked, but the good to do wrong. Saint John Chrysostom, Archbishop of CONSTANOPLE. That's a quote that we chose to open with, because it uh puts in context both anger and hatred as aspects that are they're part of the Christian life that is seen properly as almost always sinful and it's always something to be concerned about. Uh today's episode we're talking about perfect hatred, which is the the term that scripture uses for it, and we are talking about anger and how we are supposed to deal with it.

1:27 I want to make clear at the outset in in this preface that this is not a continuation of the episode on lesser known doctrines uh like usury and head coverings and shaking the dust off your feet. We are not today talking about a doctrine of hatred. Uh in other words, this is not something that we are saying, hey, the world needs more hatred and the church needs more hatred. What the reason that we're doing this episode in particular, the reason we're devoting an entire episode to the topic of perfect hatred is that well I think everyone can agree that the world needs less hatred and less anger. The question that is vital to Christians today is whether the correct amount of hatred is zero. And the scriptural answer to that question is no.

2:16 Uh hatred, perfect hatred is something that God commands, and it's something that obviously makes us uncomfortable because that's seems contrary to many of the things that are found in scripture. So day today we're going to be discussing the passages that deal with love and condemn hate, and we're also going to be talking about the passages that deal with hate and advocate it and what it means to advocate hate, because obviously that's sounds like a terrible thing. Uh something that Cory and I are routinely accused of, that we are hateful men who hate races and hate people and hate women and you know we we just hate everything. we're filled with hate. And so I'm sure that there are people who will see the

2:57 subject of this episode and be filled with glee that, you know, we're going mask off when in fact, what we are trying to get to is a clear way for all of us to look at our own behavior, our own thoughts and our own emotions, and in a scriptural manner evaluate whether what we are feeling and saying and doing isn't in fact scriptural perfect hatred or if it's sinful hatred. And the distinction between those two is is a vital one. And it's one that Christians must be able to d think about and discuss clearly because as we look at the world everything now is done in terms of love. Yeah, ever since the sixties, when we had the Age of Aquarius begin, the dawning of the age of Aquarius, and the summer of

3:47 love, and the love fests, and everything since then really has been very overtly done in the name of love. Now, the abuse of that term is clearly satanic if you're Christian. if you look at what the boomers were doing in the sixties and the natural consequences of that today, with what we see we've discussed many times in previous episodes, things that are done in the name of love are overt evil. They're horrifying. They're disgusting. And yet we're told that those things are love and we're told to love them. And the subject of this episode is is it Christian to hate period? Is it is it Christian to be able to hate? And if so, what things are Christians permitted to hate? So that's where we're gonna begin.

4:38 And so of course the short version of what we are as Christians to love and what we are as Christians to hate is that we are to love the things that God loves, the things that are good, and to hate the things that God hates, the things that are evil. And these are not two terms that we can just ignore in Scripture. Obviously no Christian is going to say we can ignore the word love, one one would hope anyway. The Greek word of course being agape is the word we're talking about here. That word appears many times in scripture, appears one hundred and fifteen times in the New Testament, fifteen times in the Septuagint, because of course it's not going to appear in the Hebrew since it is a Greek word.

5:19 Agapa, the verbal form appears even more one hundred and forty three times in the New Testament, two hundred and thirteen in the Septuagint. Seems like quite a lot. But if you actually look then at the terms for hate and related terms, they are actually more frequent in Scripture than the word love. Meseo is to hate in Greek, forty times in the New Testament, one hundred and forty three in the Old Testament. And then another one that is important is extras, is hostile, also enmity or hate, thirty-two times in the New Testament, three hundred and twenty times in the Septuagint. The concept of hate and enmity is not something that is infrequent in scripture, appears only in a few places. It appears throughout scripture from the beginning to the end, from Genesis

6:11 to Revelation. So this is not something that we can neglect as Christians. We need to understand what these things are, how they relate to each other, and what we are supposed to do with them as Christians. In short, love and hatred are really opposite sides of the same coin. To love something is also to hate that which would destroy what you love. And so God loves us. God loves his sheep. Well, he hates the wolves because the wolves want to destroy the thing he loves. He they want to destroy the sheep. That is the same that a father would do with relation to his family. A father who loves his wife and his children will hate those who would cause them harm. That is a perfect hatred, because you are hating evil.

7:01 When Scripture speaks of loving your enemy, and of course that is going to come up, that does not mean that you permit the enemy to destroy the things that it is your duty to protect and love. It is not love when you permit your family to whom you owe a higher duty to be destroyed by your enemy. You still owe duties there. You are not to hate your enemy in the sense of a mindless zeal to destroy your enemy. This is not a vengeance we're speaking of, but you can still oppose your enemy. You can still oppose the enemies of your nation. You can oppose those who want to destroy your family. In fact, it is your Christian duty to do so. So this is not a a simple or straightforward thing. You have to understand

7:47 deeply what these terms mean and what duties flow from them. And I think the first term that we need to properly understand is evil. what actually is evil? Uh fundamentally, this episode is a question about God's nature and about the things that are fruit of the Holy Spirit. When Adam sinned in the garden, he introduced evil into creation as the as the head of creation ordained by God to be over it. The universe fell when Adam fell. And I think that when we look we call God Father because that is the name that He has given himself and that is His relationship to us. And so And so we we think imperfectly in terms of our own fathers being disappointed or angry when we misbehave. And you think of it in chronological terms, that the child does

8:49 something wicked, does something wrong against the rules, and the father responds by anger, by punishment of some sort, and you know, then ideally some form of reconciliation. While some of that applies when we're dealing with God, it's not really the beginning of the understanding of what's actually going on. Because what truly happened when Adam disobeyed God in the garden, by listening to his wife rather than listening to God, and then by taking the fruit that had been forbidden to him, that had been an abomination to him according to God's law. Adam made himself God. He said, God, I know you told me to do one thing. I have a better idea. I'm gonna do something else. I am going to be my God.

9:34 You might be my creator, but you're no longer my God. At least in this one moment, I'm gonna do my thing. That That was evil. Now, was it evil because it was on one side of an arbitrary line that God drew in the sand? I don't think that's the way we can think about this. I think that a proper understanding of evil and frankly, a proper understanding of God's law, or God's eternal will, is that whatever is good is according to God's will, and therefore whatever whatever is evil is contrary to God's eternal will. On the sixth day of creation before God rested, he saw that it was very good. Now very good when that was said in Genesis two 2 isn't referring to, well, pretty good, very good, short of perfect.

10:23 No. It was absolutely perfect and it was complete. The other days of creation were also good and that there was no defect in them, but they were not complete. When God declared creation to be very good, he declared it to be complete and to be perfect. And that means that it was in accord with his will. You know, we we have a small concept of this as humans where you know you may see someone or maybe if you have the gift you make a painting or you m create a song and you keep working on it until it's finished and then you step back and you say, Yeah, that's it. I nailed it. Everything is there that I want to be there. There's nothing there that I don't want to be there. You say that your creation is very good.

