We have spent so much time preaching what God loves that we have become afraid to preach what God hates.
That imbalance has cost the Church dearly. When we teach God’s kindness without His holiness, we encourage a view of grace that excuses sin rather than confronting it. God’s love is complete and eternal. The same God whose love we see in John 3:16 also tells us in Proverbs 6 what He hates.
Love, Holiness, and the Whole Counsel of God
The conversation in the Church often sounds like this:
“God is too loving to hate anything.”
“We should not talk about what God hates. It pushes people away.”
“That is Old Testament. We are under grace now.”
“Judge not. Who are we to say what God finds offensive?”
“As long as my heart is right, the details do not matter.”
These statements are not born of deep theology. They are born of a culture that has redefined grace as the absence of divine standards and love as the absence of divine conviction.
But Scripture does not flinch. And neither should we.
“These six things the LORD hates, yes, seven are an abomination to Him.”
Proverbs 6:16
Seven things. Listed deliberately. Described as abomination, the strongest word of divine revulsion in the Hebrew vocabulary. Not inconvenience. Not disappointment. Abomination.
And remarkably, this list is not a catalogue of the crimes of pagans. It reads like a mirror held up to the people of God.
1. A Proud Look
“A proud look” means haughty eyes that look down on others. It reveals a heart that elevates itself above God and other people.
Pride is listed first. Not murder. Not sexual immorality. Pride. Because pride is the root from which every other sin on this list grows. It was pride that turned Lucifer into Satan. It was pride that caused Saul to lose his kingdom. It was pride that kept the Pharisees from recognising their Messiah standing right in front of them.
“God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
James 4:6
Pride does not announce itself. It disguises itself as confidence, as standards, as discernment, as calling. It shows up in the minister who cannot receive correction. In the believer who has no genuine spiritual community because no one is on their level. In the leader who surrounds himself only with people who agree with him.
Check the eyes. They always reveal the posture of the heart.
2. A Lying Tongue
God hates lying. Not merely the dramatic, elaborate lie, but the casual, convenient, culturally normalised lie.
The exaggerated testimony. The embellished miracle report. The half-truth told to protect reputation. The silence that allows a false impression to stand uncorrected.
“Therefore, putting away lying, let each one of you speak truth with his neighbour, for we are members of one another.”
Ephesians 4:25
Lying does not just damage the person being lied to. It damages the liar. It fractures trust. It corrodes community. And in the Church, where truth is the very foundation of everything we proclaim, a lying tongue is a catastrophic contradiction.
A ministry built on exaggeration is a house built on sand. It will not stand.
3. Hands That Shed Innocent Blood
At its most literal, this is the taking of innocent life. And God's revulsion toward it is absolute.
But this principle extends beyond the physical. Hands that shed innocent blood also describe:
- The leader whose words destroy the reputation of someone who cannot defend themselves.
- The minister whose false accusation ends a person's calling.
- The believer whose gossip kills the dignity of another image-bearer.
- The community that collectively silences, marginalises, or spiritually executes those who dare to ask honest questions.
“Death and life are in the power of the tongue.”
Proverbs 18:21
Words are hands. They touch people. They build. They wound. They shed blood without a single drop being visible.
Handle both your literal hands and your words with the fear of God.
4. A Heart That Devises Wicked Plans
This is premeditated sin. Calculated evil. Deliberate scheming.
It is the manipulation planned in advance. The trap set with a smile. The agenda concealed beneath spiritual language. The leader who uses prayer meetings to gather intelligence on people's vulnerabilities and later weaponises it. The ministry culture engineered to benefit the leader at the expense of the congregation.
“For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.”
Matthew 15:19
God does not merely judge actions. He searches the heart behind the action. A wicked plan conceived and never executed is still a wicked plan. And a God who sees in secret sees the drawing board long before the blueprint becomes a building.
Let the heart be guarded. What is entertained in private will eventually be expressed in public.
5. Feet That Are Swift in Running to Evil
Eagerness toward sin. A person who does not stumble into wrongdoing, but runs toward it. Who does not fall into temptation, but chases it.
