Pride, lies, and violence

“haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,”
-Proverbs 6:17

If God gave you a list of things He just hates, you would think you would pay attention. I mean, that’s important, don’t you think? That’s worth our attention?

Of course we would say yes right away, and yet the Bible gives us such lists, and we ignore them. One such list is the Ten Commandments. In this section of Proverbs, we are told very clearly that these are “things that the LORD hates” (verse 16).

Does that interest you? Are you at all curious? People have a problem with the doctrine of hell these days, and I know why they do – they don’t understand what God hates. They know what they themselves hate, and they just assume God is the same way. And so we can’t imagine that someone would go to hell for lying or having lustful thoughts. That is beyond our comprehension. We think we’re basically good people, because we don’t do many things that we hate, and we don’t even both to look at what God hates.

Pride is the first thing, and we’re all drowning in it. That very attitude that “I’m a good person” is a prideful one, especially when we don’t even look at what the true definition of “good” is. The Bible tells us otherwise. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is none righteous. We look at our own lives with confidence and pleasure, seeing all the things we have amassed for ourselves, the family we have built, the reputation we have, the accolades and promotions. We are pleased with our own understanding and intellect. We think we’re doing just fine, and so we go about our lives thinking nothing of God or the mercy He has had with us.

It is offensive. Those actions and thoughts are offensive to God. He has created you to bring honor to Him, and you live to bring honor to yourself. He is worthy of all praise, and you try to get praise for yourself.

Liars offend God. God is always truthful, always honest. He never lies. He cannot lie. He is holy and good, and it is against His very nature to lie. But we do it all the time. We twist the truth, tell half truths, and outright lie all the time. God has given us truth as something beautiful and wonderful, and we have trampled on it. We have used it as a plaything.

God also hates those who do violence. We may not all be guilty of this one, but we’re probably only innocent because we’re afraid of going to jail. In truth, we are all tempted to hurt others. In that moment of anger, we want to hurt someone who was made in God’s image. Those thoughts are offensive to Him.

These are only the first three of seven that are listed here, but already we can see that we may not do so well if held against God’s standard of right and wrong and not our own. We want to believe that we’re doing fine, but we’re not.

We have all sinned, and we all deserve punishment for those sins. But in love Jesus came to earth to die on our behalf, taking those sins upon Himself. If we repent and believe in Him, He will forgive us, having already paid the price for our offenses against God. We can’t look to ourselves for salvation, but we can look to Him.

Once we are forgiven, let’s remember these things as things that God hates. Our society may not think lying is a big deal, but our God does, and His opinion is the only one that matters. We may still stumble, and we will still be forgiven. So cast your eyes upon the Cross and remember what He has done for our lies, for our anger, and for our pride.