11:07 God did that with the entire universe, and that meant that everything that was there is exactly what he wanted. When Adam introduced evil into the world, he acted in a way that was contrary to God's nature. In other words, the thing that Adam had become was opposite of what God wanted. And so the root of hatred as we're talking about it today is fundamentally not an emotional one. I think that's one of the most important things that we need to get across. Hatred and anger are in one sense and in some cases they are emotions, but that's not all that they are. When God says that he hates evil, he's not talking about being emotional. God is talking about his relationship to that which is contrary

11:59 to his will. The reason that you and I will die is because we are born with sin that is contrary to God's will. And the only way that that can be rectified is both through our death and through Christ's death, covering us in his blood, so that our sins are atoned for. That is how God restores the evil that we have to a goodness that He can welcome. And so that's not emotion. You know, when when God loves us, in one sense it is emotion, but it is it is more properly understood as the thing which God desires us to be, his persect perfect creation, that is in accord with his will. And the thing that he hates about us is the sin that is preventing us from being in accord with His will. So for God, love and hatred are first and foremost two sides,

12:53 as Corey said, of the coin of is this in alignment with God's will or is it contrary to it? And if it's contrary to it, then from God's perspective and from the perspective downstream as with us as Christians, to hate that which is evil is in accord with God's will, not as an act or as an upwelling of emotion, but because whatever is contrary to God should not be. It shouldn't exist. And we are forbidden as Christians to embrace or to tolerate or to welcome that which is contrary to God's will will. That's fundamentally embracing evil on its face. Now, there are things to be said about how you handle that in the Christian life, but fundamentally to say, yes, I will love evil is to reject God, because it is to say I am

13:46 going to embrace that which is contrary to God's eternal will. And the only solution for that is God's eternal damnation. So it's really important that we understand and we get this right because there's no middle ground for understanding mistakes. And when it comes to love and hate in the the modern context, this gets more into love. I've been working on some things related to that. Hopefully I'll publish something soon on it. But love in the modern sense, in the modern world, has come to mean permissiveness. And in reality this is a direct inversion, because that's what Satan does. Satan takes the good for evil and the evil for good. There is a verse directly that speaks to that, of course.

14:33 And if you take love to mean permissiveness, what you are really doing is you are showing hatred for that person. Because that which is good is that which is in align with God's will for you. That means it's good for you. And of course, God's will flows from his nature, so you can speak of it neither way you can. You can say it's in align alignment with God's nature or his will. Permissiveness is saying that it is fine to act contrary to God's will, and it is love to let that person do what he wants to do. And that's not love. That is indifference, that is actual hatred. There is no more vile thing you can do with regard to another person than be indifferent to him To him risking his eternal

15:22 soul by acting contrary to God's will. And so a good illustration of that would be let's say we're standing in a room together, and you say that you're going to go down the hall to another room. If I say don't do that because I know there's a bear in that room, I'm demonstrating love for you because I'm demonstrating care. If on the other hand, I say nothing, or you know, have fun, I'm demonstrating hatred for you because I know that you are going to be harmed and I'm not And I'm allowing that to come to pass. Now of course that's an extreme option, and I hope you don't have a bear in your house. But we see this all the time in society because we see people who engage in incredibly destructive behavior.

16:11 And we are told that it's loving to let them do that. And so those who engage in transgenderism or homosexuality were told that we have to tolerate that, we have to permit that, because it's actually loving to permit it. And no, it's the exact opposite. It is hateful to permit that. The loving option is to rebuke them with God's law, because that gives the opportunity for the spirit to come in and actually potentially change something in that person's life. If you speak the words of God to that person the truth, instead of just letting them go on their way, you are demonstrating love. And that's the point. Love is not permissiveness. These are two totally different concepts. Love in fact rebukes.

16:57 Love in fact corrects. Love speaks the law to people because love actually wants what is ultimately good, not what is temporarily pleasurable or enjoyable. These are different things. There gonna be a couple papers that we'll have in the show notes that I I hope people will click on. One of them is uh the fairly short document by Professor Mark Quart, who's now sainted on uh Christian disputes and how to handle them. And one of the points that he makes in that paper very well is that there's a sense really j only in the last century in Christianity, or so called Christianity, including among Lutherans, where we are told Of the law of love, where we're we're sold things in terms of this permissiveness and this license, and love is

17:51 held up as the highest good. Now there There's a switcheroo that's going on there because we all know, of course, that God is love, but the c the flip side of that is not necessarily true. Love is not God. God God to speak in imperfect human terms is many things. Now obviously God is only one thing. It's when we're dealing with God's nature, it's it's fundamentally impossible to speak with absolute precision because we can't understand. We can't fit God in our head. So it's uh sometimes you'll hear Cory and I kind of choosing our ver words very carefully or doubling back and it's it's not uncertainty, it's that it's very easy to say things that either are heretical or will strongly suggest heresies downstream if you follow a claim

18:42 to its natural conclusion. So God is love, but God is also hate. Because again, these are not emotions. I think that's one of the most crucial things. I a couple episodes ago, I I made a not an offhand comment, but a brief comment where I said something to the effect that if I talk to someone on Twitter, my chief concern is that they understand with clarity what I mean and I said I don't care how they feel about it. I basically said I I more or less disregard their emotions and I didn't clarify at the time and when I was re-listening I realized that would sound kinda horrible to most people. Um for one thing, I feel the same way about myself. I don't care about my emotions. Because in my mind, and I know this is gonna sound heartless.

19:28 I hope that I can explain myself well. For me to feel something in response to a fact, I don't consider that to have any information payload. It's like if I stub my toe in the dark on the the nightstand or something, it hurts. It hurts a lot. I might cry out. It's momentary. The fact The fact that I'm feeling pain in that moment tells me that I stub my toe, and it's part of stubbing my toe. And so the fact of the toe being stubbed is the part of that whole scene that has information. The fact that I hurt and that I cry out, it's not a salient fact to me. it's momentary. It's a blip. And so for me, emotions are it's like that or it's like like gas pains. Like you're you're bloated and it's uncomfortable and you can feel something

20:22 moving inside you and it hurts and it's an ugly reminder that you're not a solid hunk of muscle, that there's actually stuff in there that we don't like to think about. But when it hurts, you think about it. And it it feels it's unnatural. Well, it is natural, but it's unpleasant to be feeling a thing that you don't normally feel. And so for me, processing of emotions is a it's a temporary thing, but I don't derive knowledge from it. Yeah, I've and on previous episodes there have been several times where I've mentioned stories where someone said something to me that I took a lesson from. I think that some people, if you're used to processing your life in terms of your emotions over the facts, you might hear that

21:08 and think, oh well, he's mad because someone said something mean about him. And I try to make the point, like, I don't care. Like it was I I yes, I was mad. It was momentary. I stubbed my toe. I got over it. But I remember where the nightstand is even in dark. And so that's what to me, and I I'm weird. I'm a weird man. I don't I wouldn't advocate that everyone be like this, but I do think it's important to understand that there's there's something that's happened in the church as we've become increasingly feminized. The more and more the feelings and the emotions that people have in the moment when something is being discussed or something is being debated, the feelings are seen as the facts somehow, which is not

