I have begun looking at the word “Truth” as I continue my study on the Whole Armor of God with particular focus on “having girded your waist with truth”.
Unfortunately, circumstances were such that I could not devote the time I had planned to study. Therefore, there isn’t a blog post ready this week.
I hope to continue in my study and have something for next but, until then, I invite you to read a post from 2021.
Monday is my usual post day and, this year, Monday happens to be Christmas Day.
I am still in the midst of my study on Ephesians 6 verses 10 through the first part of verse 18. This is the passage where the Apostle Paul describes the Whole Armor of God. I have not yet moved on from the Shield of Faith and did wonder what sort of post I could create for Christmas Day that would continue to reveal the true definition of faith.
That might seem silly because of course Christmas is all about faith for Christians. I find that “faith” in this respect is used to mean “a religion or a system of religious beliefs” which is definition 3 of “faith” in my New World Book Dictionary. Those who use “faith” mean the set of rules and regulations set down by their denomination, the theology stamped approved by their denomination, and the fiercely held but not always audibly expressed idea that the faith of their denomination is the True Faith: all others are mistaken and have fallen short of the truth.
I suppose I ought to admit I am rather ambivalent about Christmas. On the one hand, there is everything I have learned about Christmas traditions. Would it shock you to learn that there is no Christmas movie (that I can bring to mind) that accurately portrays the birth of our Lord and Savior and that the Nativity Scenes where the animals gaze benevolently at the newborn Christ, the Shepherds bow down in worship, and the Three Wise Men offer their gifts, directly contradicts the Biblical story?
Only the Shepherds were there to see the Baby Jesus. The Wise Men-and there had to be a great many more than three visitors from the East-didn’t arrive until Jesus was a child and, when they visited Him, they did so at the house where He, Mary, & Joseph were living (see Matthew Chapter 2). There is every reason to question whether His birth occurred in December and there is also reason to question whether the place He was born ought to be translated as “stable”. All of these things as they are celebrated during Christmas are traditions and are “faith” only in the respect that they are the traditions of a belief system accepted by a wide group of people.
All of these things I can take or leave. If I have the opportunity to partake of these traditions, fine; if not, equally fine. It is the people I am partaking with who are important. I also admit there are some aspects of Christmas I thoroughly enjoy. Some of the Christmas music is the most beautiful I’ve ever heard. So beautiful, I don’t always save these songs for Christmas. You can find me singing “Joy to the World” and “O Holy Night” at any time of the year. And, accurate or not, I do like the Nativity Tableau because it is a picture of what the Hebrew words translated “remember” and “remembrance” mean. The two words are spelled the same but are pronounced with different vowels. Remember is zakar and it means “to mark-so as to be recognized-to remember, to mention”. The Strong’s also defines it as “to be male” which makes this word worth a devoted study. The word translated as “remembrance” is zeker and isn’t all that different than zakar being defined by the Strong’s as “a memento, recollection, commemoration.” The Strong’s also includes the word “scent” and “to burn incense” in these definitions and I like the idea of all of our senses being involved in our remembering.
Remembrance in the Biblical sense of the word is not an intellectual exercise. The meaning can be seen in these Christmas celebrations: acting it out as if Jesus was being born this very night, celebrating the Word made flesh, recognizing our likeness in His face, and reveling in the indescribable love of God.
Unto us a Child is born. Unto us a Son is given.
But, this remembrance is not our faith. We are not acting out a mere belief system. We are celebrating-or ought to be celebrating-the revelation of God Himself in Jesus Christ. This revelation of God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, the humility in the heart of God in that God became one of us-limited in every way as we are, tempted in every way as we are-is the catalyst for a response in us and that response is the definition of faith.
I read J. Preston Eby’s teachings and only recently discovered he’d written a short series on faith. I am currently on page 3 of the first study but have read enough that there is plenty to ponder. Mr. Eby opens his study series with this definition of faith: “Faith is the mental attitude of confident response which is evoked in you by what another person reveals himself to be.”
