Hate gets a bad rap.

God hates.

Recently, I read that “you will never turn from a sin you don’t hate.”

Have you ever had one of those sins that just stayed with you? You wanted to end it, but it just hung around like the puppy we bought last year. It’s familiar. It’s tenacious. It drools. It’s even a bit, dare I say it, likeable?

You’ll never turn from a sin you don’t hate. Here are some sins God hates.

^{Proverbs 6:16} There are six things that the LORD hates, even seven that are disgusting to him: ¹⁷ arrogant eyes, a lying tongue, hands that kill innocent people, ¹⁸ a mind devising wicked plans, feet that are quick to do wrong, ¹⁹ a dishonest witness spitting out lies, and a person who spreads conflict among relatives. ^(GW)

Does God really hate? I looked up the Hebrew word translated “hate” in Proverbs 6:16. It means… hate. The word translated “disgusting” means “detestable, an abomination.” God really hates sin.

We should too.

Sanctification is a fancy word meaning “to become holy or set apart.” Positionally, that happens in an instant. When we come to God in belief, we are freed from our sin, set apart by God and sealed by Him. Ephesians 1.

But practically, sanctification isn’t so sudden. Author Jen Wilkin calls the process “a slog.” Sin can be so annoyingly likeable.

Back in my Youth Director days, I had a 4-step chart to help put signposts on our slog toward sanctification. Progress, when you see it, can be encouraging. See if this helps.

We begin our spiritual journey after salvation living a life of unconscious disobedience. Once the Holy Spirit brings an issue to us, we become consciously disobedient. Rather than change immediately, we tend to stay there a while. Sin can be so annoyingly likeable.

Over time as we yield to the Spirit, we begin to hate the behavior. Now the real work begins. Conscious obedience is the difficult step. It is so easy to slide back. Here is when we need to pray to hate the sin as God hates the sin. Developing a hatred of what God hates will decimate a temptation.

Finally, we wake up one morning and realize it has been months since that sin really tempted us. A new lifestyle is developing. We are living in the Spirit in a state of unconscious obedience. And then…

Then the Spirit shows us something else we like, something else He hates. And there we go again.

And over time we become more and more like Christ. Hating what He hates, loving what He loves.

CS Lewis put it this way,

“Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be sons of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has — by what I call “good infection.” Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.”

By the way, our church is giving away subscriptions to the largest digital bible study resource in the world, with a great kids section. Sign up here! Don’t thank me. Thank AnchorPoint.

Dan