21:53 remotely the case. That it's the exact opposite. We should try to respect each other's emotions, and I do. I I I am far more cognizant and respectful of other people's emotions than I am of my own. I'm utterly ruthless towards myself. I would I'd been killed a hundred times over if I treated others the way I treat myself internally. And it's not self-loathing, it's just I I'm going to try to be the best that I can be, and that's gonna hurt sometimes, and I'm okay with that. So anyway, the point that Mark War makes in his paper is that there's there's increasingly this feminized notion of making love God. And I hope that's coming through clearly. Love is being treated. Love as a concept now separate from God is being treated as

22:42 though it is God. And very often in these conversations that we see in the church and in the world where we as Christians are interacting with others, love is treated as the God, not God, not the God who hates evil, not the God who hates those who persecute his saints, but just love is this its own thing. And so this god that emerged in the sixties is named Love. And it's a it's a name of a God that you hear all the time. And as Christians we've fallen for it because who doesn't want love? Everyone wants to feel loved, wants to enjoy that. Hatred shouldn't exist. I think that's one of the important parts of this. The fact that there is any hatred, beginning with God's hatred, means that there are things that are contrary to God's will.

23:31 And after judgment day, there will be no more hatred because everything will finally be in perfect accord with God's will as it has not been since the seventh day of creation. And so it's a vital subject for us to understand that if we're serving love and not serving God, we're serving a demon, we're serving a false God, even if it's a demon named love, and even if the things look and sound loving, if you are acting contrary to God's nature, you're doing evil. And that's a it's a really hard part of dealing with the subject because it's a lot easier easier to be tolerant, to be permissive, to give license to things, because you don't have to fight back. You don't have to say anything. You just let it slide.

24:19 You cross to the other side of the street, you look the other way, and you let it go. That's the easy choice. And so Satan's convinced us, well that's the loving choice. And it's important for us to understand that just because something is called love doesn't mean it's from God. There some things that are love or some from God. All true love is from God. But there are today false things masquerading as love that we're told come from God where that's not remotely the case. Well you've touched on the the genealogy of these ideas, and of course we went over that in an earlier episode. But you can also look at the fruits of these things, because a tree is known by its fruit, and if you take the

25:03 permissiveness that masquerades is love today, and look at the fruit it has yielded over a course of decades, it's very obvious it's not from God. That which is from God yields good fruit. That which has come from this perverted sense of love is wicked and poisonous fruit. And you see that, and homosexuality is one of the best examples because we are told that we have to tolerate this, that we have to permit this, that we have to let them live their life their lives as they see fit, and we will live our lives as we see fit, and that is not love. That is hatred for your fellow man, because you are permitting them to merrily dance their way into hell. And just look at the way they live their lives and the

25:49 consequences of that lifestyle. We're not going to go into the details because we well, we don't want to get a strike, we want to try to keep this at a level where people can listen to it after lunch. But the consequences for those who are living in that world are dire in in this life and worse in the next, and it is not love to permit them to do that. And when it comes to being comfortable and just permitting others to do as they please, you can look at this and you see this in our own churches. How many pastors preach against obesity? How many pastors preach from the pulpit against fornication, against homosexuality, against any of a number of the very common, very widespread sins in our society.

26:41 Obesity is probably one of the best examples because I have never actually heard a pastor preach against it. This despite the fact that it is rampant in our society. And they don't speak against it because it makes them uncomfortable to say it, and they know they will be hated by others if they say it. But scripture is very clear, and you will be hated by all for my name's sake. That means you will be hated when you speak the truth. You will be hated when you preach truth to people. And you're doing it, of course, in love. You're not doing it in hatred, but they will hate you in return for that. Their hatred, of course, is wicked because they are hating the good. And so it is possible to have hatred that is righteous, it

27:21 is possible to have hatred that is wicked. And in the case of those who react with hatred against that which is good, that is a wicked hatred. As opposed to, for instance, in Hebrews, quoting the Old Testament, of course, but of the Son he says, Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom, you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. That's a perfect love and a perfect hatred, and the object of both of those is important to note loved righteousness, hated wickedness. That's perfect love, and that's perfect hatred. And that is what a Christian is supposed to have. We are supposed to imitate Christ, and of course that is speaking of Christ, that verse in Hebrews citing the Old Testament.

28:07 You had mentioned preaching, and it's that's something that we were discussing before we began recording this, as we're talking about some of Chrysostom's uh his own preaching. He's famous for preaching against drunkenness and against uh chariot races, because those were the great debauched sins that were occurring in his own parish. The people to whom he was preaching were engaging in public sin that was grievous. They were they were living pagan lives and then coming to church. And so when they came to church, he rightly, as a faithful peacher, condemned their sins. He didn't condemn far off far off hypothetical sins. He condemned the sins of the people in his pews, or I don't know maybe they were standing up, but the people before him,

28:54 he addressed their sin. And so this this fear of well, I must serve love and so I cannot speak truthfully, which just on its face should should make your skin crawl, because that that's clearly cannot be coming from God. Um, it's not just about dealing with the world. It's very prevalent when we're dealing with disputes about doctrine in our own churches, uh, from the Walther or from the the Marquard paper, there's a brief Walther quote that I'd like to give here. Walther says it has always been not so much the pure doctrine per se, which has aroused hostility against its representatives, much less is that the case in our indifferent age, but taking it seriously, the exclusive adherence to it, the rejection and condemnation of the opposite doctrine,

29:45 and above all the practical implementation of this doctrinal position, that is was which at all times provoked hostility, so also the Cardinal of Salzburg said that Luther's doctrine he would tolerate, but to allow one's self to be reformed out of a corner, that was not to be tolerated. So it still is today. What doctrine isn't one prepared to tolerate nowadays, if only it will stand peacefully beside the other doctrine, and just those who want to be orthodox accomplish the most incredible fears in this tolerance. Only observe the harmonious relation which shows itself in the academic colleges, the peaceable sitting together in pastoral conferences, the tone in the reviews. So Walther was seeing this, you know, 175 years ago, that men

30:34 would tolerate evil, they would they would tolerate violating the second commandment and lying about God as long as it meant that we could sit side by side pretending to be brothers. And the the brother and neighbor distinction we've talked about a little bit before and the matter of polarity when you're looking at scripture, I think is important to address here again. There are many times in Jesus' own direct preaching where he admonishes not hating your brother. We have two brothers. We have brothers according to the flesh, and we have brothers according to the spirit. There are also those who are not your brothers in either. And in almost every case, when Jesus is speaking of our brothers,

31:22 he is speaking in the flesh. In order word, in other words, Jesus is speaking about our brothers inside the church. Those are brothers who are brothers because they have also been adopted through baptism into God's family, not as natural sons of God, but as adopted sons of God. And so you and I are brothers because God has given us faith and made us his own, not through anything in ourselves, but solely through his action. And so many of the admonitions that are addressing hatred and anger and dissension and rivalries, they speak specifically in the context of brothers. Now, this is a distinction that is lost on us today because we don't care what brother means anymore. We're told the Babel brotherhood of man means every human being.