Mr. Eby goes on to write, “The very first thing that you will surely observe about this definition is that it declares that your faith is not something that you decided to exercise. Rather it is a response produced in you by someone other than yourself! True faith never accrues to the praise of the one who possesses it, but rather, to the glory of the one who evokes it! Then, in the second place, the “mental attitude of confident response” known as faith is totally dependent upon revelation, that is, the uncovering or unveiling of another person’s inner being in such a way that he may be seen as he really is.”
Does Jesus have December or a September or an April or some other birth month? Was He born in a stable or some other type of room? I do enjoy reading what others have to say on these subjects. I don’t have time for arguing about it because, whatever the facts may be, the truth is we have an unpredictable God who, maker and ruler of all things, did not choose to be born in a way that fitted His station. He was born to poor peasant parents, had a manger for His bed, and while angels filled the skies with song, only shepherds were there to mark His birth.
Tomorrow will be December 26th. Perhaps many of you will begin taking down decorations and packing them away until next year. Perhaps many of you will find tomorrow to be a bit of a letdown. Perhaps you sought the Magic of Christmas and needed Santa and Elves and Flying Reindeer in order to find it. But then, you probably stopped believing in all of that years ago. You try to create magic for your children but deep inside you know magic is nothing more than illusion and sleight of hand.
None of your days have to be a letdown. We don’t have to try and stir up some sort of holiday spirit and try to keep it going into the cares and trials of our daily lives. Jesus is not just the reason for the season, He is the reason for everything that exists: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.” (Colossians 1:15-17).
I follow the blog Hebrew Word Lessons and a recent post addressed Christmas. The point was made about the unlikelihood of Jesus having a December birth but also pointed out the beauty of celebrating His arrival with lights during the darkest time of the year. The author also writes, “This Messiah (Anointed One), who would come as a child, would be an awe-inspiring, mighty, eternal, peace-bringer. And He would be a counsellor…an intimate advisor for every human heart.” John 14:16 refers to the Holy Spirit as the Comforter and the Amplified expands that word with “Counsellor, Helper, Intercessor, Advocate, Strengthener, and Standby”. (See also John 14:26-28).
Today is the day chosen to be the commemoration of God’s coming to earth through His being born a human being. However you choose to mark today, if you do so choose to mark today, I hope it is a day full of the comfort and joy that belongs to each one of us. Because that baby is no longer a baby. He is the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ, sitting at the right hand of the Father, with all authority in heaven and on earth His, ever living to make intercession for us, dwelling in us in and by His Spirit.
When we experience the vitality of us in Christ and He in us, all substitutions pale in comparison. Our reality is we have the Holy Spirit dwelling inside of us. Emmanuel, God with Us, has become God in Us. Our very bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit not just today but every day. He is our Comfortor and His fruit is joy. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation, will open our eyes to the magnitude of what it means to live in union with Christ in us: we only have to ask. And then, having opened our eyes, this same Spirit will strengthen us to live our lives in response to all we have seen: a life of faith.
Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982
Guralnik, David B., Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, Second College Edition, William Collins + World Publishing Co., Inc., Cleveland • New York, 1953, 1976
Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990
Hello Readers and welcome-or welcome back-to Renaissance Woman where, this week, I am taking another look at the Hebrew word sane (saw-nay) which is often translated in scripture by the English word “hate”.
An interesting passage in Psalm 139 kicked off this study. I read in verses 21-22: “Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate You? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.” King David appears to be saying his hate is a good thing and something that honors God. How can this be especially since the words of Jesus in Luke 6 conflict? “Love your enemies,” Jesus instructs. “Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you” (Luke 6:27-28). I do not believe the Bible contradicts itself. I believe when and if passages appear to contradict each other, it is my understanding that is incomplete. What then, did I understand about hate? Was there ever a time when hate might be considered a good thing? What is meant by “perfect hatred?”
