Hate Evil, Love Good

6 Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. 7 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches

(Revelation 2:6-7ESV).

Who are “the Nicolaitans?” They were false teachers, lovers of pleasure rather than God. They involved themselves in loose living and enticed the church with deceptive and empty words. Clement of Alexander wrote of them: ‘They abandoned themselves to pleasure like goats, leading a life of self-indulgence.’ Their teaching perverted grace and replaced liberty with license.”

The empowering grace of the Holy Spirit within the child of God gives him freedom from sin rather than freedom to sin. God is patient and slow to anger. But over the course of time if you do not repent from the sinful way you think and act the Lord’s anger will come against you. God condemns sin because it destroys the human being, His highest creation. If you refuse to depart from sin you too will, in essence, condemn yourself.

People who merely listen to God’s Word don't have God's approval. Only individuals who obey what God’s Word says will have His approval. If you judge people for the very sins you participate in, do you think you will escape God's judgment because you go to church and the other does not?

God’ s love puts up with a lot. He is not turning a blind eye to anyone’s sin. He is moving in kindness that we might turn from our sin. If we stubbornly refuse to change the way we think and act we will eventually face God’s righteous anger. If we live in Christ, we will hate evil, and overcome it with good.