“The Lord hates six things; in fact, seven are detestable to him: arrogant eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that plots wicked schemes, feet eager to run to evil, a lying witness who gives false testimony, and one who stirs up trouble among brothers.” (Proverbs‬ ‭6‬:‭16‬-‭19‬ ‭CSB‬‬ – Read the chapter)

I’ve been reading back through a book lately called, Gentle and Lowly, that makes the case for the gentleness and passion God has for people, and especially His people. Drawing on both New Testament and Old Testament sources alike, it’s a powerful exploration of the deep and passionate love of God—a love far deeper and more passionate than we can really imagine. Yet as great as God’s love for us is, as much as He is love, there are some things He hates. Solomon gives us a list of some of them here. Let’s take a look.

This six-plus-one formula appears in various other places in the Scriptures. The point was to create what was intended to be a comprehensive list. The list was almost complete with six items, and this last one put it over the edge. In this particular case, we are treated to seven things God hates.

The idea of God hating anything is an uncomfortable one for us. After all, God is love. Hate shouldn’t really be associated with Him at all, right? Well, yes, and no. It is absolutely and unavoidably true that God is love. Love is the very essence of His being. The trouble with this fact (if you could call it that), is that we have such a twisted understanding of what love is today that we struggle to properly grasp what is meant by this most foundational characteristic of our God.

Love, biblically defined, is an intentional decision to see somebody else become more fully who God designed them to be. Yes, a certain amount of emotional affection is often going to be a part of that process, but it doesn’t have to be. Did you see anything about emotion or affection in that definition? That was on purpose. To describe love as a verb is badly cliched, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Love is a choice. It is a choice to commit yourself to seeing someone else become the best version of themselves.

To a certain extent, although you will naturally grow in affection for someone when you make such a commitment, emotion can’t play but so big a part in that. This is because being committed to seeing someone become the absolute best version of themselves will occasionally mean doing some things that will hurt them and for which they will likely come back at you with very negative emotions. If your own emotions play too big of a role in your love for them, this strongly negative emotional reaction from them could leave you thinking that you don’t love them anymore, or that you can’t. Of course you can. You signed up for seeing them become the best version of themselves, not to have them feel about you a certain way, let alone you feel about them a certain way.

When we say that God is love, what that means is not that He feels about us in a certain way (although He doesn’t harbor the kind of emotional hatred for us we often erroneously imagine as love’s opposite). Rather, it means that He is wholly committed to our good. The Hebrew word often translated as “love” in English translations, chesed, can also be translated as “covenantal faithfulness.” God is committed to seeing us become the best possible version of ourselves no matter what. He loves us. To put that another way, He has chosen us.

This is the biblical picture of love. God has chosen us in His great mercy and compassion, and because of His great faithfulness, He is going to stick with that choice no matter how undeserving of it we might be. Just about every single time you come across the word “love” in the Bible, this is the idea that should come to your mind, not some kind of an emotional response.

Well, with this understanding in place, we can better grasp this idea of God’s hating something. If God’s love is wrapped up in His choosing to be committed to someone or something, His hatred is wrapped up in His rejection of that thing or that person. When we see God’s hatred mentioned here, we should not first imagine an emotion response, but a whole-hearted rejection of these things. God has set Himself resolutely against these things in all of their forms and fashions.

So then, what are these things God is so wholly committed to opposing? The list Solomon gives us here is comprised of seven things that are gross violations of His character. These things are utterly detestable to Him. The first is “arrogant eyes.” This is the person who constantly looks down on the people around her from her perceived perch of superiority. She is smarter, wiser, better-looking, harder-working, kinder, a better driver, a better friend, a better everything than the people around her. She doesn’t need anyone or anything else. She is good enough just as she is. Such a view is utterly at odds with reality. The truth is that she is a dirty, rotten sinner just like everyone else, and but for the grace of God, she wouldn’t have anything she presumes herself to have. She wouldn’t be any of the things she presumes herself to be. God created the world good and for our good. People who create their own fantasy facsimile version of reality for themselves to live in are rejecting the world as He made it, and He hates that.

In the same vein, God hates “a lying tongue.” People who create these fantasy facsimiles and then try to force others to live in them are inviting people out of God’s world that actually exists and into a world that doesn’t and which will ultimately lead to their missing out on the goodness God desires to pour out for them to enjoy. God hates that.

He also hates “hands that shed innocent blood.” God is fully committed to the good of all of His creation, and especially all of His image bearers. But He has a special passion for those who are the weakest and most vulnerable through no fault of their own. Those who would seek to do harm to these innocents God rejects with a particularly fiery passion. The same is true for “a heart that plots wicked schemes.” Sometimes people fall into wickedness unintentionally. One decision leads to another which leads to another and they find themselves causing harm to the people around them. Sometimes, though, the harm is intentional. The evil was planned out ahead of time. Just like our justice system distinguishes unintentionally killing (manslaughter) from premeditated killing (murder), God vigorously rejects the one who plots the harm of his neighbors.

God hates “feet eager to run to evil.” All of us stumble and fall on occasion. We are broken people who occasionally do broken things from out of that brokenness. We didn’t plan it, but we did it when the moment arrived. Our desire is for the good and the right, but the warring passions within us sometimes draw us to the wrong side. God doesn’t like that, but there is grace for that. For those who are in Christ, Jesus died to cover that. But when someone doesn’t just stumble into evil (which is definitionally anything that diverges from God’s character and command), but marches toward it with intentionality, things have been elevated to another level. When someone is intentionally committed to violating God’s character and expanding the chaos of sin in God’s world, God hates that.

The second thing God hates was a lying tongue, so why does Solomon come back to dishonesty again in the sixth? Because it’s that big of a deal. Number six on the list here is “a lying witness who gives false testimony.” The problem here isn’t primarily the dishonesty, although that’s obviously not a good thing. The problem here is primarily one of injustice. The lying witness who gives a false testimony is seeking to see justice not merely avoided for the guilty, but wrongly applied to the innocent. This is not only a direct violation of God’s character and what He wants to see for His world, it is an inversion of it. To borrow an image from Stranger Things, this is an attempt to force the people around you to live in the Upside Down. God hates this.

The last thing on the list is “one who stirs up trouble among brothers.” Our God is a God of peace. He is a relational God who delights in right relationships. He is rightly related among Himself as Father, Son, and Spirit. He desires to live in right relationships with all of His people and for His people to have right relationships among themselves. Because of sin, this doesn’t happen very often and indeed can’t happen apart from the grace of God in Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. The whole project of the Gospel is to undo this damage. But when someone actively seeks to stir up trouble and to harm relationships between people, that person is directly opposing God’s plans for His world. He is working directly against the Gospel. He is functioning as an agent of Satan and an enemy of God. He hates that.

God is a God of love. That is an essential truth about the world we live in. But just because He is love in essence, doesn’t mean there aren’t still things He opposes. And if He opposes these things, we should too. We should oppose them in the world around us. We should oppose them in our own lives. By this we will put ourselves on track with the direction God is taking His world. Only good will ever come of that.