The definition of “hate” in my New World Dictionary didn’t help in my attempt to find an answer. The English word hate means “to have strong dislike or ill will for, loathe, despite, bear malice toward.” I read through some scriptures containing the word sane and it did seem as though that definition was accurate. Consider these passages:
Deuteronomy 19:11: “But if anyone hates his neighbor, lies in wait for him, rise against him and strikes him mortally, so that he dies…”
1 Kings 22:8 (also 2 Chronicles 18:7): “so the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, ‘There is still one man, Micaiah the son of Imlah, by whom we may inquire of the Lord; but I hate him, because he does not prophesy good concerning me, but evil.’”
Psalm 25:19: “consider my enemies, for they are many; And they hate me with cruel hatred.”
Psalm 41:7: “All who hate me whisper together against me; Against me they devise my hurt.”
Each one of these passages, and others like them, appear to bear up the definition of “ill will, strong dislike, malice” and it is obviously not considered to be a good thing. But then, in contrast to each one of these passages, there are others where sane/hate is considered to be a good thing. Consider:
Psalm 97:10: “You who love the Lord, hate evil!”
Psalm 101:3: “I will set nothing wicked before my eyes; I hate the work of those who fall away; It shall not cling to me.”
Proverbs 8:13: “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth I hate.”
Ecclesiastes 3: 1, 8: “To everything there is a season…a time to love and a time to hate.”
As I have studied the Hebrew word sane, I have found various scholars who say “hate” is not an appropriate choice to translate sane. A better one would be “reject” or “turn aside.” I read through the Strong’s concordance listing of scriptures containing sane with that definition in mind and…okay; I can see where that definition might be appropriate. And yet I am not satisfied. Few of the passages accurately represented what I think of when I hear the word “reject” in that the ones “hated” were not ostracized or left utterly alone.
One article I came across said something that struck me and which I have been pondering all this week. The article is posted on the Light of the World blog and says, “The original Hebrew Picture shows us what Hate does, not how it feels.” The author quotes Psalm 139:22 and says, “Our English definition of Hate does make it appear that King David Detests, abhors, and Despises, בוז Buz his enemies.” She then quotes Proverbs 14:21 which says, “But he who despises his neighbor sins; But he who has mercy on the poor, happy is he.” The author points out, “He (King David) would have known that it is Sin to Despise your Neighbor because it missed the Mark of the Commandment to Love your Neighbor: ‘You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall Love your Neighbor as yourself: I am YHVH’ Leviticus 19:18. This means שנא Sane cannot include the emotion of Despising anyone. In context, we see that he parallels Turning Aside, סורSur, With Hate, שנאSane, Psalm 139:19.”
The Light of the World blog compares Exodus 20:12, “Honor your Father and Mother” with Luke 14:26, “If anyone comes to Me and does not Hate his Father and Mother…” The author writes, “Apparent contradictions like this one should alert us to our misunderstanding of the original meaning. With the meaning of Hate being to Turn Aside, it is possible to Honor our parents, while Turning Aside From the lies they have inherited, in order to Obey the Commandments of our Eternal Creator.”
I can see how defining sane as “to turn aside” could work and yet it doesn’t entirely fit especially when it comes to God. His promise to never leave nor forsake stands and His turning aside never meant utter abandonment. As I look at the Hebrew letters comprising sane which are ש Sin נ Nun and א Aleph, I see the picture of a fire rooted and emerging from God. The ש Shin carries the meaning of a process of destruction and consumption until completion. Hebrews 12:29 states “our God is a consuming fire” and I am convinced the love and hate of God are two aspects of the fire that He is.
