openswitch

I’ve heard it said that we should “Hate the sin, but love the sinner.” On paper this sounds like a great Christian principle to live by. But in real life I find it to be a difficult, if not impossible, task to accomplish. We know that God hates sin, and that we should too. I hate abortion (well, abortion as birth control anyway), I hate drug abuse, I hate murder too. Yes, so far so good. My conscience is still intact.

But when we get down to the nitty gritty of living with people I think our perspective has to change slightly. Now, don’t go misunderstanding me, we need to call sin “sin” and we need to see sin the way God does too. But I also think a lot of folks get hung up here. I know I do, at any rate. For one reason or another we can’t get past a person’s sin to see who they are (or could be) in Christ. I see a drug abuser and think how depraved they are. “Scum of the Earth” is what I feel. Yet along with hating sin the way God hates sin we also must love people the way God loves people.

This presents a problem for me, and I suspect it does for you too. I simply can’t get past other’s sin to be able to wholly love them. More than that, I don’t want to associate with them because they are “dirty” or “condemned” or “sinful.” But I think Christ gives us the prime example that those are the very people we should be mixing with.

One practical way I’ve found of accomplishing this is to change my verbiage a little and say “Love the sinner, look past the sin.” I find there are two results from this change in mindset:

1. I feel more concerned for a person’s welfare and eternal fate

All of a sudden I see them as a person in need of a Savior. No, more than that. I see them as being exactly like me. When I look past their sin and see the person underneath I’m utterly compelled to love them. Without a genuine love for people you can never be used by God.

2. My ego gets put aside and I’m a more humble person

When I get hung up on another’s sin, whether that be drug abuse, homosexuality or adultery, I almost always end up feeling somehow “better” than them. Believe me, it’s quite unintentional on my part, a result of my own sinful nature no doubt. But once I see others as being in the same sinking ship I am in, both in need of the same thing, well, all my haughtiness dissolves.

If we really want to be humble, if we really want to love people, we have got to look past their sin and love them. Remember, I never said we have to say the sin is “OK” or to love the sin, but I think it’s very possible to keep the mindset that sin is a horrible assault on God and at the same time look past it to see the fragile person underneath.