1 John 3:15 "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him."This is the most difficult verse in the Bible, bar none!
It is strange: The Ten Commandments does not contain "Thou Shalt not hate"! Why is that? Because all the Commandments are about love. We know that from what Jesus said about the Greatest Commandment:
Matthew 22:36 (ESV) “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
(Please be patient for a few short verses while I show the engineer side of me. It will get better, I assure you).
You do the math where v is a verse above.
v. 40=v. 37+v.39 (Complete love = Love God + Love Others), and notice that to completely love God, one must love others. The importance of that is to show love for God, Christians must love others.
Where C = Commandments (Exodus 20):
Love God = C1 + C2 + C3+ C4
Love Others = C5 + C6 + C7 + C8 + C9 + C10 , and
Complete Love = The Sum of all the Commandments (C1... C10)
There is no such thing as darkness. It is merely the complete absence of light.
Likewise, there is no such thing as hate, it is the complete absence of love.
Hate is anything less than complete love, or failing in all the commandments.
Even if one claims to love God (C1... C4), and hates his neighbor, (C5... C10), many Commandments are broken.
Hating others is:
C5 (failure to honor parents), C6 (killing people), C7 (having sex with their wives), C8 (stealing from them), C9 (lying to them), and C10 (desiring what is theirs).
Jesus picked out one of these forms of hate to clarify its intensity. He picked murder. Hate is really all the Commandments combined, but Scripture says that if you fail on one, you fail on them all. (James 2:10). The one Jesus picked out is the most extreme of the last six: Murder!
Hating a person is like killing them. Let's get to the point: Loving someone is not an emotional thing. It is a strong desire that they have eternal life. Just as Jesus loves us so, that none should perish (John 3:16), we must love others that much as well because we are to be Christ-like.
Hating someone is having a desire that they perish. It's the opposite of love which is that none should perish. Consequently, hate is murder and haters are murderers. At the Great White Throne Judgment, if we hate anyone, our indictment will be on the charge of first degree murder!
Why? Because just as loving others is the measure of loving God, hating others is the measure of one's hate for God. He Commands that we love others. Hating others is rebellion against God's will, and is blasphemy against him. At the judgment, God will say: You hated me because you hated others. You as well as murder me!
I know people who I believe hates me. Are there degrees of hate? No. Hate is black and white. Just as love is intense, and one can't love just a little, hate has the same intensity. You can't hate just a little!
I know what hate is! I can feel hate. I can't rejoice in the presence of a hater. In order for the Holy Ghost to work within us, we must be of one accord. That's from several places in the Book of Acts. Because I sense discord from others, the Spirit is still there, but stays still. Discord and hate must be absent for unity to be!
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