There is an idea circulating that the love of God is this saccharine thing: that He is some ancient drooling entity confined to a celestial rocking chair where He bestows vacant grins on His children and just loves them. No. He is alive and passionate and because He loves so utterly and completely, He hates. Last week I quoted a bit of Romans 2 from the Message and I like how this is rendered: “God is kind, but he’s not soft. In kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us unto a radical life-change” (MSG). Hebrews 12:5-6 quotes Proverbs 3: 11-12 saying, “My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.” There is a dark side to the love of God, for lack of a better word. Certainly there are experiences that don’t feel all that great but they can be endured because we know He loves us and the consuming fire that He is only destroys those things that would hinder us from growing into His image. The ש Shin is a comfort here in that the process repeats itself over and over. In His love and mercy, He doesn’t burn through our lives all at once. He is, above all things, agape and His lovingkindness endures forever.
As creatures made in the image of God, we are capable of hate and it is right that we are. Hate burns within us when we see a loved one suffering from a disease or when we see pain and injustice. Hatred burns within as a “No! These things shall not be!” That fire within us burns the apathy out of us and we are roused to take action. I think hatred only becomes a bad thing when it causes us to sin and fall short of the glory of God. I think of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians where he quotes Psalm 4:4; “’Be angry and do not sin’: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil” (Ephesians 4:26-27).
It is so important that we realize that God, in his ultimate hatred, cried “No! These things shall not be!” and that this hatred looks like Jesus. “For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:16-17). What did Jesus do? “…once, at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Hebrews 9:26). Jesus Christ is “Himself the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:2). “…For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8) and “through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14).
The cry of “It is finished” heard from the cross echoes through the ages. It was the ultimate victory and it is now made a reality in our lives through the processings we experience. We know these processings are not to utterly destroy us but are necessary so that Jesus Christ present us, The Church, to Himself not having any spot or wrinkle but are presented holy and without blemish (See Ephesians 5:27). We embrace the consuming fire that He is knowing when He has tried us we shall come forth as gold!
Just as He is so are we in this world. We have the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus (See Philippians 2:5) and therefore, because Jesus Christ is alive in us, we love as He love and hates as He hates. We hate with perfect hatred. We go out into the world and we make war. What is crucial to remember is “we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). It is also crucial to remember we do not conduct our warfare after the way of this world. “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).
We seek to know Him as we are known and then, with our confidence in the finished work of Jesus Christ, we take up the full armor of God.
Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982
Guralnik, David B., Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, Second College Edition, William Collins + World Publishing Co., Inc., Cleveland • New York, 1972, 1976
Haralick, Robert M., The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters, Jason Aronson Inc., Northvale, New Jersey, 1995
Peterson, Eugene H., The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, NavPress, The Navigators, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1993, 2002, 2018
Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville Tennessee, 1990
Hello and welcome-or welcome back-to Renaissance Woman where, this week, I continue looking at the Hebrew word sane (saw-nay) often translated by the English word “hate”.
In last week’s post, I shared an article by Chaim Bentorah where he says a nineteenth Century Hebrew master and linguist named Samuel Hirsh applies the English word “rejection” to sane rather than hate.A post on the Light of the World blog (linked below) says a closer translation of sane would be “turn aside”. This post also points out the original Hebrew picture of the word sane shows us what Hate/Rejection/Turning Aside does, not how it feels as that picture is not one of an intense negative emotion. This is a subject I’d like to explore in the upcoming weeks. For the sake of this post, I want to share some thoughts I had as I considered the different ways to translate sane.
I wasn’t sure “rejection” was thoroughly supported by the context of the passages in which sane appeared. For example, Leah was “hated” but she was not “rejected” in the sense that Jacob had nothing to do with her. On the contrary; Leah was obviously the recipient of Jacob’s attentions as she bore him children. So, she was not “rejected” in the way I think of the word which is “to have nothing more to do with” but she did not have Jacob’s heart.