32:14 That every every time you meet someone, it's a Noah family reunion, and so we're all brothers. Well, that's simply not true. If someone is within the church, one set of rules applies. If someone is not in the church, another set of rules apply. Now they're very similar. We're not saying that you can hate anyone who's not within the church. That's That's absolutely not what Jesus says. However, the specific admonitions regarding dissension and anger and strife and hatred have to do with those who are also sanctified by Christ's blood and who confess it. And so when we just say, well, those passages apply universally to all people, we're losing what God is actually saying. There are other places where he deals with that.

33:01 But it's important, just as I I took a shot at uh Mr. Rogers a few weeks ago because he collapsed neighbor into being a universal, that anyone could be your main your neighbor if you like them. We're told the same thing about brother. Anyone is your brother if you like them, right? And you're supposed to like everyone. So that makes everyone your brother. Well, that's not what God says, as not what that word means. And so as you're looking at the various verses dealing with love and with hatred, we are to love all men because all men are created in the image of God and are descended from Adam. However, that is not necessarily and it is not in fact the same love that we have within the body of Christ.

33:46 The love that I have for Cory as a brother is different than the love that I am to have for a random human being halfway around the world. When that person on the other side of the world somehow becomes my neighbor, I am to love them as I love myself and that if they're hungry, I would feed them just as I would feed myself. And that is a a type of love, but it is not the fullness of love, such as you would find within your own family. There are things that you will do for a a mother or a wife or a son that you won't do for a stranger. And that's godly. And I think one of the dangers that we lose when we collapse neighbor well, we expand neighbor and brother into being universal platitudes, we lose the distinctives that God has given us to address those

34:33 specifically within our sphere. To get back to what Corey was saying at the very beginning, we have offices in our lives to deal with certain people in certain ways. And that should always be done from a place of love, but that love sometimes requires things that to the world don't look like love. if a home invader breaks into your home at three in the morning, you use violence against him. You don't take it as an opportunity to spread the gospel to someone who clearly needs it. You use whatever violence is necessary to end the threat to protect your family. That is love. It is love for your family. And the man who breaks into your home intending harm and violence, he's receiving the due penalty for his sin.

35:18 And your love for him as a neighbor momentarily is far less important scripturally than your love for your family to whom you have an absolute duty to protect as their caretaker and on God's behalf. You mean you don't just point a camera phone at him and hope for the best? Yeah, you're you're not gonna convict a man's conscience by by pointing out to him that he's sinning. you you restrain and you end the sin and then you can go and visit him in jail if he survives and you can tell him about Jesus. Yeah, no. Um just to clarify for the the Lutheran audience, for those who are paying close attention, we do of course hold that the Imago Dei in Man is lost through original sin. When we speak of man being made in the image of God,

36:06 that is man is originally made, it is restored, of course, in Christ. That's a a subject for another time. But when it comes to those who would set the various attributes of God against each other, or particularly in this case, those who would set love against truth or truth against love, it is important to remember the transcendentals, we have spoken of them before, beauty, goodness, and truth being the three core ones, there is never a time where these can be set against each other. If you are advocating that any of the attributes of God can be set against the other attributes of God, you are advocating for a split or division in the Godhead, and that simply cannot be. That is rank heresy.

36:54 And so speaking the truth is not an act of hatred. Now I'm not saying that you couldn't possibly use the truth to hate someone. It is possible to use things that are good in themselves for evil. It is possible to turn the good things of God toward wicked ends, and that happens all the time, that is what Satan frequently does. Sex is a good gift from God, when it is in marriage between a man and his wife. good in itself, but in the case of fornication or homosexuality or rape, It is being put toward an evil, a wicked end. And so it is possible, as I said, to use that which is good, that which is from God, even things that are good in themselves, like truth, to use them, to attempt to work toward

37:47 a wicked end. However, when those things in and of themselves are being set against each other, that is an indication that you are dealing with someone who is wicked, who has malice in his heart, who is attempting to cause you and others harm. And so if someone tells you that you cannot speak the truth because that would be hateful, that person is a wicked liar and needs to be rebuked. Yes, that is a way to go about it. There are good ways to speak the truth, there are bad ways to speak the truth. But it is important and it is the duty of the Christian to speak the truth, because that is actually showing love. And earlier in this episode I mentioned that the word hate, to get back to the topic for today, appears

38:36 throughout scripture, beginning to end, Genesis to Revelation, and so I'd just like to highlight how early on in Scripture hatred appears, and how near to the end of the scriptures hatred appears. We'll start with the end, we'll start with Revelation. In Revelation two six, yet this you have, you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate, that is Christ speaking, commending Christians for hating and saying that he himself hates. God hates wickedness. And that's what he's saying that he hates here. He's hating the work of false teachers. That is a perfect hatred. Just a bit give a bit of context, in in Revelation 2, that's one of the letters that Jesus is writing to the seven churches. And in that passage, he when he's addressing them, he's kind

39:29 of dressing them down. He's saying, You're you guys are screwing a bunch of stuff up. One of the only things that Jesus commends that church for is their hatred. go read Revelation 2. It's when you read it clearly with these eyes, it's stark that the thing which God commends of them in the other churches have their own strengths and weaknesses, but one of the only things that that church is getting right is its hatred. I think that's a it's a point that cannot be ignored because this is we're again we're talking about God's nature and God's will. And if God is commending a church for its hatred over against their other failings, we can't ignore that as Christians and we cannot say that hatred is always per se evil.

40:14 We must acknowledge that there are times and places when not only is it permissible, but it's required. And sorry to before I'd stop interrupting you. No, of course. you you made you you highlighted the point how often love and truth are set in opposition. That's one of the things that's very much a point in in Markwart's paper as well. We see this all the time. The pastors who personally hate Cory and I for the things that we say and for the things we say in this podcast. They hate us for telling the truth. They hate us for saying what is in Scripture. Just as God promised the righteous would be persecuted by evildoers. It's the charge is of lovelessness, but the accusation is never falsehood.

40:57 When truth is spoken, the accusation is lovelessness. And I think that we gotta be we have to pay extremely careful attention when we see this playing out, because again, there's a demon named love. Just as love is part of God's nature, there is a demon that is named love that is worshipped by this world. It is worshipped by the worst people in this world. And when they say do this in the name of love, they're wanting you to think that we're they're talking about God when they're not, they're talking about something else. And if truth is destroyed by love, that is not love that comes from God because as Corey said, God cannot be set in opposition to himself. And it's worth emphasizing again, Christ says which I also hate.

