No Hate Like Christian Love

---

A guest contribution by Randi Bianchi, author of The Quiet Rebellion on Substack

---

If you’ve been on social media at all in the last five years, you’ve probably seen the popular mantra, “There’s no hate like Christian love.” Perhaps it made you nervous. Have we Christians gotten it wrong? Are we not loving others well? And while that may often be the case, as we are but imperfect humans incapable of accurately representing Christ’s love, this is not the heart behind this mantra.

The claim that “there’s no hate like Christian love” is actually definitionally accurate. Let’s look at this logically.

What is hate?

Remember, this mantra comes from the secular world, so we must use their definitions. In order to define hate from a secular perspective, we must first look at how they define love. The secular world equates love with tolerance. In other words, in order to love someone well by the world’s standards, you must tolerate their point of view and allow them to “live their truth.” (The subjectivity of truth, musings about which could take up hundreds of books, is the root of the world’s definition of love and tolerance).

If love and tolerance is allowing others to live the way that they want to live, then hate and intolerance is doing the oppowsite. The world sees you as hateful if you stand in the way of them “living their truth.” This could look like calling people out on behavior that you don’t agree with, but it could also look like refusing to agree with or subject your own life to these ideologies.

I saw a post on social media the other day that said, “Explain why the legalization of gay marriage personally affects your own heterosexual marriage.” A lot of the comments read along the lines of “Explain why your neighbor owning a slave personally affects your decision to not own a slave;” or “Explain why your brother beating his children personally affects your own children’s safety.” The heart of these comments is the same: morality permeates society. One person’s moral choices affect the sociocultural climate of society as a whole.

Another example is the forced usage of specialized pronouns propagated by the transgender community. If you call a biological male “he” or “him” when the pronoun button he wears on his shirt says “she/her,” congratulations! You are now a hateful bigot. In other words, if you do not apply false ideologies to your own life in the presence of someone who adheres to these false ideologies, you are expressing hatred toward that person.

What is Christian love?

Because the worldly mantra invokes the name of Christian love, they’ve allowed us to look to the Bible to define it. There are, of course, countless passages in Scripture that define love (1 Corinthians 13:4-7; 1 John 4:7-12, 16-21; John 15:12-13, 17; John 3:16, to name a few). We know that Christian love is sacrificial, that it honors the truth, that it is not evil or jealous or aggressive. But for the sake of this conversation, I would like to focus on how 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 talks about love:

“For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.”

Love, according to this passage then, also includes living for Christ.

What does it mean to live for Christ?

We need only to read further in 2 Corinthians 5 to find out. Verses 20 and 21 tell us:

“Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

This passage outlines two commands: to be reconciled to God and to become the righteousness of God in Christ. Once again, let’s look to Scripture to see how exactly we do these things.

How do we become reconciled to God?

It may be helpful first to define what reconciliation is and why it is needed. In Genesis 3, we read about the fall of man. Adam and Eve disobey the Lord, which is the first sin, and which results in them being cast out of the Garden and separated from God. This separation is the death that the Lord warns against in Genesis 2:16-17. As Isaiah 59:2 says,

“But your iniquities have separated you from God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.”

If separation from God is caused by sin, then reconciliation to God can only be achieved through the removal of this sin. We are incapable of doing this ourselves, which is why God sent His son to die in our place, paying for our sin, and opening up a path to approach the Throne (Isaiah 53:5; John 3:16-17; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 2:2; Col. 1:21-22). Paul tells us directly that we are reconciled to God through Christ’s sacrifice in Romans 5:8-10:

“But God demonstrates His own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.”

How do we become the righteousness of God in Christ?

The answer to this question is found in Philippians 3:7-10, which says,

“But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ, and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection…”

According to this passage, true righteousness cannot be found in the world or by obeying certain laws or social norms or “personal truths.” True righteousness comes only:

1. From God

   and

   
   

2. By faith in Christ

Romans 3:21-26 also deals with the righteousness of God apart from the law, and demonstrates how pointless it is to try and achieve said righteousness through our own merit.

What is the point of reconciliation to God and becoming the righteousness of God?

Reconciliation and repentance unto righteousness through faith is the path to salvation. The alternative is death. See Romans 6:15-23, Acts 3:19, and Romans 10:9-13, which are a few passages that outline this truth.

What does the love of Christ compel us to do?

As 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 says, the love of Christ compels us to encourage others to live for Him. We know through reading Scripture that Christian love is about action, not about feeling. If we love others, as we should be doing (Mark 12:31; Matthew 22:39), then we want them to be reconciled to God, because the alternative is death and eternal separation from Him (i.e., Hell).

What if I don’t care what Scripture says?

Since we are dealing with a secular mantra here, it is only fair to use a secular example. Non-believing parents love their children very much. It follows then that by the world’s definition of love (tolerance), these parents would let their kids do whatever they want. Grab a hot curling iron, for example, or climb into the back of a stranger’s car, or cross a busy highway by themselves. Right?

Of course not. Parents’ love for their children is marked by the desire to protect them and keep them safe. This means that even if their teenage girl decided it was “living her truth” to date a 40 year old man, her parents would not allow this relationship because it would put their daughter in danger.

Good parents always want better lives for their children than they had for themselves. They want their children to make better choices, live in safer environments, have better friends, and live healthier lives than they did. This is proof of their love for their children, and it is demonstrated not by tolerance but instead by sacrifice.

If you knew there was a path that led only to death and destruction, and someone you loved wanted to walk that path, would you let them? Or would you risk hurting their feelings, or even being seen as intolerant and hateful, by telling them that they are wrong? Would you sacrifice the approval of that friend to tell them that there is a better path that leads to life and joy?

“There is no hate like Christian love” is perhaps one of the most definitionally accurate claims that this world makes. Through this claim, they are both affirming the truths of how secular love and Christian love conflict, as well as successfully undermining the Christian’s authority in the public sociocultural sphere. If you ask the world, Christian love is in fact hateful, because it does not tolerate sin or coddle willful sinners.

There is joy, however, in being shunned by the world. It is not the world’s approval Christians should be trying to gain, but Christ’s. As Galatians 1:10 says,

“For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.”

And in Colossians 3:2:

“Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.”

And again in Matthew 10:28:

“And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Christians should take the world’s hatred and disapproval as proof that they are doing something right (John 15:18-25). It is good if the world hates you or thinks you foolish - they did the same to our Lord.