I saw the same picture where scripture states God “hated” Esau. I can see a bit more support for the idea of rejection in the story of Esau but there is a passage worth noting. It is Deuteronomy 2:4-7 where God warns the Israelites to take care as they passed through the lands of the descendants of Esau saying He had given Mount Seir as their possession and not one bit of their land would be given away. The Israelites were also admonished not to meddle with them in any way and to buy any food and drink that might prove necessary. So, God “hated” Esau but did not utterly reject him in the sense that He had nothing more to do with him or his descendants. However, Esau didn’t share in God’s heart the same way Jacob did.
Since “rejection” didn’t sum up the meaning of sane for me, I looked it up on thesaurus.com hoping a list of synonyms might help fill in some of the gaps. I was especially curious to see if “incompatible” was included in the list. It was not but “cast aside” was. This fascinated me and I was reminded of something I’d just read in Andrew Murray’s commentary on the Book of Hebrews. He was speaking on Hebrews 12:1 which says, “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us”. Andrew Murray quotes the latter part of that passage and writes:
“One of the first thoughts connected with a race is the laying aside of everything that can hinder. In the food he eats and the clothing he wears, how resolutely the runner puts aside everything, the most lawful and pleasant, that is not absolutely necessary to his success. Sacrifice, self-denial, giving up, and laying aside is the very first requisite on the course. Alas, it is this that has made the Christian life of our days the very opposite of running a race. The great study is, both in our religious teaching and practical life, to find out how to make the best of both worlds, how to enjoy as much as possible of the wealth and the pleasure and the honor that the world offers. With many Christians, if their conversions ever were an entering through a straight gate, their lives since never were, in any sense, a laying aside of everything that might hinder their spiritual growth. They never heeded the word, “Whosever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). But this is what we are called to as indispensable: “lay(ing) aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily best us.” Yes, laying aside every-sin-however little it seems, however much it be our special weakness; it may not be spared. Sin must be laid aside if we are to run the race. It is a race for holiness and perfection, for the will of God and His favor; how could we dream of running the race without laying aside the sin that so easily bests us?” (Murray, Page 493)
Andrew Murray had spoken on the idea of perfection in an earlier chapter where he was discussing Hebrews 11:39-40: “’That apart from us they should not be made perfect.’ He writes, “The better thing God has provided is perfection. The word ‘perfect’, or forms of it, is used fourteen times in the epistle. The law made nothing perfect. Jesus Himself was, in His obedience and suffering, made perfect in His human nature, in His will and life and character, to us. As the Son, perfected forevermore, He is our High Priest; having perfected us forever in His sacrifice, He now brings us, in the communication of that perfection, into real, inner, living contact with God. And so, He is the Perfecter of our faith, and He makes us His perfect ones, who press on unto Perfection. And our life on earth is meant to be the blessed experience that God perfects us in every good thing to do His will, working in us what is pleasing in His sight. Apart from us, they might not be made perfect; to us, the blessing of some better thing, of being made perfect, has come.” (Murray, Page 489).
This idea, of running the race for holiness and perfection and that that perfection is ours in Jesus Christ, the Perfect One, is one that has stuck with me as I’ve sought to understand the meaning of sane. The Hebrew letters comprising sane are the Shin (ש), the Nun (נ), and the Aleph (א). The picture of the Shin is of teeth representing Sharp, to Eat, Devour, Destroy, Consume, like a fire, and is also representative of a process that repeats. The Nun represents a seed, sperm, sprout, continuation, offspring, life, activity, and emergence. The Aleph is a picture of an ox and represents strength, power, leader, master. It is also the letter that represents God Himself and Unity with God.
Thinking of sane as a devouring, consuming fire rooted in and springing from God, I am reminded of Hebrews 12:29: “our God is a consuming fire.” I am also reminded of a passage in Romans 2 which, from The Message, is, “God is king, but he’s not soft. In kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life-change. You’re not getting by with anything. Every refusal and avoidance of God adds fuel to the fire. The day is coming when it’s going to blaze hot and high, God’s fiery and righteous judgment. Make no mistake: In the end you get what’s coming to you-Real Life for those who work on God’s side, but to those who insist on getting their own way and take the path of least resistance, Fire!” (Verses 4-8, MSG).
