The following quote comes from Jerry Bridges book, “The Pursuit of Holiness.”

We often say, ‘God hates the sin but loves the sinner’. This is blessedly true, but too often we quickly rush over the first half of this statement to get to the second. We cannot escape the fact that God hates sin. We may trifle with our sins or excuse them, but God hates them. Therefore every time we sin, we are doing something God hates. He hates our lustful thoughts, our pride and jealousy, our outbursts of temper, and our rationalizations that the end justifies the means. We need to be gripped by the fact that God hates all these things. We become so accustomed to our sins we sometimes lapse into a state of peaceful coexistence with them, but God never ceases to hate them.

It’s natural to skip over God’s hatred of sin and go straight to the mercy of Christ.  It’s not as if God wants us to sit in our sin forever.  After all, we were dead in our sin and God made us alive in Christ (Eph. 2:5).   However, God makes it clear that sin is serious -serious enough for Him to send Jesus, and for Jesus to bleed and die on tree.  Forgiveness is indeed God’s design, but before we can taste the depth of our freedom and forgiveness in Christ we need to feel the weight of our sin against Christ.

Have you wrestled with your disobedience lately?  Have you used God’s grace as a permit to do as you please?  Or perhaps you feel righteous because of how “good” you are -but don’t you know that even our righteous deeds are like filthy rags to our holy God?  May we see our sin as disgusting, so that Christ might be seen as precious.  If God hates sin, we should too.