All We Need is Love?
Written By Joseph Spurgeon
Years ago, the Beatles sang “All we need is love.” This is the mantra of our day. We love to talk about love. We say love is love, love wins, love everybody, and wearing a mask is love. We also despise, dare I say hate, hatred. We have crimes against hate, the internet police to police hate speech, and signs that say, “love trumps hate.” Some people even get uncomfortable if anyone uses the word hate.
But the problem is, we don’t know what love is, because we refuse to hate. I say we refuse to hate but that’s not entirely true. We all have a lot of ungodly hatred. Furthermore, by refusing to have holy hatred, we don’t actually love what we say we love but end up showing hatred for it.
Let me put it another way, you can’t love something if you don’t hate. If you truly love something or someone you will hate whatever may seek to destroy or harm what you love.
If you truly love your wife, you will come to despise, to abhor, to hate pornography, feminism, and your sinful lusts.
If you truly love your children, you will despise, abhor, and hotly hate pedophilia, the Darwinian, secular humanist, and LGBT+ agendas being aimed at them daily, and the lack of respect for godly authority in our society.
If you love your church, you will despise, abhor, and hate the critical race theory nonsense being taught from seminaries and false teachers. You will hate those who seek to divide the church with their lusts, cowardice, pride, and heresies. You will hate false professors who refuse to stand for Christ because they want to be loved by the world.
If you love your country, you will despise, abhor, and hate the collusion between big business, big tech, and big government. You will hate ungodly ideologies of communism, feminism, and sexual revolution. You will hate political parties that openly despise the country’s founding and political hacks that refuse to stand up against the enemies of the country both foreign and domestic.
If you love God, then you will despise, abhor, and hate the enemies of God and in particular how your own sin made you his enemy and cost the blood of Jesus on the cross. If you love God you will despise, abhor, and hate all falsehood you are tempted to believe, all pride that you harbor, and all of your own hypocrisy. You will hate to hear his beautiful, righteous, and holy name used as a mere curse word. If you love Jesus, you will hate anything or anyone that would keep you from Him.
If you love God you will hate what he hates. No one can say they love someone or something and then be indifferent to or like that which stands in complete opposition to what they love. You can’t say you love God while refusing to hate what he hates.
Friends, the world has always called Christian’s haters, even in the days of the church fathers. And you know what, God calls us to be haters too. So here is my invitation to you, join the world’s largest hate group, Christianity. Be a hater and do so because you are filled to the brim with love for God and for your neighbor.
I love you all.
Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good.
Romans 12:9
20 thoughts on “All We Need is Love?”
Fabulous post.
Truth sounds like hate to those who hate truth.
Christians are being quiet when satanic devils are running wild in America, and that needs to end.
Judgment is required, however, God loved Phinehas, who hated evil. Phinehas found a Jewish prince fornicating, and stabbed him and his foreign princess partner to death in the act of copulation, with a javelin.
Christians need to learn to hate evils like porn, homosexuality, abortion, birth control, feminism, racial tribalism, Communism, the wicked leaders of the Democrat party, masturbation, and everything else God hates. He hates them because they destroy us individually and societally.
Justice seems to be dead in our nation but I am thankfully that we serve a just God.
I agree with this post.
Absolutely abhor feminism,sexual revolution and pre-marital sex(yes even the acceptance and normalization of it) and half of your social problems are solved there itself.
Have A Great Day ahead Mrs.Lori Alexander!!??
Hi Lori.
You are spot on. The Lord gave me this same message with I shared with the deacons and the Men’s group I am part of:
2 Chronicles 19:2
And Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him, and said to King Jehoshaphat,
“Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord?
Therefore the wrath of the Lord is upon you
Jesus hates the sin, but he loves the sinner
That is a great post! Thank you Lori! It seems as though many Christians are lukewarm and don’t want to hate anything. Sad..
Make sure we don’t end up people, though. That would be very much anti-Christian.
Why do you think we should hae the leaders of the Democratic party? We aren’t to hate people, right? Only their actions and ideas if they are sinful. And I do not believe God is political, there is evil on both sides of the aisle. I would love to hear anyone else’s thoughts on this.
Read this to my family. My husband’s response… Excellent! 100% agreement. Then he read Psalm 139:17-24.
