You cannot love God if you do not love others

I John 4:20 (TEV)

If we say we love God, but hate others, we are liars. For we cannot love God, whom we have not seen, if we do not love others, whom we have seen.

Pretty strong language here.  How would you like to hear the Lord call you a liar?  You don’t like anyone calling you a liar, much less your Creator.  But, His Word here clearly states that you are a liar if you have hate for anyone else while claiming to love God.  What does “hate” mean? 

Earlier in this letter, John wrote “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer and no murderer has eternal life in him” (I John 3:15).  So the word “hate”, according to I John, means to murder.  Jesus made it clear in Matthew 5:21-24 that even to call someone a bad name is the same as murdering that someone.  So these verses clearly reveal God’s attitude when a person hates another person. 

Think about this……..if God was willing in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for all humankind, He was not differentiating amongst people, both nice people and not-so-nice people.  He was showing His love to all people as He declared in John 3:16.  So if you say that you believe in God and in His Son, you absolutely cannot hate anyone.  If you do, then you cannot love.  It is impossible to love and hate at the same time.  As a Christian who has taken advantage of God’s love for you and has the love of God in your heart, you are expected to love others and cannot hate anyone. 

This does not mean that you need to like what every one says or does, but you are to love others, especially another brother or sister in Christ, because you are a disciple of Christ and Christ loves them.     

There’s this story of a Christian couple whose son died in the Vietnam War by falling on a grenade and saving another soldier’s life.  Some kind of reunion was planned where this couple was able to meet the soldier.  He showed up drunk, was very profane and showed little gratitude for this couple’s son.  As the drunken man was escorted out of the room, the couple looked at one another and one of them said, “How could our son have died to save a “thing” like that?”  Yet isn’t this exactly what God did through His Son for all people, some (perhaps many or all) of whom might be called “things”?  Such is the love of God for all people.  It is this kind of love that His believers must follow and exemplify too.   

Is there someone in your life that you would admit that you hate, but in light of what you have just read, can you ask the Lord to help you overcome your hatred and begin to love that person because of the love of God in you?