What The Lord Hates

There are six things the LORD hates —

no, seven things he detests:

haughty eyes,

a lying tongue,

hands that kill the innocent,

a heart that plots evil,

feet that race to do wrong,

a false witness who pours out lies,

a person who sows discord in a family. Proverbs 6:16-19

AS WE READ through the list of things the Lord hates, as it zeros in on every body part that has been engaged in hateful and hurtful attitudes and actions toward others, we wonder if someone has been spying on what goes on behind closed doors at our house. After all, we’ve seen these offenses, both in ourselves and in our children.

We’ve seen haughty eyes rolled at us and our rules. We’ve caught our children in outrageous lies. We’ve had children who bit other kids in the nursery, bullied other kids on the playground, and ruined the reputations of other kids on the Internet. We’ve figured out their plans to deceive us about where they will be and seen them race out the door to go where we told them not to go. Our children have twisted the truth in their tattling and persisted in conflict with siblings.

When we read through this list, we hope it really is true that God hates the sin but loves the sinner. And indeed there is hope for those infected with things the Lord hates. There is grace for sinners —the kind of grace that changes haughty eyes into eyes filled with tears of repentance, grace that transforms a lying tongue into a tongue that tells the truth, grace that cleanses away the blood of the innocent, grace that melts a cold heart into one that desires to please God, grace that changes the course of feet quick to do wrong so that they follow after Christ, grace that transforms troublemakers into peacemakers.

Oh, Lord, our family needs your transforming grace if we’re ever going to experience the kind of deep heart change that will transform how we relate to one another. We need your Spirit to convict us when we selfishly hurt each other. Would you do a work by your Spirit in us so that we increasingly love what you love and hate what you hate?