How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee. Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, ye bloody men. For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Lori I agree there is a lot ungodly hatred and as Christians we are to have a holy hatred. As I made a comparison of these two types of hatred I thought of the reactions or results that each hatred produces. I believe it’s possible to have a holy hatred along with the fruits of the Spirit. I mention the fruits because I’m am seeing in others and at times myself that the current world/political situation is creating (even among Christians) ungodly hatred. I want to have a holy hatred for the things that oppose God and in my small world make a difference. How can I make a difference? I’m not protesting or being actively involved to change the craziness of the world. But I think I may be contributing to some of the things that I’m to have a holy hatred for such as:
My subscription to the local newspaper, I’m supporting their editorials that are pro-choice and include their liberal beliefs. Facebook, I’m not on it but I’m finding out how big tech is censoring and pouring millions of dollars to buy elections. Smartphones, another tech wonder that a lot of people use, my husband has one and uses it daily. I’m wondering if holy hatred includes any of the above?
Lori – Thank you for your ministry. I have been greatly encouraged over the years. Unfortunately, one of your male commenter has finally chased me away. This is no longer a safe place for me.
God bless you and I wish you all the best with your health.
Merry Christmas to you and your family. I’ve been reading your blog on a daily basis for so many years now that I think of you almost as a friend / wise Godly mentor.
If I had your attitude, KAK, I would have quit writing LONG ago! I learned quickly to stand by my own convictions and not allow others to shut me down or up as many want. I wish you would do the same. There will always be people with whom you disagree. Merry Christmas to you too!
The idea is that we hate the sin, not the sinner. We pray for the conversion of sinners, but that doesn’t mean that we condone their deeds. We must hate sin. We must love our neighbor. Loving our neighbor does not mean that we fawn all over them and tell them they’re wonderful and okay. We tell them the truth. Prudence, of course, needs to dictate just how much we say and when we say it, because we also have to take into consideration that these people won’t care for the truth at all, and if you’re responsible for others and it’s possible that someone could retaliate against you, well, prudence would dictate that it would be unwise to directly confront the person. This differs for everybody, so what is prudent for you might not be prudent for me, and so on.
The greatest enemy any human has is their sins, your comments are valued, but, if you expect to escape criticism with insolent rejoinders relying on lying disinformation, you’re mistaken. Safe spaces are a fairy tale.
Hebrews 12:
[5] And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:
[6] For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
[7] If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
[8] But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
[9] Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
[10] For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.
[11] Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
[12] Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees;
[13] And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.
“Fire is the rest of gold, and adversity is the test of strong women/men.”
Seneca
A gentle reminder that you don’t have to read the comments if you don’t want to. You can just read Lori’s blog post and leave it at that.
Biblical love: is patient, is kind, does not envy or boast, is not proud, is not self seeking, is not easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs.
21st century Western culture love: “Agree with me all the time, support everything I do, think, am, or say I am, or you hate me.”
The former is sacrificial and is a choice. The latter is something that a child might say.
@ KAK, A male commenter was pouring his heart out (about his wife’s unfaithfulness and her love manifested for another man to whom she gave what was rightfully his) while admitting his own sin and all you could see in his words were his transgressive sins of “arrogance” and “bitterness” and “blaming women for everything” – I guess maybe that guy might like a safeplace and it’s not like you don’t complain about your victimization which could be deemed “bitterness.”
If the author declares it a safeplace for women only, no problem. But then I’d ask some of the females here not to participate in men’s blog’s either (some of them do).
I strongly disagree with the author’s unfounded claim that ” we don’t know what love is, because we refuse to hate.” In its modern usage, “hate” is the “ungodly hatred” that the author displays towards those with whom Joseph Spurgeon apparently disagrees (feminism, members of the LGBTQ community, Democrats, humanists) and many other political (not religious or spiritual) “targets.”
The author seems to believe that because he believes in God, God must therefore support his own personal biases. That is a serious error of pride… and worse.
I cannot reconcile God’s boundless love and rich Word with the fallacious and hateful arguments that Spurgeon uses.
“The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.” (Ps. 11:5)
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”
I agree with Mr. Spangler. This post fails to acknowledge the important truth that we are called to love members of all these communities. We are all sinners, so we are in no place to hatefully criticize others whom we want tp ostracize, rather we have to listen and respect everyone while graciously leading them to Christ.