41:45 He is commending them because they are imitating him because they are hating the things that he hates. And again that is perfect hatred. And so to switch to Genesis then, the beginning of Scripture. Well, this is the more important one, that's why I've left it for second. Genesis three fifteen, which of which of course is the Proto Evangelion, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. And of course, that word enmity there has the lexical scope of hatred. That's what enmity is. Enmity is hatred, to give you the dictionary definition. Enmity is the quality of being an enemy, the opposite of friendship,

42:32 ill will, hatred, malevolence. That is what is spoken of there, and that is the first instance of the gospel in Scripture. The first instance of the gospel does not have the word love in it, but it has the word hate in it. And so you have hate from the beginning of Scripture to the end of Scripture, and to be very clear we are still saying that hate is not God an intrinsically good part of creation. Hate is intrinsically good when it is properly directed, because it is directed toward that which is evil, but it was not God's original intent for hatred to be part of creation because it did not need to be part. It entered into creation through disobedience, through wickedness. It of course will be removed in the new heavens and the

43:22 new earth. But in so far as we are still in this life, hatred is part of the Christian life, and it is a necessary part of the Christian life. It is not an optional part. It is not something that we can set aside that we can say, Well, we're Christians, so we only love. No. In order to have love in this life, you must also have hatred, because you must hate that which is evil and love that which is good. I think probably the single best demonstration in scripture of this polarity that we so often focus on, you know, we've talked in the past about things that are abominations, and we pointed out abomination to whom? When we talk about hatred, and particularly perfect hatred, and I'm going to give you the the passage where that exact phrase is

44:07 used by God to describe what he desires, it's important to understand when we talk about enemies, there are our enemies and there are God's enemies. And sometimes they're the same people. And so when you look at the passage where Jesus says to turn the other cheek, for one thing, the turning of a cheek when someone slaps you, if you look at the hand that Jesus references, it's the hand that they used to wipe their behinds after they did their business. So it wasn't an act of violence that Jesus was describing. It was a profound personal insult. It was an attack on ego. It was a public humiliation to slap someone with that hand. And Jesus was telling them: if someone humiliates you like that, You

44:54 like that, turn the other cheek. Don't respond in kind, because that person is acting as your enemy. In Psalm 139, Jesus references the same sort of hatred that he commends in Revelation two. David writes O that you would slay the wicked, O God, O men of blood depart from me, they speak against you with malicious intent. Your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hatred, I count them my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Now I included the last couple verses there because at the end

45:49 of Psalm 139, David appeals to God for a clean conscience, which eliminates any possibility of doubt that maybe David was describing something sinful, which is an accusation that's made in one of the other papers that we will link. When David is describing this, he is describing the opposite polarity of enemy. Go read Psalm 139 again for yourself. it's a beautiful psalm, and you've the first part of it is actually very often used in pro-life uh contexts, but the end of it is about hating God's enemies. David is the Psalms are filled with David striving striving against his own enemies and crying out to God for mercy and help. In Psalm 139, the enemies that David is describing are explicitly enemies

46:39 of God. Now, as we've said before, of God means something. Enemy of God doesn't mean the same as enemy of mine. There are men who hate me, who hate me for saying the things that God says. Personally, there are some days when I struggle to respond to that in a godly way, both in my heart and what I'd say out loud, either here or on the internet. But I always in order to try to remain in accord with God's will, I focus on what is it they're hating. Because if a man hates me for saying what God says, it's not really even me that he's hating. As Corey quoted previously, when when people hate us for the sake of God, it is God that they hate, fundamentally and exclusively. We just happen to be the messengers.

47:34 And that was what the the old testament f prophets faced over and over again. They got they were persecuted, they were murdered, they were chased, and the same thing happened to John the Baptist and to Jesus. When someone comes and says what God says to people who hate God, they're usually hated and killed. Occasionally they're listened to, but that is up to God. God determines whether or not those who hear his word are going to well that's a free will question. I'm not sure how to to finish that sentence cleanly. There are times when it's see it's another another episode, yes. Yeah. It's the it's when when God acts in this life, what we need to focus on is that when we are acting in accord with what God says and we're hated for it, those aren't

48:22 our enemies. So when these pastors, like Don Stein, who is actually recently in public it with a group of pastors, asked the other pastors to pray to God against this podcast. What do you say to that? when God says thou sh that we shouldn't judge, judge not, that's what he's talking about. Because God alone can do the math on whose prayers he listens to. Does he listen to the prayer of the men who are serving him faithfully? Or does he listen to the prayer of the men who are asking God to strike those men down? God can sort that out, and so we don't have to worry about it. So while there is enmity between men, the focus in the Christian life means needs to be against whom is the hatred directed?

49:12 When it's coming in, if someone hates you for being a Christian, scripture says to rejoice. You should give thanks when you are hated for his sake. That is that is a type of martyrdom. And we shouldn't we shouldn't feel bad about that. It doesn't feel great, but it is something to give thanks to God for because the alternative is to not say what God says, and therefore to not be hated by the world that is ruled by the prince of this dark age who cloaks himself in the name of love. And so when we as Christians hate God's enemies, hate those who hate God, that is obedience to God. Full stop. There could be no argument. Or you have to reject Psalm 139 and all of the other passages that you know Cory mentioned hundreds and hundreds of times in

50:04 scripture where it is clearly said that hatred of God's enemies, that hatred of evil, is obedience to God. Proverbs 8 says, the fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. And one of the mistakes that some pastors make when they're trying to thread the needle on this and and make sure that people don't go too far with their hating, they'll say things like We have no enemy but Satan. Well that's simply not true. That that's absolutely contrary to what scripture says. We absolutely have enemies. Some of them are just enemies because they don't like us for whatever reason. There are other enemies who hate us because we're God's children, and God's children will be hated by the prince of this world and

50:48 by his own children, because both God and the devil have children, and everybody it has one father or the other. There's no third option there. And when we speak of hatred, as we're evaluating it, as we're thinking about it, and as I said, like I struggle with this, and sometimes I fail. Someone directs something at me, and I my first instinct is to shoot right back twice as hard. And I I don't always do what God wants me to do. But when I look at my own actions and I look at the actions in the world, my first concern is not, did that person make me feel bad? Did he hurt my feelings? Did he did he say something mean? My first concern is is my will and are my actions aligned with what God commands and desires.

51:37 And if they are, are the other man's actions and his aligned with God's will and his desires? And then I go from there. I think that that's what all of us need to spend more time focusing on. What is God's actual will? Because we've been it's all been collapsed into this bumper sticker theology where we've all come to believe, well, God's will is love, right? I mean, God's will is love. That that's like it's it it's such a trope that it's difficult for Christians to push back because we don't have the words because the words are not being given to us by our teachers who will clearly say someone who is doing evil in the name of love is a child of Satan. And the fact that they're cloaking themselves in light is no surprise.

52:21 That's what their father does. That's what the Lucifer, the light bringer, the s the demon. demon who cloaks himself in light is of course going to be appealing because that's how he gets people to be succored. It's important as a Christian who has the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to listen to God's voice in all things, not just the things that make us feel good, and not just the things that let us off the hook. As I say repeatedly, when I read scripture, I find myself condemned. That means it's working. That means that the Holy Spirit is saying, Yeah, I'm telling you, you need to obey God when you do these things. You need to obey me, because it's God speaking. We all need to focus on that.