I recently conducted a study on the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares where I shared scriptures that spoke of each one of us being tried by the same fire. The results of this testing were good or ill based on whether or not we were united to Christ. I wonder if sane isn’t the same? Again, the Light of the World blog pointed out the original Hebrew picture of sane shows us action rather than feeling. Perhaps the same fire I welcome into every aspect of my life feels like rejection to someone who does not long to, or perhaps does not feel able to, know the heart of God. Perhaps whether we experience the consuming fire of God as sane or ahab (love) is akin to the idea expressed by Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians: “For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death and to the other the aroma of life leading to life” (2 Cor.: 15-16.) Perhaps the fire of God is life to us pressing ever deeper into Him but rejection to those who are not.
It is something I will meditate on in the coming days and I hope this has been food for thought for each of you as well. I will continue looking at sane next week. Until then, let us each one go on unto perfection, that perfection that is Christ in us, our hope of glory.
Amen.
Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982
Hello and welcome to another post on Renaissance Woman!
Psalm 139 is one of my favorite Psalms. It is the first one I ever memorized in its entirety and I often use the verses contained within it as prayers and reminders. However, there is a passage towards the end of the Psalm that does feel like it doesn’t belong. It starts in verse 19 but, for the sake of this post, I want to focus on verses 21 and 22: “Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate You? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.”
There is an interesting story related in the Gospel of Luke Chapter 10. Verse 25 states, “And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, ‘Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’” The complete Jewish study Bible begins this verse with; “An expert in Torah stood up to try and trap him by asking…” Jonathan Mitchell’s New Testament describes the man as “a certain man versed in the Law (a Lawyer and a legal theologian; a Torah expert)”. Jesus replies, “What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?” The lawyer answers, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself’.” Jesus says to him, “You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.” But the lawyer, “wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’”
The story Jesus tells after the lawyer’s question is the one often called “The Good Samaritan.” It is a fascinating story with many layers to it. An important point to realize when reading it the deep and abiding hatred that existed between Jews and Samaritans. For Jesus to use a Samaritan in His story, especially when speaking to an expert in Torah, was one of those times we must pay close attention because Jesus is making a crucial point.
Who is my neighbor? As I carefully listen to the things being spoken today I do not think I stretch things if I rephrase this questions as, “who am I allowed to hate?” The answer to that appears to be found in Psalm 139: we can hate those who hate God, loathe those who rise against Him, count them our enemies. Of course, there is some difficulty in determining just who hates God. There are times when it appears obvious who hates God but it gets trickier when we come across those who claim to be believers in Jesus but don’t quite believe the right things. There are so many lines drawn and labels applied to people so we can distinguish our enemies from our friends. If you belong to my denomination, if you look like me, sound like me, believe like me then you are safe but if you don’t then you are not only against me but against God. The story of The Good Samaritan is a warning to take care because our neighbor is not who we might think. After all we humans judge by the outward appearance but God looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7).
And yet, we do live in a time where the heart seems to have been put on display. The headlines have been full of behaviors where I think we could point a finger and say, “those people there are obviously against God so they are the ones I can hate” but then we come up against John 3:16 which says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” and 1 John 2:2: “And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.” But then, there are passages like Psalm 11:5 “The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates” and Romans 9:13 where Paul quotes Malachi 1:2-3 saying, “as it is written, ‘Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated’.” So; God hates but His commandment to us was “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27-28). Which is it? Was David wrong in his Psalm or could it be we don’t have an understanding of what the Bible means by hate?
As I search for an answer to that, I have to wonder why “hate” was chosen in the first place by our English Translators. My New World Dictionary defines hate as “to have strong dislike or ill will for; loathe; despise, to dislike or wish to avoid; shrink from (to hate arguments)”. There’s a note under the definition that says “hate implies a feeling of great dislike or aversion and, with persons as the object, connotes the bearing of malice.” Can this really describe our God as revealed in Jesus?
