The holy God’s rejection of evil is as decisive as the human body’s rejection of poison by vomiting. Vomiting is probably the body’s most violent of all reactions. . . . God cannot tolerate or “digest” sin and hypocrisy. They cause him not distaste merely, but disgust. They are so repulsive to him that he must rid himself of them. He must spit or vomit them out.
God hates sin. Full stop. It’s an abomination to him. It disgusts him. It angers him.
But why?
In evangelism and discipleship, we often move quickly from “we’re sinners” to “the wages of sin is death” to “we need a Savior.” That progression makes sense, but in my experience, even among believers, we don’t always feel the weight of God’s revulsion toward sin or understand why he hates it so much that a penalty of death and hell would fit. Perhaps this is because we live in a world that has reduced God’s benevolence to tolerance, assuming he’ll be overly accommodating toward all our offenses. The biblical image of a majestic God vomiting at sin is far removed from the sentimental deity our culture often imagines.
Naturally, some Christians attempt to make sin’s seriousness clearer by simply repeating, in effect, Sin is bad, bad, bad. But we need to go deeper. Why is sin so bad? Why does God respond with such intolerance?
Need for Clearer Explanation
In The Gospel Way Catechism, Thomas West and I have sought to articulate core Christian teachings in a way that counters today’s cultural assumptions. One key question we address is this: How does God respond to sin? Here's our answer:
God is not a permissive grandfather who winks at sin, but a perfect Father of fiery love. He hates sin because it defies his righteous character, disrupts our fellowship with him, and defaces us—his beloved image-bearers.
We’re pushing back against the idea that “it’s my job to sin; it’s God’s job to forgive me.” In today’s world, sin—if acknowledged at all—is seen as a failure to live up to personal standards, not an offense against a holy God. Many accept the need to resist selfish impulses but only for self-improvement, not because they’ve defied God or failed to love their neighbor.
The Bible tells a different story. God isn't a passive observer, indifferent to our rebellion. He isn't a permissive grandfather who shrugs at sin. Nor does he sweep evil under the rug. Instead, Scripture reveals a God who thunders against sin, whose holy love demands he confront and destroy it.
God’s hatred of sin isn't at odds with his love; it’s an expression of it. If sin separates us from the source of all life, leading to death, how could a loving God remain indifferent? His wrath isn't cold, detached anger but the white-hot response of a holy, loving Creator who sees sin corrupting and destroying his people. If God stood passively by as sin disfigured those made in his image, then we’d have reason to question his love.
Spider Infestation
To make this reality more visceral, we use an illustration in the children’s version of our catechism. Imagine waking up in a room full of spiders. They’re crawling on the walls, scurrying across the floor. You look down and see bites on your legs—your skin burning, infection setting in. You cry out for help. Now, what if your dad walked in, saw the infestation, and simply shrugged? You’d be perplexed. You want someone to crush the spiders, not ignore them.
Sin is like that infestation—poisoning our hearts, distorting our desires, and destroying our relationships. It doesn’t just harm us; it defies God’s holiness and love. Because God loves—he loves his glory and whatever will bring about our ultimate good—he must hate sin because not only is it an affront against his goodness, but it stands in the way of all he wants for us. He sees how sin wounds, deceives, and leads to death.
C. S. Lewis on Why God Hates Sin
C. S. Lewis arrived at a similar conclusion in a letter he wrote to Arthur Greevesshortly after his own conversion. He realized God’s hatred of sin isn’t arbitrary. God hates sin because it keeps us from him. Evil is a barrier to what we ultimately long for—God himself. In Augustinian terms, all sin is misdirected love, a grasping for idols out of the deeper desire for God.
“This is why we must be prepared to find God implacably and immovably forbidding what may seem to us very small and trivial things,” Lewis wrote. “When we are tempted, we must remember that just because God wants for us what we really want and knows the only way to get it, therefore he must, in a sense, be quite ruthless towards sin.”
Lewis saw that the image of a passive grandfather can’t be squared with the God of the Bible. Sin isn't only a personal failure; it’s an assault on both God’s holiness and our humanness.
God is not like a human authority who can be begged off or caught in an indulgent mood. The more he loves you the more determined he must be to pull you back from your way which leads nowhere into his way which leads you where you want to go—to God.
Good News of God’s Hatred of Sin
This is why we must do better at explaining why God hates sin. It’s not enough to say sin is bad. We must show how sin is a parasite, feeding on the good and beautiful things God has made, warping our affections, deceiving our hearts, and leading to destruction. Sin is what keeps us from the God we were made for. Sins are like spiders that must be stomped.
God’s hatred of sin reveals the severity of his love. If he were indifferent, we’d be lost forever. The fact that he thunders against sin, that he refuses to tolerate it, that he has made a way to defeat it through the cross of Christ—all this is good news.
The softened, sentimental vision of God so common today doesn’t match the God of the Bible. Scripture presents a blazing sun of holiness and mercy, whose wrath against sin erupts from the volcano of his everlasting love. Because he loves, he will not tolerate what destroys. Because he loves, he has acted in Christ to rescue us from sin. Because he loves, he will one day purge this world of evil.
That’s why, in the end, it’s good news that God hates sin.
(This blog appeared first on April 1, 2025. You can view the original here.)
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