I'll admit, I've used the saying "Love the sinner; hate the sin," before. However, it never dawned on me that my attempt to show love to broken people might actually belittle and shame them (after all, I said to love the sinner!). I cannot claim that I have come to this conclusion on my own. In fact, I had never considered the weight of these six words until I read a blog post (http://bethwoolsey.com/2013/10/3-reasons-i-quit-loving-the-sinner-and-hating-the-sin/) last night that was shared to Facebook.
When we say, "Love the sinner. Hate the sin," we imply that we regard someone else as a sinner. While it is true that everyone, in fact, is a sinner (Romans 3:23b — "...we all fall short of the glory of God."), we as fellow sinners have no right to call others such. We are not to sit in God's chair and judge in His place. Likewise, we should not point out others' sin and hate it, but should hate our own sin. Handle the plank in your eye before you point out the speck in someone else's eye (Matthew 7:4, Luke 6:41-42).
We ought to simply love people — our neighbors (Luke 10:29-37) — and show them grace, for, "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us," (Romans 5:8b). We are all sinners, and we have no right to call other people sinners (as if we are exempting ourselves from this title); nor do we have any right to hate the sin of others rather than hate our own sin.
Instead of loving the sinner and hating the sin, we should simply love.
"Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity." Colossians 3:12-14
