It is the one thing in the universe to which He is opposed. Sin is
essentially antagonism to God. People shrink from the thought of God's
hatred of sin, because of--
An underestimate of its gravity. Contrast the human views of its
enormity, as shown by men's playing with it, calling it by half-jocose
names and the like, with God's thought of its heinousness.
A false dread of seeming to attribute human emotions to God. But there
is in God what corresponds to our human feelings, something analogous
to the attitude of a pure human mind recoiling from evil.
The divine love must necessarily be pure, and the mightier its energy
of forth-going, the mightier its energy of recoil. God's 'hate' is Love
inverted and reverted on itself. A divine love which had in it no
necessity of hating evil would be profoundly immoral, and would be
called devilish more fitly than divine.