What is the meaning of the word "hate" used In Luke 14:26? How can its spirit be reconciled with the principles and obligations of the golden rule?
The original word for "hate" in this verse is miseo, the same word that is translated "hate" in. forty-one other passages of the New Testament, beginning with the sermon on the mount and ending with Revelation 18. Usually it is used in the sense that we ordinarily understand in current practice. Its use in Luke 14:26 sounds paradoxical if not contradictory, but is capable of being harmonized with other teachings of the Scripture.
That "hate" cannot be rightly interpreted in this verse in the ordinary sense, is plain from the fact that we find in several verses in the first epistle of John, such as chapter 2:11, 3:15, and 4:20, that hard and condemnatory things are said of one who hates his brother. How then can one be condemned for hating his brother, and yet be told that unless he hates his brother he cannot be a disciple of Christ? One thing is clear from the context, and that is that the verses in the epistle of John are dealing with a spiritual brother, while Luke 14:26 is dealing with a natural or physical brother. In what sense, then, must one hate a natural brother? Surely not in the commonly accepted sense, but in such sense as the Scripture makes clear elsewhere.
There is a sense in which God hates, and hates persons. Romans 9:13 says, "Esau have I hated." This is said in contrast to Jacob, where it says in the same connection, "Jacob have I loved." God's love is not an emotion, but a principle of character—"God is love." God loves righteousness and hates sin. The meaning is therefore clear when it is said that God loves one man and hates another man, because one man is by grace living in harmony with the character of God, while the other man has identified himself with sin. God cannot look upon sin with any degree of allowance. Neither can He look upon the sinner with any degree of allowance, if that sinner refuses the grace offered to him. Yet God so loved that sinner that He gave His Son to die for him.
God never exhibits anything but love, for that is His character. Consequently, when the sinner who refuses His grace is finally destroyed, it is an act of love, both to save that sinner from a further life of incorrigible sin and to rid the universe of sin. Shall we not conclude, therefore, that God hates the sinner in the sense that He cannot fellowship with him? Sin and the sinner cannot endure the presence of a holy God. It does not mean that He holds a spirit of enmity or evil passion toward the sinner, but that He cannot tolerate sin or the sinner in His presence.
Applying this principle to the natural man, may we not say that a man, in order to be a disciple of Christ, must not allow anything in the nature of sin or a sinner to stand between him and God or to interfere with his full fellowship with God? In other words, a disciple of Christ must forsake everything and every person that stands in the way of his full fellowship with God. If my father or my mother, my brother or my sister, hinder me from obeying God, then I must disregard that father and that mother, or that brother and that sister, and let them be as though they did not exist as far as my relationship to Christ is concerned. I must choose between fellowship with God and fellowship with the sinner. To use a strong term, I must "hate," in this sense, everything and everybody that separates me from God.
On the other hand, this hate must take the same direction as it does with God; namely, that I am willing to lay down my life for the sinner for the sake of bringing him into a relationship with God and with myself that is called love in the deepest sense.
W.E. Howell.