The Hebrew word used by David in his Psalm is sane (H8130, pronounced saw-nay) and is spelled Shin Nun Aleph (שנא). The Strong’s concordance defines it as “to hate (personally) enemy, foe, odious” so isn’t all that helpful in trying to understand what sane means. As I continued looking into the sane, I found articles that said “hate” was an incorrect translation of sane and “to love less” would be more accurate. Others have said that the ancient pictograph of sane is a thorn and then a seed denoting something unsettling that would be turned away from. One article says “the Hebrew view of hate was more about being hurt or wounded by something because of love being involved…When we feel pain, we want to withdraw; we are made in His image” (FirmIsrael). Chaim Bentorah has an article devoted to Psalm 139:21 and the word sane and says his studies have suggested “reject” would be better than “hate” to translate the Hebrew.
I don’t disagree with anything I read in the articles linked below (and there are some wonderful points made about how God blessed Esau even though He supposedly “hated” him-worth reading) but I see something more in the picture formed by the Hebrew letters. The Shin (ש) represents the totality of an entire process from beginning to end and means “whole, entire, intact” or “complete”. It also carries the idea of repetition in that the process is completed over and over again. Shin, with its three arms, also represents fire. Nun (נ) means “emergence” but it also means “to sprout, spread, propagate, shine, flourish, blossom”. The Aleph (א) is the letter that represents God but also is the letter that brings all of creation into unity with God. Thus, in the Hebrew word sane, I see the picture of fire rooted in God. His sane is the love of His Father’s heart that burns against anything that would keep His children from relationship with Him.
What does the sane of God look like? It does look like some harsh dealings as we read the Old Testament but each one of those instances describe the broken heart of God and His reluctance to act. (I have touched on this in my studies on evil). The fullness of the sane of God looks like Jesus coming to seek and save that which was lost. It looks like the stories of Luke 15 where, when the precious lost sheep, coin, and son are restored to their rightful place, the call is “rejoice with me!” United to Jesus Christ, One Spirit with Him, His sane burns in us. The apostle Paul is a perfect example of the sane of God manifested in a human life. As the zealous protector of the Temple, Paul hated the Christians in the dictionary definition of the world. After His encounter with the living Jesus on the road to Damascus, Paul had sane against everything that sought to keep anyone from experiencing the fullness of God. He became the one who wrote, “My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19).
There’s a quote that’s recently been shared a great deal and it has bothered me. It’s from one of Billy Graham’s sermons and he says, “The closer you get to Christ, the more sinful you’re going to feel”. The quote is taken out of context and I have not yet had an opportunity to hear it within the entire sermon but, as it stands, I don’t agree with it. What I believe is the more the life of Christ is formed in you, the more you will sane. That is not a bad thing. Our God is a consuming fire and, as we are transformed into the image of Jesus Christ from glory to glory, the more His fire burns in us. We live rooted in Jesus Christ and His life in us shines out of us and lights the entire world. We sane anything that would seek to destroy the precious treasure of His life within us and, at the same time, that life in us is an irritant to the world.
There is so much more to be said on this. I believe understanding the sane of God is the first step toward understanding spiritual warfare and is a subject I will continue to look at in the upcoming weeks.
Until then, let us remember “that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us; we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:19-20).
Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982
The Complete Jewish Study Bible, Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC, Peabody, Massachusetts, 2016
Bentorah, Chaim, Hebrew Word Study: Beyond the Lexicon, Trafford Publishing, USA, 2014
Guralnik, David B., Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, Second College Edition, William Collins + World Publishing Co., Inc., Cleveland • New York, 1972, 1976
Haralick, Robert M., The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters, Jason Aronson Inc., Northvale, New Jersey, 1995
Mitchell, Jonathan, The New Testament, Harper Brown Publishing, 2019
Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville Tennessee, 1990
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