Perhaps you have heard, as I have more than once, that there are times when the word “hate” in the Bible means “love less.” Three passages come to mind. Genesis 29:31-33 tells us that Leah was hated. The NKJV, NIV and NASB all translate the word as unloved, but the KJV, ESV and RSV are more accurate: The LORD saw that Leah was hated. In Malachi 3:2-3 the Lord says, Jacob have I loved; but Esau have I hated. Paul quotes this verse in Romans 9:13. Some commentators say that this means that the Lord loved Esau less than Jacob. The third passage is Luke 14:26: If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Many will say that Jesus means that we must love family members less than we love him.
This is an inadequate interpretation of the word hate. The words for hate in Hebrew and Greek together appear about 200 times in the Bible, and in almost every instance it is evident that the words must mean something much stronger than “love less.” Joseph’s brothers hated him (Gen. 37:4, 5, 8). They did not simply love him less than they loved (for example) Benjamin. They hated him to such a degree that they were ready to murder him and sold him into Egypt as a slave. Amnon hated Tamar after he had raped her and humiliated her completely by refusing even to protect her from the shame of what he had done to her (2 Sam. 13:15). Absalom hated Amnon for what he had done to Tamar (2 Sam. 13:22) and later murdered him. The psalms frequently complain of the hatred of enemies, and Jesus warned his followers frequently about those who would hate them (Matt. 10:22, 24:9-10, 13:13, Lk. 21:17, Jn. 15:18-19 and others). We should not lightly dismiss the word hate in the three passages mentioned above but instead ask why the Scriptures use it.
The answer to that question is that the Lord judges hatred not so much by strength of feeling as by what we do. John says that we must love “in deed,” that is, by what we do to our neighbor more than by what we feel for him. Love is shown by works. So is hatred.
Thus, when Genesis tells us that Leah was hated, it means, not that Jacob loved her less than Rachel or that he felt revulsion towards her, but that he neglected his husbandly duties towards her and regularly demonstrated to her his preference for Rachel. This was Leah’s complaint in the verses immediately following Genesis 29:31. She gave her firstborn the name Reuben (Behold a Son) because, “Now… my husband will love me.” She named her second son Simeon (Heard) “because the LORD has heard that I am unloved [hated].” And when Levi (Joined To) was born she said, “Now this time my husband will become attached [be joined] to me, because I have borne him three sons.” Leah’s life as the wife of Jacob was not happy, and it was Jacob’s fault. He hated her by his neglect.
Malachi 3:2 is the well-known passage where the Lord says he hated Esau. If that means that the Lord loved Esau less than Jacob, he had a very strange way of showing that lesser love. He says, “Esau have I hated, and laid waste his mountains and his heritage for the jackals of the wilderness. Even though Edom has said, ‘We have been impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places,'” thus says the LORD of hosts: “They may build, but I will throw down; they shall be called the Territory of Wickedness, and the people against whom the LORD will have indignation forever.” His deeds were not deeds of love, but of hatred. He hates the workers of iniquity (Ps. 5:5).
The same principle applies to Luke 14:26. When Jesus says we must hate family members for his sake, he means more than that we should love them less than we love him. He means that we must be ready to abandon family for his sake and even that, if love for them conflicts with love for Christ, we must hate them in the same way that David hated the Lord’s enemies in Psalm 139: Do I not hate them, O LORD, who hate you?… I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies. We may find it necessary to pray against them, after the example of many of the prayers against enemies that we find in the Psalms.
That is not a happy situation. We should pray that God will never require that of us. But we must also recognize that it could happen and be prepared, because of our passionate love for Christ, to leave family and friends and all earth’s good things for his sake.
We must also understand, then, that when John talks about hating our brothers in Christ, he does not necessarily have in mind feelings of revulsion towards them. Instead, he wants us to understand that gossiping about them, neglecting our duties towards them, withdrawing from them because for some reason they make us uncomfortable, injuring them or even failing to help them when they need help are all fundamentally acts of hatred. Love means doing good to them, praying for them and esteeming them more highly than ourselves.