God's Hatred of the Reprobate

Augustine (354-430): "He who said, ‘I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,’ loved Jacob of His undeserved grace, and hated Esau of His deserved judgment" (Enchiridion, xcviii).

Martin Luther (1483-1546): "the love and hate of God towards men is immutable and eternal, existing, not merely before there was any merit or work of ‘free-will,’ but before the world was made; [so] all things take place in us of necessity, according as He has from eternity loved or not loved ... faith and unbelief come to us by no work of our own, but through the love and hatred of God" (The Bondage of the Will, pp. 226, 228-229).

John Knox (c.1514-1572): "[God] will destroy all the speak lies. He hateth all that work iniquity; neither will he show himself merciful to such as maliciously offend. But all the sinners of the earth shall drink the dregs of that cup which the Eternal holdeth in his hands. For he will destroy all those that traitorously decline from him. They shall cry but he will not hear" (An Answer to a Great Number of Blasphemous Cavillations Written by an Anabaptist and Adversary to God's Eternal Predestination [London: Thomas Charde, 1591], pp. 403-404).

Jerome Zanchius (1516-1590): "When hatred is ascribed to God, it implies (1) a negation of benevolence, or a resolution not to have mercy on such and such men, nor to endue them with any of those graces which stand connected with eternal life. So, ‘Esau have I hated’ (Rom. 9), i.e., ‘I did, from all eternity, determine within Myself not to have mercy on him.’ The sole cause of which awful negation is not merely the unworthiness of the persons hated, but the sovereignty and freedom of the Divine will. (2) It denotes displeasure and dislike, for sinners who are not interested in Christ cannot but be infinitely displeasing to and loathsome in the sight of eternal purity. (3) It signifies a positive will to punish and destroy the reprobate for their sins, of which will, the infliction of misery upon them hereafter, is but the necessary effect and actual execution" (Absolute Predestination, p. 44).

William Perkins (1558-1602): "This hatred of God is whereby he detesteth and abhorreth the reprobate when he is fallen into sin for the same sin. And this hatred which God has to man comes by the fall of Adam and is neither an antecedent nor a cause of God's decree, but only a consequent and followeth the decree" (A Golden Chain, chapter 53). 

John Robinson (c.1576-1625), the minister of many of the Congregationalist settlers who journeyed to Plymouth Colony, New England: "Lastly, seeing it cannot be denied, but that Jacob as a faithful and godly man was in time actually beloved in God, and Esau, as godless and profane, actually hated; it must needs follow, that God before the world was, purposed in himself accordingly, to love the one and hate the other: seeing whatsoever God in time doth, by way of emanation or application to, and upon the creature, that he purposed to do, as he doth it, from eternity [Rom. 9:13] ... [In Romans 9:18], 'whom he wills he hardens,' [God] speaks of that will, according to which he himself works in ... hatred."

George Gillespie (1613-1649), Scottish Presbyterian Commissioner to the Westminster Assembly: “I cannot understand how there can be such a universal love of God to mankind as is maintained [by some]. Those that will say it must needs deny the absolute reprobation; then a love to those whom God hath absolutely reprobated both from salvation and the means of salvation” (cited in David Blunt, “Debate on Redemption at the Westminster Assembly,” British Reformed Journal [January-March, 1996], no. 13, p. 8).

John Owen (1616-1683): "We deny that all mankind are the object of that love of God which moved him to send his Son to die; God having 'made some for the day of evil' (Prov. 16:4); 'hated them before they were born' (Rom. 9:11, 13); 'before of old ordained them to condemnation' (Jude 4); being 'fitted to destruction' (Rom. 9:22); 'made to be taken and destroyed' (II Pet. 2:12); 'appointed to wrath' (I Thess. 5:9); to 'go to their own place' (Acts 1:25)" (Works, vol. 10, p. 227). "... reprobation ... [is] the issue of hatred, or a purpose of rejection (Rom. 9:11-13)" (Works, vol. 10, p. 149).

Francis Turretin (1623-1687): "For as he who loves a person or thing wishes well and, if he can, does well to it, so true hatred and abhorrence cannot exist without drawing after them the removal and destruction of the contrary" (Elenctic Theology, vol. 2, pp. 237-238).

Matthew Poole (1624-1679): "But as for the wicked, let them not rejoice in [David's] trials, for far worse things are appointed for them; God hates and will severely punish them ... His soul hateth; [God] hateth [him that loveth violence] with or from his soul, i.e. inwardly and ardently ... For the righteous Lord loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright; This is given as the reason why God hateth and punisheth wicked men so dreadfully" (Commentary on Ps. 11:5, 7). 

