“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
1 John 4:20-21 ESV
So, what does he mean when he says “hate” about our relationship to our brothers, our neighbors? Does he mean hate in the sense of active evil, or malicious harm? Is he talking about purposeful ambush or deception to do injury? Or, is he talking about the antithesis of loving?
This is similar to Jesus making the expression, raising the bar if you will, on keeping the law concerning murder. If you hate your brother you have broken the commandment. And, in case the hearers wanted to justify themselves on keeping the law, if you have lust in your heart you’ve commit adultery. How often do we think of our passing comments about others as gossip and our gossip as bearing false witness?
The absence of love may be the equivalent of the hate to which John is referring. After all, he is contrasting our profession of love for God, whom we cannot physically see with our eyes, against an attitude held toward our brothers who occupy this land with us, isn’t he?
Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians tells us what love is. “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” 1 Cor. 13:4-7 ESV
So, perhaps when we are not kind, not patient, or if we seek our own advancement ahead of our neighbors, if we don’t prefer others before ourselves, or if we keep bringing up or reminding them of their past wrongs toward us or what we adjudge to be their myriad other failures–in short, when we fail to love as the Spirit says love is–we are actually hating in the sense which John uses the word. If we say we love God but hate our brother, we are liars!
That may be hard to accept. But is God calling us to anything less?
Men Following Jesus 