53:04 And that will sometimes mean that there is outgoing hatred, not in not in a counter battery, not in returning fire, but that there must be hatred of that which is contrary to God's will. And when we are personally involved with it, that's when it becomes very difficult because uh we are naturally fallen and we will naturally go further than God permits and do things that God does not condone. And that's why it's so important to understand this clearly first in our own hearts and minds, so that we're always judging our own actions first and then the actions of others by the measuring stick that God has given us in Scripture. And really today the pastors who stand up stand up and condemn hatred

53:48 by and large are acting like fools. Because it's just not a problem in our churches these days. Now in some of the liberal to use the term in a technical sense, denominations, it is very much a problem because they have a specific hatred for specific groups for specific reasons. We can get into that eventually in another episode, but by and large, in traditional Christian denominations and churches, hatred just isn't a problem. The exact opposite is the problem. There's no hatred. It's all permissiveness and this and this sixties sense of love and live and let be. And so the the pastor is condemning a sin that isn't even present in his congregation, and that's if he's even condemning it in terms that are the terms related to the sin, and not the

54:40 modern misconception, it would be as if a pastor today stood up and condemned charioteering. Okay, yes, for Christmasdom that was relevant today not so much. I don't think very many people are going out to the track and betting on chariot races very often in our churches anymore. And so it's again, pastors are supposed to speak to the congregation about the things that apply to the congregation, not some far off sin of some other people that is irrelevant to the congregation. Is it still sin? Yes, but if it's not a problem in your congregation, why are you spending time hounding your congregation about something that doesn't apply to them at present. Now, I also want to turn back to Psalm 139 for a

55:26 moment and focus on that word that is translated as perfect or complete, depends on which translation you are reading. In the ESV it's complete hatred. The word there is teleos, and that is of course related to telos, telos meaning end, so teleology is dealing with the end of things or the purpose of things, depending on if you're doing philosophy or theology. But what that word means is perfect or complete or mature, it is a hatred that is properly directed toward a rightful end. And that is the whole point that we're making about hatred. That is what is being said in that Psalm Psalm one thirty nine, a perfect hatred is a hatred that is properly directed toward a proper end. And in this case it is the hatred of God's enemies, and

56:20 if you hate God's enemies, that is a perfect hatred, because it is properly directed toward the enemies of God, and that is a proper end for hatred. I want to give a few verses here just to give some specific scriptural warrant for when and how hatred is appropriate among believers. You mean we're we're not going to read just the entirety of the The poetry or the wisdom literature. I guess not all of it, because not Job and Song of Solomon, so just the the big chunk, the core in the middle. Psalm Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Yeah, exactly. I w when I was looking it was it was mostly in those passages Which is it shouldn't be surprising, but we'll we'll discuss what it means in a minute. Yes. Psalm ninety seven says O you who love the Lord hate

57:10 evil, he preserves the lives of the saints, he delivers them from the hand of the wicked. In Psalm eleven it says the Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked, and the one who loves violence. In Psalm forty five, you have loved righteousness and hated wickness wickedness. Therefore God your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. That of course is the verse that was referred to in Hebrews earlier. God says in Psalm twenty-six, I hate the assembly of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked. In Psalm thirty-one he says, I hate those who pay regard to worthless idols, but I trust in the Lord. And this is the longest one that I want to focus on.

57:54 There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers that's from Proverbs six. Now as we mentioned earlier, truth and lying show up a couple times here as things that God hates. It is not lovelessness that he condemns, although that's condemned elsewhere. But here God specifically condemns falsehoods, falsehoods that are slander, falsehoods that are simply false on their face. And in particular I want to focus on God's hatred of one who sows discord among brothers, because that was the focus and part

58:44 of the of the uh Marquard uh paper. It's a focus of much of what is directed against Corey and I for this podcast and for the other things that we say. And again, the word brother is there, which means in the church among Christians. Now, scripture, we'll talk about this in another episode, but discord does not simply mean that there's disagreement. Or rather, when there is discord among brothers, it means that there is falsehood among brothers, first and foremost. There can be no dispute among Christians that is not based on lies. And so when discord arises, again to big to get back to the the mention early on of distinguishing between the fact and the feeling that arises from encountering the fact, so often today, when

59:37 there is discord among believers, the finger is pointed by those who would charge lovelessness against the one who has raised the alarm, against the man who has said, wait, stop what you're doing, stop what you're saying. Scripture says something different. Let's get back on the same page as God. The man who charges lovelessness is attacking the man who speaks of Scripture. And so that when there are discussions of discord among believers, again polarity polarity comes into play. From whom was the discord introduced? Was the discord introduced by the man who pulled the fire alarm? Or was the discord introduced by the man who lit the match? The contention that Cory and I have is that we as the

1:00:25 stones who cry out, and we as the men who are pulling the fire alarm, are pointing out that a fire has already started among us, and that the discord was started by those who speak contrary to Scripture. Now every man has to figure this out for himself by looking to Scripture. Who is in agreement with God and who is not. Behavior is one thing and feelings are one thing, but the truth is immutable and the truth is knowable. As we talked about in the episode on the perspicuity of scripture, you can absolutely understand what God is saying about these things. It's not a mystery what God wants us to do, and it's not a mystery what God declares to us. And so when men will seek to undermine the church by saying

1:01:13 things that are confusing, that are false, that lead us further away from God says, including leading us further away from being able to hate that which is contrary to God's will, they are sowing discord. They're sowing the discord that God hates. And when the second man speaks, and maybe he shouts, maybe his tone of voice is very tense, because a man has just lit a fire in the midst of a church and he says, Stop what you're doing, this is evil, we must stop it immediately. That man will immediately be accused of causing discord. As Christians, we have to figure out where it's coming from. Is the man who raises the alarm or is the man who spreads the lie the one who is doing the evil? It's a question that obviously we know what we think and we

1:02:02 we act with a clean conscience in these matters. You as observers and you as participants in other places must think for yourselves from whom is the discord arising? Is it he who speaks contrary to scripture, or is it he who cares enough about pure doctrine that he will fight, even if it means fighting someone who on paper is inside the church? And this is one of the really tough things about what in the church means and what a brother in Christ means because in the church means that we are part of the body of Christ, and there is nothing imperfect or evil in the body of Christ. Now, obviously, that doesn't exclude sinners because otherwise it would be a headless church. There'd be nothing in it.

1:02:46 But it is important to focus on the fact that when men are acting in evil ways, they are saying, I am not a brother. I am no longer your brother in Christ. I am like Adam in the garden. I am my own God. I am serving the God who is named love and not the God from whom the love we have been given flows. Distinguishing between the two is not obvious. It's not something to fix on a bumper sticker, but the fact that we continue to fail to discern these matters clearly is precisely why our churches continue to decay and our hearts continue to grow cold, because we're not listening to God's voice. We're listening to the age of Aquarius as the tune plays on. And the further and further we get from God, the more we

1:03:33 sound like we're still doing Jesus y stuff, we're still talking about love, but it's not the love that comes from God, it's a something else entirely. So you went through a few verses there that had to deal with uh hatred, and there of course are many of them. As mentioned earlier, there are many, many instances of these words in scripture. We had pretty much the same list for the Psalter. One other one that I had was Psalm five, which of course says The boastful shall not stand before your eyes, you hate all evildoers. And of course that is a prophet saying that God hates evil, God hates evildoers. That is actually one thing that um some modern pastors and others like to try to weasel out of hatred by saying, no no,

1:04:16 God hates sin. God doesn't hate the sinner. Well, scripture's very clear you hate all evil doers. God hates sinners. It in fact doesn't really even make sense just to hate sin because without sinners there's no sin. And so no, it's God hates sin and sinners. God hates evil and evildoers. You cannot speak of him hating one and not the other. That is, to lie about what Scripture says. But to get back to the frequency with which these terms appear, some may have noticed that there is a difference in the frequency between the New and the Old Testaments. It may have been hard to note just when I was going through very briefly but yes, the words related to hatred do appear more frequently in the Old Testament.