This describes a soul that has lost its moral brakes. Sin is no longer a struggle; it has become a preference. Where the conscience, long ignored, has grown silent.
“But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.”
James 1:14–15
Swift feet toward evil are the result of a desire that was entertained rather than crucified. Every believer has a flesh. The question is whether you are mortifying it or feeding it.
“But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil its lusts.”
Romans 13:14
Do not make provision. Do not leave the door open. Do not linger at the edge. Swift feet toward evil begin with slow feet that stopped at the wrong threshold.
6. A False Witness Who Speaks Lies
This is distinct from a lying tongue. A false witness is specifically one who bears false testimony against another person. One who uses their voice and their credibility to destroy someone else.
This was the sin that sent Naboth to his death in 1 Kings 21. This was the instrument used against Jesus in His trial. This is the spiritual weapon most commonly used to remove righteous people from positions of influence.
“A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who speaks lies will not escape.”
Proverbs 19:5
False witnesses operate in boardrooms, in church boards, in family conversations, in social media comment sections, and in WhatsApp groups. They are not always strangers. They are often people with access, people who were trusted with proximity and used it as ammunition.
God is not neutral about this. He hates it. And He keeps records.
7. One Who Sows Discord Among Brethren
The last on the list. And perhaps the most rampant in the Body of Christ today.
The discord-sower does not always look like a troublemaker. They often look like a concerned member. A worried intercessor. A loyalist raising flags. But their consistent fruit is division. Suspicion. Broken relationships. Fractured communities.
They whisper what should be spoken openly. They speak to ten people about a problem instead of the one person who could resolve it. They frame every situation to maximise offence and minimise reconciliation. They leave every room they enter slightly more divided than when they arrived.
“Now I urge you, brethren, note those who cause divisions and offences, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and avoid them.”
Romans 16:17
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”
Matthew 5:9
Discord-sowing is the antithesis of peacemaking. And God, who sent His Son to reconcile all things, hates what tears apart what He has joined together.
A Mirror for the People of God
This list is not primarily about the world. It is a mirror for the people of God.
Pride in our pulpits. Lying in our testimonies. Innocent blood shed through our words. Wicked plans conceived in our leadership meetings. Swift feet running toward compromise. False witnesses in our church courts. Discord-sowers in our congregations.
These are not the sins of pagans alone. They are the sins that have infiltrated, weakened, and brought reproach upon the Body of Christ from within.
And God has not changed His assessment of them simply because they now occur inside church buildings.
“For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God.”
1 Peter 4:17
To Every Believer
Do not read this list looking outward. Read it looking inward. Ask the Holy Spirit to search you thoroughly. Pride can hide in the most consecrated-looking life. A lying tongue can exist in the most theologically articulate mouth. Discord can be sown by the most spiritually active hands.
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Psalm 139:23–24
To Ministers and Leaders
Preach the whole counsel of God. Do not sanitise Scripture to make it more palatable. A gospel that never offends the flesh will never transform it. The kindness of God leads to repentance, but so does the holy standard of God, faithfully and lovingly preached.
To the Church Collectively
We cannot carry the glory of God and the weight of these seven things simultaneously. One will eventually displace the other. Let us deliberately, soberly and urgently choose to be a people who love what God loves and hate what God hates. Not with self-righteous contempt for sinners, but with the holy, humble, Spirit-led conviction of people who have been transformed by grace and take seriously the God who saved them.
“The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth I hate.”
Proverbs 8:13
The fear of the Lord is not a trembling that paralyses. It is a reverence that purifies. It is the beginning of wisdom and the foundation of a life that God can trust with His glory.
Let the Church be found holy. Not perfect, but pursuing. Not sinless, but serious. Not self-righteous, but genuinely, deeply, and consistently yielded to the God who hates what destroys us and loves us enough to say so.
He told us what He hates because He loves us too much to leave us comfortable in it.
“For whom the LORD loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights.”
Proverbs 3:12
Receive the correction. Walk in the fear of God. And let your life be the kind of offering He is pleased to receive.