The Church Needs More Hate
Yes I am using a provocative title. No this isn’t just clickbait. Yes I mean every word. The church needs more hate.
I’m talking about a specific kind of hatred.
The kind found in Romans 12:9.
“Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them.
Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good.”
Romans 12:9 (NLT)
A friend of mine shared this passage with me as I, and many others, were walking through an appalling injustice and abuse of power. They began to express what they were feeling with anger, passion, zeal, and an intensity that made me uncomfortable.
Of course, I thought the Christian, or at least the reasonable, thing to do was to calm them down. Lower the temperature. Minimize the injustice. Theorize the family-of-origin pain of the perpetrator. Cloak it all in the sovereignty of God.
Almost as if to say, “Whoa. Don’t get so worked up about sin. It’s no big deal.”
And that’s when this friend gently read the passage aloud. No commentary. No explanation. Just the text. Intuitively I knew It was their way of saying, I am speaking this way because of my love for you.
In Romans 12, Paul gives us a picture, along with a series of commands, meant to shape the way of Jesus within Christian and local community. He begins here:
“Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them.
Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good.”
Got me on the love part.
Got me on the don’t pretend part.
Love must be sincere.
But Paul seems to add a qualifier, by way of the Spirit, about what proves sincerity. Before we rush toward hatred, it’s worth noticing what Paul does not say marks genuine love.
He doesn’t say, “Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Speak words of blessing over them.”
He doesn’t say, “Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hold space for their story.”
He doesn’t say, “Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Try to see both sides of the evil they experienced.”
He doesn’t say, “Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Send encouraging text messages telling them God has a plan for them.”
None of those things are wrong. In many situations, they are necessary. They often belong in healthy dialogue around pain and suffering.
But Paul, when describing sincere love within Christian community, includes something many of us would rather avoid.
Hatred.
Hatred of evil.
Without getting overly technical, the Greek carries the sense of continual recoil, a reflexive rejection of what is corrupting and destructive.
If this were only about some abstract evil “out there” in the world, we would all nod in agreement. But Paul isn’t writing to pagans. He is writing to the church.
Which means, contextually, it sounds more like this.
Develop a reflexive disgust toward anything that poisons love.
Or put another way.
You cannot love sincerely if you remain neutral toward evil.
Now, I know where some minds go at this point. This can sound like an off-ramp onto an old-school holiness highway, the kind where a preacher rants loudly about sins he doesn’t struggle with while ignoring the ones hidden in his own heart. Public outrage. Moral theatrics. A call for others to get really really upset about the “really bad sins” of the culture, while remaining unbothered by the quiet lurking sins within.
But that is not what Paul is doing. He is not calling for collective outrage about how bad the world is. He is not inviting more rants, tweets, or viral videos. He is not asking you to police the foul language of your Sunday soccer team. He is not championing boycotts over culture-war talking points.
No. He is addressing a deeper hypocrisy, the kind that lets us claim love for others while refusing to hate the evil committed against them.
Paul is saying this. If you truly love someone, you will hate the evil you are capable of doing to them. And you will hate the evil done to them by powerful men, women, governments, systems, and institutions.
You cannot say you love someone while partnering with, supporting, or propping up the very forces that are wounding them.
Enough with toxic neutrality.
Enough with prayers and well wishes detached from any hatred of what is destroying the people we claim to love.
Woe to us if we continue to support systems, leaders, movements, and organizations that cause untold harm while calling ourselves loving.
Now here is the harder truth. This hatred cannot begin outside of me. That is too easy.
It is easy to spot manipulation, hypocrisy, and abuse in the church and summon momentary zeal, some table-flipping energy, about what I see out there. It’s easy to identify the egregious and inflammatory behavior, rhetoric, and policy perpetrated by the political parties in my nation. But that is not where my hatred of sin should start.
My hatred of sin must begin in me.
I must hate the evil I am capable of.
I must ask the Spirit to expose the self-deception in my own heart, the parts of me that point fingers quickly and avoid mirrors entirely.
I must repent of my compromise.
My hypocrisy.
My insincere love.
My inaction.
My cowardice.
My playing it safe.
My unwillingness to pay the cost of truth and righteousness.
Lord, forgive me for insincere love.
Forgive me for being a blurry witness of the gospel.
Forgive me for wounding brothers and sisters with silence.
Forgive me for offering platitudes where hatred of evil was required.
Forgive me for loving people with words while refusing to hate what unmade them.
So yes, I will say it plainly.
We need more hatred in the church.
The right kind.
Hatred that unites us against evil that destroys image bearers.
Hatred that names spiritual manipulation and abuse.
Hatred that stands with victims instead of silencing them.
Hatred that values people even when they hold no power or platform.
We need a hatred that will break allegiance with anything, or anyone, who willfully, deceptively, and unrepentantly harms the Bride and the witness of Christ.
This is not a call for cancel-culture outrage, but rather for sincere love.
Love that doesn’t pretend. Love that not only promotes, but protects. Love that not only cheers, but confronts.
I need more hate. We need more hate.
Hatred for the things that destroy the ones He loves.