1:05:07 And so of course there are some who will try to make something of that, but that's really just bringing up an ancient heresy that of course continues to rear its head because the the demon responsible for that still around and will still try to subvert the church by saying, Is the God of the Old Testament really the God of the New Testament? The answer, of course, is yes, because God does not change. One of the papers that we're going to link is one that I wrote about two years ago in response to a paper written by uh Reverend Doctor Jeff Gibbs, fr retired recently from the St. Louis Seminary of the Missouri Synod. Uh he wrote a paper on righteous anger, the term that he used, basically condemning it.

1:05:52 And if in effect his argument I was it was like a twenty page paper, but the gist of it was essentially while technically it might be scriptural to say that something like righteous anger might possibly exist. Humans are so sinful that we can never possibly get it right, so it's better if we just never have any anger at all. Um in effect, he was condemning outright any anger in the hearts of any Christians for any reason whatsoever. And the principal logical fallacy that he made in that error that was the premise of his paper was that he saw anger as strictly an emotional thing. That it's it's it's an upwelling of a feeling disconnected from fact and without regard to the facts, either the emotion is right or

1:06:46 wrong. And so when Scripture is speaking of anger and of hatred, Gibbs contention was that scripture is only speaking of emotions. And the contention that we're making here in this presentation that I make in the paper separately is that this isn't about emotion at all, at least not principally. When God hates sin and God hates the wicked, that is the evildoers, the men who are wicked. That's not emotion. That's not not in any human sense. And it's not just that God's not human, so he works differently. It's that again, that which is evil is contrary to God's nature. He hates and abhores that which is contrary to himself, and he will destroy it eternally in fire. That is his perfect will. That's not emotional, that's judgment.

1:07:37 Now, I mentioned the judge not passage earlier, and I think I mentioned this before, but it's it's worth reiterating. We all know if we've ever watched a courtroom procedure or anything, there are two different kinds of judgment. There's the judgment of fact, which is done by the jury, and there's the judgment of sentence, which is given by the judge. When God instructs Christians to judge not, he's referring to the second. He is saying that when a man like Don Stein imprecates us before the church and says that God must restrain us because we're evil, only God can figure out how to do the math on that mess. We as humans don't know what the final disposition of that will be. Is Donstein damned because he prayed a damnable prayer and involved

1:08:27 other pastors in his wickedness? I don't know. I hope not. I hope that he'll repent for this ongoing sin. I cannot judge the final disposition of those acts, but I can tell you with an absolute certainty that I judge those acts to be wicked on their face, because the lies and the deception and the malice that got to the point that those prayers were said in public are profoundly and obviously evil. They're obviously contrary to God. That is wickedness. And as a member of the body of Christ, not only am I equipped to judge as a jurist whether or not something is sinful, I am obligated to do so. And when it is a public sin, as was in the case of Don Stein's sin at this pastoral gathering, that public sin can

1:09:17 and must be repudiated publicly. That's another part of Mark Wart's paper. And so when Gibbs talks about anger and wants to make it just an emotional thing, it's a trap that's really easy to fall into. And I see a lot of people who criticize Corey and I online say we're we're angry about something as though it were emotional about something. Yes, I do sometimes get emotional. I don't typically show it on Twitter. I mean, if I show displeasure on Twitter, it's usually tactical, it's usually for effect. Um, it's not that I've lost control and I'm just blustering. But because we live in a feminized world today, people look at the presence of emotion or something that could be described as emotion

1:10:02 and say, aha, there's the content. Those are the facts that are relevant to what's going on here. When that's simply not the case, there's truth and there's falsity, and that which is measured true should be received by believers and will be hated by unbelievers. And the opposite of true is true. If something is false, if something is slanderous, it will be hated by Christians because it is contrary to what God says. And so is it emotional to say that I hate when there are pastors praying evil prayers? I don't think so. I'm not personally upset about it. I'm w whatever emotional response I have to that is about the fact that our church has fallen so far that we have this sort of public evil going on and nothing is done about it.

1:10:47 And it continues to be the case that the evil gets worse and the silence gets more deafening as time goes on. That upsets me. I uh that's like stubbing my toe. That hurts a lot because I don't know if I'm ever going to stop stubbing my toe against this kind of wickedness. There doesn't seem to be anyone who's stepping forward to end it. So yeah, there's some emotion there. But it's still transient. There's not there's not something there's that I think well that made me upset and therefore I've I've stamped my book that someone made me mad on such and such a day and I'm never gonna forget. I don't care. I do care that hateful things to God are a threat to souls. The reason that Corey and I do this podcast is that these

1:11:31 lies are a threat to souls. You know, we did the episode a couple weeks back where we talked about um disputes and we and we mentioned the blow up over communion within Lutheranism. And I have seen numerous public and private reports since then of men who were considering becoming Lutheran or who had been Lutheran, who have already ceased to be Lutheran because of what Jordan Cooper said online. He said things that sounded reformed and people said, Well, that sounds reformed. I was already reformed. I don't I don't need this crap. Why would why would I be Lutheran? I already have this. There are things I like about Ring being reformed that I don't like about being Lutheran. I can be exactly what I am over there.

1:12:17 And Jordan Cooper gives me license to remain reformed because he says we believe the same things. Now, Jordan will say that he didn't mean to do that, but that was the effect of his words. That makes me furious. That fills me with hatred. Not at the man, so much as at the fact this unmitigated evil continues among us, and we can't get our act together to speak faithfully about the gifts that God has given us and people who are looking simply walk away. There will be thousands of people as a result of that blow up who will either leave the church, the Lutheran church, or they'll leave the church entirely and lose their faith. They're people who will go to hell because of what Jordan Cooper said, and not for the first time.

1:13:03 This has been his pattern for years. That is a righteous object of perfect hatred. That is pure evil. And the fact that someone can do it with a collar and someone can do it while saying they're Lutheran and saying they're confessional doesn't change the facts. So as a Christian, I have to separate the emotion that these things cause from the righteous assessment as a juror of good and evil. We are told that we will judge angels, and there will be judgment that Christians will pass on creation. That is what God has assigned to us, and by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we're capable of it imperfectly today. I can tell whether or not something is good or evil, not perfectly, not an absolutely every case, but generally I can do a

1:13:53 pretty darn good job, because the Holy Squirt Spirit and Scripture has equipped me and should equip every believer to do that. And when the world tells us, love, love, you need to love, there needs to be more love, use your indoor voice. Don't get upset. You can't hate. You can't hate when something bad is happening. That is the voice of Satan. Because the more that these things happen and the more that they're received or covered up in the name of love, the further we get from what God commands of us. When Jesus commended that that wishy-washy crappy church in Revelation two, and he said the only thing they had going for 'em was their hatred, which he shares, he would not give us the same commendation.

