You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

-Leviticus 19:17-18, ESV

In our day many apply the term “hate speech” quite liberally.  The Left often uses it for any view that makes them feel uncomfortable.  Balking at this, the Right often responds by denying the entire concept of “hate speech”.  But Scripture must define our terms, so we cannot call everything “hate speech” like the Left, but we also cannot deny its existence like the Right.  This post will examine how Scripture defines hate speech.

Denigrating God’s Image

While we may debate what constitutes hate speech, it is clear from Scripture that hateful speech is sinful—and that God takes it very seriously.  The tongue is a restless evil full of deadly poison (James 3:8), so we are foolish to underestimate its destructive power: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit” (Proverbs 18:21).  We will be either justified or condemned by our words (Matthew 12:37).  Thus, Scripture is clear how we must speak: “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear….Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving” (Ephesians 4:29, 5:4) and “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Colossians 4:6).  Therefore, we are sinning whenever our words are corrupting or foolish; not helpful for building others up, gracious, beneficial, or fitting to the occasion.  But sinful speech is not necessarily hateful speech.  Jesus links speech to hate in the Sermon on the Mount:

You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

-Matthew 5:21-22, ESV

Here, “you fool” was a serious insult that went beyond mere foolishness to denote worthlessness.[1]  While Scripture sometimes calls people worthless, we dare not use such language since we do not know the eternal state of people’s souls.  Such language denigrates people by referring to them as something lower than people made in God’s image.  It is the most common manifestation of the anger of man that does not produce the righteousness of God (James 1:20): “Terms of abuse are not a heightened form of anger; they are its most obvious and common expression”.[2]  That is why Jesus equates such speech with murder:

Jesus establishes a new divine law when He…proclaims in threefold repetition that the term of abuse which is regarded as harmless though spoken in ill-humour is an offence worthy of death….This paradox of unparalleled sharpness is designed to bring home to the hearers the terrible seriousness of sins of the tongue in God’s eyes and hence to save them from having on their consciences the everyday ill feelings towards their brothers which might appear innocuous but in fact poison relationships.

-Joachim Jeremias, “Ῥακά,” ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans: 1964: 975–976.

Therefore, hate speech according to Scripture would be any speech that does not recognize another person as a person created in the image of God.  Obviously, things like racial slurs fit into that category, but so do misogynistic or misandristic terms that view women and men respectively as inferior. Since our culture despises marriage, some culturally acceptable terms for spouses would be hate speech according to Scripture, such as a husband referring to his wife as his “ball and chain”.  Our culture’s disdain for children also means that several terms for them are actually hate speech, like “rug rats”.  For the same reason, I refrain from saying “unborn” or “preborn” in favor of “children in the womb” to avoid diminishing their humanity. 

Biblically, hate speech also includes viewing a person’s identity as part of a certain demographic or lifestyle as more important than his or her personhood.  The primary and most important identity of any person is as a person—a man or woman made in the image of God.  Second is identity in relation to God.  We are all sinners by nature and either separated from God because of our sin or reconciled to God by being in union with Jesus Christ through faith.  Then—and only then—come other factors, starting with our unchangeable identity as male or female.  We err when we allow any other factor of our identity to supersede this hierarchy.  Any factor can supplant this identity in our minds, but this erroneous prioritization is especially prevalent in the alphabet abomination where sexual orientation is the locus of identity.  They are not gays, lesbians, homosexuals, or anything else but people who practice homosexuality (1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:10).  While our sin nature is an important part of our identity, we must not make our particular sins to be so central to our identity that they supplant our humanity or relationship with God.  All of these are hate speech by the biblical definition.

It is equally important to note what is not hate speech according to Scripture.  While any term that emphasizes demographics or particular sin over personhood and relationship with God is hate speech, that does not mean that all strong or less-than-complimentary language is hate speech.  Scripture is full of sharp word that our culture would consider hateful.  Proverbs and Ecclesiastes frequently refer to people as fools, and God Himself often mocks the folly of sinful people.  For example, we have previously seen how God calls the complacent women of Samaria “cows” (Amos 4:1).   Jesus continues this practice by calling the religious leaders blind guides, blind fools, and sons of vipers (Matthew 23).  And few passages can rival this string of verbal blows:

But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion. These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.

-Jude 10-13, ESV cf. 2 Peter 2:12-22

How is this not hate speech?  First, these are the words of God, either directly or through the men He inspired to write Scripture.  Since God is love (1 John 4:8), His speech cannot be hate speech.  Scripture is clear that there are things God hates.  He hates idolatry, particularly the child sacrifice we call abortion(Deuteronomy 12:31).  He hates “haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers” (Proverbs 6:17-18).  Note that the last two indicate God’s hatred not only for the sin but also for the sinner: “The LORD tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence” (Psalm 11:5).  God is always completely truthful, so all of these statements are declaring the truth about who God is and who we are.  In our day we have such a disregard for sin that we cannot grasp God’s hatred for sin, and we would consider His hatred for sinners unfathomable.  Yet these passages reveal that God hates sin and sinners.  But how do we reconcile this with the countless passages showing God’s great compassion for sinners and patience in calling them to repentance?  After all, He demonstrated His love for us in that Christ died for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8).  Since we are all sinners, the only difference between those loved by God and those hated by God is election.  All those God hates are not predestined to salvation and therefore continue in their sins and perish apart from Christ to eternal condemnation.  Conversely, the sinners predestined for salvation have their sins removed by Christ at the cross, are clothed by Christ’s righteousness, and are united with Christ, guaranteeing their inheritance of eternal life.  Since the Father loves the Son, the Father cannot hate the Son’s Bride (John 17:26).  So the only difference between those loved by God and those hated by God is the grace of God.  This should lead us to humbly rejoice and marvel at our salvation to the praise of our gracious God.  And since only God knows all who are His, we cannot determine who God loves or hates.  Those who continue in sin may be elect and will one day be saved, while those who appear righteous may not be and will one day perish.  Thus we should desire the salvation of all and preach the Gospel to all.  Regardless of election, all sin is still evil, so reflecting God we are commanded to hate evil and love good (Amos 5:15, Romans 12:9).  We like Paul should also hate our sin that hinders us from obeying God as our regenerated hearts desire (Romans 7:15).  And since we do not know who God truly loves or hates, we must not hate anyone but love our neighbors as ourselves.

