It is likely that you’ve heard the old Christian adage that we should “love the sinner and hate the sin”. It is also likely, if you’ve spent much time in Calvinistic circles, that you’ve heard this statement criticised.[1] The main concern seems to be that the sinner and the sin cannot be so absolutely distinguished. After all, it is the sinner who is guilty of the sin and will justly bear the wrath of God for having committed the sin: in this sense (regarding God’s intent to carry out his justice), God certainly hates the sinner, and not just the sin in isolation (Psalm 5:5). There is also a danger in our very antinomian age that loving the sinner and hating the sin will be understood to mean that God (and Christians imitating him) will simply overlook sin in the church or the wider world, in the name of love.

I don’t fundamentally disagree with any of these concerns. Loving the sinner and hating the sin can be easily misunderstood and misapplied. However, I do want to insist that there is a very important sense in which we can affirm that we should love the sinner and hate the sin, and indeed that we must do so in order to be Biblically faithful: we just have to be thinking in the right categories. To explain this, I want to draw on insights from both John Calvin and Augustine of Hippo, two pivotal figures in the history of Christian thought. These two men, separated in time by over 1000 years, approach the question by different, yet complementary paths that reach the same conclusion. In sharing their insights, I hope we can clarify our own thinking on this question. My concern is that contemporary pop-Calvinism (the sort spread by YouTube clips and popular internet personalities) teaches an overly-simplistic understanding of God’s hatred for sinners, while neglecting ways that we can rightly say that God loves sinners. If we believe that God absolutely and only hates our sinful neighbours, we might struggle to see the sense in his command to us to love them (Matthew 22:39). Of course, that God has commanded something should be sufficient for us. We do not need to understand to obey. Nevertheless, it would be reasonable to ask: should we really love what God hates? In hearing from Calvin and Augustine, I hope we can find the freedom to love our sinful neighbours as the Lord commands.

Insights from Augustine

There are a few key points we need to grasp in order to understand Augustine’s contribution on this topic. These concern creation, the nature of evil, and what it means to love and hate.

Augustine, reflecting on the Genesis account, understands that all substances created by God are good. Anything that exists, or that has substance, has that substance from God, and what God creates is good. He explains this in Confessions (Book VII, Chapter XII):

Thou madest all things good, nor is there any substance at all which Thou madest not; and for that Thou madest not all things equal, therefore are all things; because each is good, and altogether very good, because our God made all things very good.

Evil, then, is not a substance. Evil is only deprivation or lack of good.

That evil then, which I sought whence it is, is not any substance: for were it a substance, it should be good. For either it should be an incorruptible substance, and so a chief good; or a corruptible substance, which, unless it were good, could not be corrupted.

Evil exists only in the same sense that a hole in the ground exists. A hole is not a substance in itself: it is only an absence of ground.

To Augustine, man’s nature is a good, but corruptible substance. In falling into sin, man has lost much of the goodness with which he was created – and thus has suffered corruption. But insofar as he continues to exist, there necessarily continues a remnant of his created good. If it were not so, he would not exist at all.

So, what would it mean to love such a creature, created good but now corrupted? Love and hatred are about what attracts or repels the will, but it is necessary that our wills are attracted and repelled by the right things. Augustine says this in The City of God (Book XIV, Chapter 7):

Wherefore the man who lives according to God, and not according to man, ought to be a lover of good, and therefore a hater of evil.

It is in this context that he tells us how we can love the sinner while hating the sin:

And since no one is evil by nature, but whoever is evil is evil by vice, he who lives according to God ought to cherish towards evil men a perfect hatred, so that he shall neither hate the man because of his vice, nor love the vice because of the man, but hate the vice and love the man. For the vice being cursed, all that ought to be loved, and nothing that ought to be hated, will remain.

We are to love what is good in man and hate what is evil. What man is, with respect to his nature or substance, is good and ought to be loved. But since he is corrupted by vice, this corruption is something we should hate.

Insights from Calvin

What Augustine articulates in philosophical terms, Calvin expresses in more explicitly Biblical categories. Central for Calvin is the image of God.

Nailing down precisely what Scripture means by the image of God in man is a controversial topic in theology. For Calvin, the image of God is a kind of creaturely resemblance of the Creator: specifically, the attributes of man (primarily spiritual attributes) that surpass the other animals. He says in the Institutes of the Christian Religion (Book I, Chapter 15, Section 3):

…by this term is denoted the integrity with which Adam was endued when his intellect was clear, his affections subordinated to reason, all his senses duly regulated, and when he truly ascribed all his excellence to the admirable gifts of his Maker.