1:14:37 We have no hatred in our hearts today. We have no perfect hatred for anything except racism, incidentally. If you're racist, if you do w if you do a racism, that will inspire the full wrath of our churches today. There's virtually nothing else that will get anyone's dander up. That's a conversation for for a near uh episode coming up soon. But think about that. You will see perfect hatred. Well, you it's not perfect, but you will see hatred among our pastors and among the laity against certain things. And the things that they're attacking are things that are not even sins. They're things that are not scriptural. They're things that are not from God. And that is the only place that you'll see hatred.

1:15:20 That's not a coincidence. It's not a coincidence that there is no hatred of false teaching. there's only hatred of the men who would say, Hey, I think this is false teaching. That's not a coincidence. That is achieving an end that is contrary to God's will and that is something that as Christians we must hate. I generally have the the same response you do when it comes to the various pastors and detractors online a little more of the Germanic phlegmatic disposition. I personally just don't care. It doesn't elicit an emotional response from me in any way, shape, or form. Except I would agree with you, when it comes to the fact that this is actively harming other souls, nothing these men say affects

1:16:08 me in any way. So, for my own sake, I don't care. There are others who are more annoyed by it on my behalf, and thank you for that, but in my case, there's not going to be an emotional response. So that accusation just falls entirely flat. It's nonsense. Of course it's still a violation of the eighth commandment on their part, but I don't have personal enemies like that because it's silly and I don't see a point. The entire point of why we're doing this, the entire purpose is because there are men out there who are teaching falsely, who are harming souls, who are driving particularly young men out of the churches. They are actively harmful to Christ Church. And someone has to stand up and speak against them.

1:16:59 And since we've brought up the issue of private versus public sin, I think this is a great time to read To read paragraph two hundred and eighty four from the large catechism. It's part one dealing with the eighth commandment. All this has been said regarding secret sins, but where the sin is quite public, so that the judge and everybody know it, you can without any sin avoid him and let him go, because he has brought himself into disgrace, and you may also publicly testify concerning him, for when a matter is public in the light of day, there can be no slandering or false judging or testifying, as when we now reprove the Pope with his doctrine, which is publicly set forth in books and proclaimed in all the world.

1:17:44 For where the sin is public, the reproof also must be public, that everyone may learn to guard against it. And that is exactly what we are dealing with. Because nothing we have said on any episode so far, nothing we will say, has dealt with private matters. These are false teachers and wolves masquerading as pastors, who are spreading their filth online, who are spreading it on social media, who are spreading it on YouTube, who are teaching people falsely, who are driving people out of the church, who are harming souls, who are leading men straight into hell, and all of it is public. And so the rebuke must be public. It is a matter of hatred. It is a matter of perfect hatred. It is a matter of not impassioned hatred, not emotional hatred, but

1:18:40 a cold in the technical term, the technical sense of the term hatred. It is a hatred of the things that stand against God That cause harm to his sheep. It is a hatred of that which is evil and wicked, which is to say it is love for that which is good and right. It is a love for the sheep, it is a love for Christ Church. Because when you act out of hatred for the evil, you are acting out of love for the good, and vice versa. And it's important to reiterate that anything that a pastor, that an ordained minister of the word says pastors don't get to have private theological opinions. That is absolutely disqualified. By virtue of their office as a pastor, whatever a man who is called and ordained thinks about God's Word is de facto public.

1:19:37 Every thought in his head, and certainly every word that he's ever said to anyone with regard to scripture, with regard to doctrine, is a public matter because when a man with a collar speaks, it binds consciences. We've said on numerous episodes this is just a podcast. We're here, we're teaching. You can pick it up. You can shut it down. We don't know your names. You're not accountable to us in any way. We're po we're accountable to God for what we say, but we hold no authority over you. Anything that you hear us say that you might agree with, it's only because the Holy Spirit has convicted you of that. Because the arguments that we make are arguments from Scripture. We do not exercise any authority on our own.

1:20:21 This is not true of pastors. Any pastor, whether regardless of denomination, if he stands up and says, I'm a pastor, let we let me tell you what God says. He is speaking in the stead and by the command of God. Or he's speaking in the stead and contrary to the command of God. And these men who speak falsely are lucky that they are not struck dead. It is if if they're blessed and they're going to convert and become Christians again, it will be a blessing that their lives continue from that day forward, that they may return to the faith and be forgiven. If it were not the case that these men will not repent, that they will continue to take these high-handed sins, this slander and this evil that they feel that are their most proud moments, if

1:21:08 they're going to take those to judgment day, it would be better for them when they're burning in hell if God were to strike them dead today. I know that sounds like a horrible thing to say, but strictly speaking, that is the most merciful thing that could happen. God will judge how that may happens. God determines the hour of each of our deaths. It's none of my business. Well, and that is also just straight scriptural, because Christ says of Judas it would have been better for him had he not been born. So that's not just something you infer from scripture. That is something that is a literal quote from Christ. Yeah. And so we spend uh more time than I wish that we would. I I I I don't want this to be a podcast complaining

1:21:52 about pastors. But the whole reason we're talking about perfect hatred is that there are very few pastors that are who are speaking about it correctly. There are a great many pastors who accuse us of hatred, of evil hatred, of hatred that comes from Satan, that say that we work for Satan by telling you these things, that this podcast is from Satan, and they're praying to their God to destroy us. That's between them and their maker. I'm not a party to that. If we're hated for saying what God says, I thank God for that martyrdom. I and it shames me to say that because I don't deserve martyrdom. If I were ever to be faced with being killed for being a Christian, I would beg them, not for my life, that

1:22:38 they would kill me for something else. Because I do not deserve to stand in the courts of those who have died for the faith. However, it's not up to us. We say what God gives us to say, and we say it to whoever will listen. And the manner in which that is received is between each listener and the Holy Spirit. The reason for discussing all of these forgotten doctrines in things like hatred is because Satan is doing an end run about around the entire church today The things that we're discussing are the things that no one else is discussing. So it's frequently going to be upsetting to people or confusing to hear our episodes because we're talking about things you probably haven't heard before. And that should rightly get your hackles up.

1:23:22 It should make you nervous to hear somebody talking about theology in a way you've never heard. That's a that's a huge red flag. The question is whether what we're saying is anything new. And the simple fact is that everything we're saying is ancient. This is not new theology or a new doctrines that we just came up with because we were mad online. We look at scripture and we look at the history of the church and the history of believers, and this is all we see until the last few centuries when all of these things came under attack. And each of these episodes is a different moving part of Satan's attack against the church and our efforts as individual men, as laymen, to try to rally whatever faithful men remain to look and

1:24:06 to see clearly what it is that's going on in the church and in the world and to address it faithfully. And there will be days when addressing it faithfully requires that we hate with perfect hatred. And if we have not thought about what that means, how it works, what we can do, and what we cannot do before that day, we will not be equipped to obey God on the day when our perfect hatred is required of us as obedience to God. Amen.