A Surprising Form of Hate Speech

This leads to another form of hate speech according to Scripture that is absolutely countercultural.  Just before the command to love our neighbors as ourselves, we see this: “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him” (Leviticus 19:17).  Here, hate is contrasted with reasoning frankly, so it is hateful not to speak frankly with someone.  To understand why, we need to recall why hate is equated with murder: “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15).  Murder is the ultimate disregard of someone’s personhood by ending his or her physical life and hastening damnation.  Therefore, hate arises from that same disregard and ultimately desires to accelerate or facilitate someone’s damnation.  Cursing people is certainly one way to do this, but another is to simply allow them to continue on a path that you know will lead to damnation. In that case, it is actually hateful to stay silent or encourage their destructive behavior but loving to intervene and warn them.  In such cases, we like Ezekiel are called to be watchmen:

Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul.

-Ezekiel 3:17-19, ESV

When examining the nature of responsibility, we saw that shared responsibility does not negate our individual responsibility.  We are all responsible for our own sin, which is clear from God’s statement to Ezekiel that whether or not he warned the people they would die for their own sin.  But as we saw with matters of conscience, we are responsible for anything we do to encourage or facilitate others to sin.  In this case, not warning the wicked of God’s coming judgment facilitates their condemnation and therefore brings guilt upon us—not guilt for their sin but for our hatred of them demonstrated by our failure to warn them.  Yes, hatred.  In this clip, Penn Jillette, an atheist, recounts a man handing him a Bible.  While he rejects the Gospel, he understands that silence about the Gospel is hateful: “I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize….If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell and people could be going to hell…and you think that…it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward…how much do you have to hate someone to not proselytize?”.  This does not mean that our failure to share the Gospel with people is the reason they will perish, as Scripture is clear that all those apart from Christ perish for their own sin.  Nor does it mean we are in sin if we do not share the Gospel with everyone we meet throughout the day.  As we saw previously, God is sovereign over salvation and will save all whom He has chosen.  What this does mean is that when God gives us opportunities for the Gospel, we should make the most of them (Ephesians 5:16, 1 Peter 3:15). 

More specifically, loving our neighbor by reasoning frankly means calling out sin and warning of its temporal and eternal consequences.  First, this means showing no approval for sinful practice, which is clearly sinful itself: “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Romans 1:32).  It is hateful to voice approval for women becoming murderers by having their children brutally slaughtered in the womb.  It is hateful to voice approval for homosexuality and all other forms of sexual immorality that cause much damage in this life and prevent their practitioners from entering the Kingdom (1 Corinthians 6:10).  It is hateful to entertain delusions that attack the core of people’s identity as male or female, either by using pronouns clearly inconsistent with biology or promoting grotesque hormonal and genital mutilation.  It is hateful to promote no-fault divorce that rips families apart, the self-centered cultural approach to marriage that leads to it, and the general distortion of the created order in marriage and the roles of husband and wife.  It is hateful to voice approval for any policy or practice that denigrates members of any ethnic group, ranging from affirmative action and critical race theory to literal support for genocide.  It is hateful to celebrate and facilitate sin, so we are commanded to expose it: “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Ephesians 5:11).  Exposing sin is uncomfortable and exposes us to abuse, so we do it not for our own good but for the good of others—as with all forms of love: “Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy” (Proverbs 27:5-6). 

While we should seek opportunities to confront sin in the world and call people to faith and repentance, we have a special obligation to confront sin in the church: “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted“ (Galatians 6:1) and “My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins” (James 5:19-20).  Whenever we confront sin, we must not do it arrogantly but with great humility, gentleness, and care.  We must recognize that we too are sinners and apart from the grace of God toward us—independent of our own works or merit—would be likewise headed to hell.  We should do it out of genuine love and compassion, earnestly desiring to gain brothers and sisters in Christ and see them flourish in sanctification rather than languish in sin.  We will face opposition, so it is important to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves (Matthew 10:16), choosing our engagements wisely while ensuring we ourselves are above reproach.  And we must trust God with the outcome.  He hates sin and delights in repentance much more than we ever could.  Thus we will avoid this often overlooked form of hate speech: silence and approval.

Our culture calls many things “hate speech”, but Scripture clearly defines it as any speech which denigrates people’s nature as God’s image-bearers and any speech—or silence—that promotes sinful and destructive behavior.  In order to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must pray for them, acknowledge their personhood, and lovingly seek their good by confronting sin when necessary.  The world will call us hateful for this, but this is what Scripture calls love—and that’s all that matters.

NOTES:

[1] John D. Barry et al., eds., “Raca,” The Lexham Bible Dictionary, Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press: 2016.

[2] Georg Bertram, “Μωρός, Μωραίνω, Μωρία, Μωρολογία,” ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans: 1964: 841–842.