Thus, Calvin understands the image of God in man to have been badly corrupted by the fall, and only able to be restored (in its full integrity) by grace. He says this:

It cannot be doubted that when Adam lost his first estate he became alienated from God. Wherefore, although we grant that the image of God was not utterly effaced and destroyed in him, it was, however, so corrupted, that any thing which remains is fearful deformity; and, therefore, our deliverance begins with that renovation which we obtain from Christ, who is, therefore, called the second, because he restores us to true and substantial integrity.(Institutes, Book I, Chapter 15, Section 4)

The key point here for our discussion is that Calvin recognises that the image of God was not wholly destroyed by the fall. No part of fallen man’s nature retains the whole goodness with which it was created (everything that remains being fearfully deformed), but something does remain. This, then, becomes the rationale for how we are to love sinners. He says:

The Lord enjoins us to do good to all without exception, though the greater part, if estimated by their own merit, are most unworthy of it. But Scripture subjoins a most excellent reason, when it tells us that we are not to look to what men in themselves deserve, but to attend to the image of God, which exists in all, and to which we owe all honour and love. (Institutes, Book 3, Chapter 7, Section 6)

If we love God as we ought, we will love the image of God in sinners.

In this way only we attain to what is not to say difficult, but altogether against nature, to love those that hate us, render good for evil, and blessing for cursing, remembering that we are not to reflect on the wickedness of men, but look to the image of God in them, an image which, covering and obliterating their faults, should by its beauty and dignity allure us to love and embrace them. (Institutes, Book 3, Chapter 7, Section 6)

Thus, Calvin distinguishes the wickedness of men (which ought to be hated) from the image of God in them (which ought to be loved). Of course, this is not in any way to deny the doctrine of total depravity. Man is dead in sin and wholly inclined to evil. Sinners cannot please God, who rightfully demands sinless perfection. It is important to clarify that recognising a remnant of created good in man is not to say there is any meritorious good in man. That is, there is nothing in sinful man that deserves or earns God’s favour. That man was not utterly annihilated after the fall – and thus retains any vestige of the image of God at all – is only a result of grace. Thus, we can strongly affirm that God’s general love for mankind is a gracious love, for it is only by his grace that something good (that can be loved) remains in man at all.

Conclusions

I sometimes fear that overly-simplistic pop-Calvinism can be dangerous for the Christian life. One way that this can manifest is a coldness toward our unbelieving neighbours. If we hear of nothing but God’s hatred for sinners, how can we – with full Biblical freedom – truly love our neighbours as commanded? We will no doubt seek to do so out of duty, but if struggle to understand why we should do so, we might be hindered by a sense of cognitive dissonance. The practical import of these insights from Calvin and Augustine is that they have given us a rationale for how and why we should love our neighbours.

If man were entirely and utterly destitute of any good whatsoever, to love the sinner would be to love evil (which would be sin!). But God would have us love our fellow man, and since God would not have us love evil, it follows that there is some created good in man that we can rightfully love and indeed ought to love. If we can distinguish the good in man from the corruption in man (that is, if we can love the sinner while hating the sin), we can avoid two common errors. First, we will avoid the error of utterly hating the sinner because of our hatred for the sin. And secondly, we can avoid minimising the seriousness of the sin (or the justice of sin’s punishment) because of our love for the sinner.

Calvin and Augustine have helped us to see how we can do this in a Biblically balanced way. They both recognise that a pale reflection of God’s goodness, inherit to man’s nature from creation, remains (by common grace) in even the most degraded and filthy sinner. This is true, though every aspect of man’s nature has been tainted and falls short of the glorious end for which it was created. Evil, as Augustine has taught us, has no substantial existence. It is only a parasite, existing only by infecting what is good by nature. Indeed, by recognising this, we can hate sin more perfectly, because we will have a sense of the profound tragedy of something good (the very image of God!) that has fallen into such ruin. And if we are to honour the Lord who gives and sustains that goodness by his grace, we as Christians should be ready and eager to recognise that goodness wherever it is found, and thus to show love to all, freely and openly, even as our Father does (Matthew 5:43-48).

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[1] See this clip, for example, from Ligonier: https://youtu.be/eHKzTVQwm_E?si=zkhLRvzcOps1Jmd6, or this one with from Sproul and MacArthur: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp7S3e_-jP0