Formula Consensus Helvetica (1675): "the Scriptures do not extend unto all and each God's purpose of showing mercy to man, but restrict it to the elect alone, the reprobate being excluded even by name, as Esau, whom God hated with an eternal hatred (Rom 9:10-13)" (article 6).

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758): "But the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit are what God sometimes bestows on those whom he does not love, but hates ..." (Charity and Its Fruits, p. 38).

Robert Haldane (1764-1842): "Nothing can more clearly manifest the strong opposition of the human mind to the doctrine of the Divine sovereignty, than the violence which human ingenuity has employed to wrest the expression, ‘Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.’ By many this has been explained, ‘Esau have I loved less.’ But Esau was not the object of any degree of the Divine love ... If God’s love to Jacob was real literal love, God’s hatred to Esau must be real literal hatred. It might as well be said that the phrase, ‘Jacob have I loved,’ does not signify that God really loved Jacob, but that to love here signifies only to hate less, and that all that is meant by the expression, is that God hated Jacob less than he hated Esau. If every man’s own mind is a sufficient security against concluding the meaning to be, ‘Jacob have I hated less,’ his judgment ought to be a security against the equally unwarrantable meaning, ‘Esau have I loved less’ ... hardening [is] a proof of hatred" (Romans, pp. 456, 457).

John Kennedy of Dingwall (1813-1847): "Nor is it by concluding that because God is love, therefore He loveth all, that you can have before you the view of His character presented in the text. Beware of being content with a hope that springs from believing in a love of God apart from His Christ, and outside of the shelter of the cross. It may relieve you of a superficial fear. It may excite a feeling of joy and gratitude in your heart. It may beget in you what you may regard as love to God. This love, too, may be the mainspring of very active movements in the bustle of external service; but it leaves you, after all, away from God, ignoring His majesty and holiness, dispensing with His Christ, and enjoying a peace that has been secured by a cheating, instead of a purging, of your conscience. The time was when men openly preached an uncovenanted mercy as the resort of sinners, and laid the smoothness of that doctrine on the sores of the anxious. 'Universal love,' in these days in which evangelism is in fashion, is but another form in which the same 'deceit' is presented to the awakened. This is something from which an unrenewed man can take comfort. It is a pillow on which an alien can lay his head, and be at peace far off from God. It keeps out of view the necessity of vital union to Christ, and of turning unto God; and the hope which it inspires can be attained without felt dependence on the sovereign grace, and without submitting to the renewing work of God the Holy Ghost. 'God is love;' but when you hear this you are not told what must imply the declaration that He loves all, and that, therefore, He loves you. This tells us what He is, as revealed to us in the cross, and what all who come to Him through Christ will find Him to be. It is on this that faith has to operate. You have no right to regard that love, which is commended in the death of His Son, as embracing you if you have not yet believed. It is only with the character, not at all with the purpose, of God that you have in the first instance to do. What right have you to say that He loves all? Have you seen into the heart of God that you should say He loves you, until you have reached, as a sinner, through faith, the bosom of His love in Christ? 'But may I not think of God loving sinners without ascribing to Him any purpose to save?' God loving a sinner without a purpose to save him! The thing is inconceivable. I would reproach a fellow-sinner if I so conceived of his love. Love to one utterly ruined, and that love commanding resources that are sufficient for salvation, and yet no purpose to use them! Let not men so blaspheme the love of God. 'But may I not conceive of God as loving men to the effect of providing salvation, and to the effect of purchasing redemption for them, without this being followed out to the result of His purpose taking actual effect in their salvation?' No, verily. For the love of God is one, as the love of the Three in One. The one love of the One God is the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. If that love generated in the person of the Father a purpose to provide, and in the person of the Son a purpose to redeem, it must have generated in the person of the Holy Ghost a purpose to apply. You cannot assign one set of objects to it, as the love of the Father, and a different set of objects to it, as 'the love of the Spirit.' And there can be no unaccomplished purpose of Jehovah. 'My counsel shall stand,' saith the Lord, 'and I will do all my pleasure.' 'The world,' which the Father loved and the Son redeemed, shall by the Spirit be convinced 'of sin, righteousness, and judgment,' and thus the Father’s pleasure shall prosper, and the Son’s 'travail' be rewarded, through the efficient grace of God the Holy Ghost" ("The Pleasure and Displeasure of God;" Eze. 33:11).

