Exodus 28 / Matthew 25:31-26:13 / Psalm 31:9-18 / Proverbs 8:12-13
There are so many valuable nuggets of truth and wisdom in Proverbs. I could likely spend the entire year just in Proverbs and build a whole devotional series. Today, the verse that grabs my attention is this one:
All who fear the Lord will hate evil. Therefore, I hate pride and arrogance, corruption and perverse speech.
All who fear the Lord will hate evil. First, what is evil, and second, are we even aware of it. Finally, do we as followers of Jesus Christ sincerely hate evil?
And I have more questions. How do I hate evil, while loving people? How do I love people while not compromising toward sin? It’s not possible for me to fully explore this topic in one short post (already my mind is going 100 different directions), but let’s see if we can pull a few truths out to process.
What does it mean to fear the Lord? Some might think this means I’m afraid of or hiding from Him. That’s not what it means unless you’re His enemy. Fear is terror, respect, reverence.
And though we probably have a good idea, what is evil? Evil is giving pain or misery, hurtful, ethically wicked in thoughts or actions, injury.
To have respect and reverence for God means we will hate evil. There’s another verse in Isaiah 5:20 that says “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who replace darkness with light and light with darkness, who replace bitter with sweet and sweet with bitter.”
I was reading yesterday about common grace and I think it will help inform today’s discussion. Common grace as defined in Lance Wallnau’s book God’s Chaos Candidate is “the grace that comes upon all, Christian and non-Christian, to help us affirm the good and resist the bad… the hidden hand of God that works to promote justice and order in a world where selfishness could produce societal collapse.”
Every person is created by God and we all have common grace on our lives. Some live with this grace in view, and some ignore it, preferring to call evil good and good evil. We talked a few days ago about being a good, moral person. Common grace will allow one to be good and moral.
The thing that sets believers apart from the “common grace”, good moral person is the one who has received God’s saving grace of salvation. I believe it is God’s saving grace that allows us to fear God and truly hate evil. But to hate evil, we must awaken ourselves to its existence. And once we realize it exists, we must as followers of Jesus Christ stand against it.
A lot more could be said, but I’ll stop here for now. One exhortation before you leave… please awaken to and stand against evil in our day. The world needs the justice of the Lord through the Church! What can you do to awaken and stand? Pray.
