"Your thone, O God, is forever and ever;A scepter of righteousness is thescepter of your kingdom.You have loved righteousnessand hated lawlessness;Therefore God, Your God, has anointed YouWith the oil of gladness morethan Your companions" - Hebrews 1: 8-9, quoting Psalms 45: 6-7
Loved Righteousness and Hated Lawlessness. Hate is not a word used in the Christian community often, especially not in association with God. But righteousness and lawlessness are mutually exclusive, completely. In order to truly love some things, other things must be hated. But in this question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, we can definitively say it is the love that superseded the hate. We do not hate lawlessness for the sheer pleasure of it, but because it stands to destroy that which we first loved, righteousness. A general disdain however was not strong enough. In order to love righteousness, we must hate lawlessness.
What is lawlessness? I can see several different cases. First Lawlessness could refer to breaking any myriad of laws imposed by the civil authority appointed over us. (See Romans 13 to begin the intricate discussion of to what extent we need to obey the civil magistrate). Lawlessness could reach to a more foundational level and refer to the breaking of God's law. What I think is the most fitting explanation is that lawlessness refers to not a mere act but a state of being, the state of lawlessness - The state of an individual living a life privy to no authority, with no love for discipline, who sees his own truth as the only truth, who thinks that one plus one, in fact, equals three. A person who has chosen to, in life, turn from even the most fundamental laws and refuses to believe that an XX genotype creates a woman and an XY genotype a man. For are not even the most basic laws that govern this world the creation of God? Did the apple not fall on Newton's nose because God made it so?
The love of righteousness necessitates the hatred of the kind of thing that abdicates God's law.
amen, my friend. the doctrine of the antithesis (Gen 3:15) is alive and well. love comes first, but hate must follow. to love something is to hate whatever would come against it. but like you point out, loves comes first. it is the stronger of the two impulses and the source while the hate is derivative.
ReplyDeleteYou always manage to clarify issues for me. Thanks!!
ReplyDelete