A. W. Pink (1886-1952): "‘Thou hatest all workers of iniquity’—not merely the works of iniquity. Here, then, is a flat repudiation of present teaching that, God hates sin but loves the sinner; Scripture says, ‘Thou hatest all workers of iniquity’ (Ps. 5:5)! ‘God is angry with the wicked every day.’ ‘He that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God’—not ‘shall abide,’ but even now—‘abideth on him’ (Ps. 5:5; 8:11; John 3:36). Can God ‘love’ the one on whom His ‘wrath’ abides? Again; is it not evident that the words ‘The love of God which is in Christ Jesus’ (Rom. 8:39) mark a limitation, both in the sphere and objects of His love? Again; is it not plain from the words ‘Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated’ (Rom. 9:13) that God does not love everybody? ... Is it conceivable that God will love the damned in the Lake of Fire? Yet, if He loves them now He will do so then, seeing that His love knows no change—He is ‘without variableness or shadow of turning!’" (The Sovereignty of God, p. 248).

John Murray (1898-1975): "[Divine hatred can] scarcely be reduced to that of not loving or loving less ... the evidence would require, to say the least, the thought of disfavour, disapprobation, displeasure. There is also a vehement quality that may not be discounted ... We are compelled, therefore, to find in this word a declaration of the sovereign counsel of God as it is concerned with the ultimate destinies of men" (Romans, vol. 2, pp. 22, 24).

Homer C. Hoeksema (1923-1989): "All history, in which vessels unto honor or unto dishonor are formed, is the revelation and realization of the counsel of God according to which He loved Jacob and all His elect people, but hated Esau and all the reprobate" (cf. "A Scriptural Presentation of God’s Hatred").

James Montgomery Boice (1938-2000): "although hatred in God is of a different character than hatred in sinful human beings—his is a holy hatred—hate in God nevertheless does imply disapproval ... [Esau] was the object of [God’s] displeasure ... Since the selection involved in the words love and hate was made before either of the children was born, the words must involve a double predestination in which, on the one hand, Jacob was destined to salvation and, on the other hand, Esau was destined to be passed over and thus to perish" (Romans, vol. 3, p. 1062).

Cornelius Hanko (1907-2005): "God loves His people in Christ, but He hates all the workers of iniquity (Ps. 5:5). Since God loves holiness, that very love turns in hatred against unholiness and sin. Since He is righteous, He burns with righteous indignation against all wickedness. Since He loves Himself as the sole Good, He banishes from His presence all that is in conflict with His Holy Name. God is a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him. No one has ever dared to deny that God hates the devil. And yet also the devil is one of God's creatures, who was created as a holy angel. If God hates the devil and his host, does He not hate those who are branded in Scripture as the very seed of the serpent, a generation of vipers? Nor can we distinguish between the deed and the person, as if God hates the sin but loves the sinner. For the deed can never be separated from the depravity of the one who commits the sin, nor can the guilt be reckoned to anyone but the guilty party. Therefore God does not banish sin to hell, but the sinner. The Word of God never hesitates, therefore, to declare that God's very soul hates the wicked and him that loveth violence (Ps. 11:5). "Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated" (Rom. 9:13). See also verses 17 and 18" ("Particular Love, Particular Atonement, and Missions," Standard Bearer, vol. 42, issue 4).

John MacArthur, Jr.: "In a very real sense, God hated Esau himself. It was not a petty, spiteful, childish kind of hatred, but something far more dreadful. It was divine antipathy—a holy loathing directed at Esau personally. God abominated him as well as what he stood for" (The Love of God, pp. 86-87).

D. A. Carson: "Fourteen times in the first fifty psalms alone, we are told that God hates the sinner, his wrath is on the liar, and so forth" (The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, p. 79).

Louis F. DeBoer: "The Scriptural position is that God hates sinners and intends to put them in hell where the smoke of their torment will ascend for all eternity. The only sinners that a Holy God can love are his elect in Jesus Christ who are clothed with his righteousness and cleansed by his blood" (Hymns, Heretics and History, p. 119).

Donald S. Fortner:  "The Christ of modern, freewill, works religion loves everyone in the universe and wants to save them. We are told that Christ loves all men alike, desires the salvation of all men alike, and is gracious to all men alike. That makes the love, will, and grace of Christ helpless and useless. But that language cannot be applied to the Christ of the Bible. The true Christ, the Christ of the Bible, the saving Christ loves his people, wills and prays for the salvation of his people, and is gracious to his people, the people unconditionally chosen unto salvation from eternity, whom he came to save (Ps. 5:5; 7:11; 11:5; Matt. 1:21; 11:27; John 10:16; 17:9-10; Acts 13:48; Rom. 9:21-24; Eph. 1:3-6)."