Hatred With Better Manners

Most of us have disqualified ourselves from the sin of hatred because we've never flipped a table or screamed at somebody in a parking lot.

That's not John's definition.

Two chapters after warning us about hating the brethren, John gives us the working definition in 1 John 3:17 — "But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?"

Hatred, in John's vocabulary, is sometimes just a closed hand.

It's seeing the need and deciding it's not your problem. It's having something to give — time, encouragement, a phone call, real help — and choosing not to give it. You didn't curse him. You didn't confront him. You just made yourself unavailable and called it boundaries.

John calls it hatred.

And he's not talking about your lost neighbor down the street. He's talking about the brother sitting three pews over.

That means hatred can wear a Sunday suit. It can carry a King James Bible. It can shake hands at the door and say all the right things and still go home to darkness.

James put it plainly: "If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?" — James 2:15-16

The spiritual-sounding dismissal with nothing behind it. That's not love. That's hatred with better manners.

Somebody in your church family is waiting on you to open your hand. You already know who it is.