Hate is Weak. Grace is Strong.

On yesterday’s podcast, Pastor Hal and I ruminated on how we, as believers, can combat hatred with grace, and there was one point I loved too much:

Hate is weak. Grace is strong.

This is a great thing to meditate upon. I loved this.

Hate may look like strength, but in truth it’s weakness acting out. Hate weakens the mind, clouding judgment and robbing discernment. It weakens the heart, hardening it against love, compassion, and peace. It weakens relationships, driving wedges where there should be unity, turns friends into foes and families into strangers. Hate is a signature attribute of the unbeliever living in the flesh (Titus 3:3). Far from empowering, hate is an enslavement to the flesh chaining a person to bitterness, blinding them to truth, and leaving them exhausted. In the end, hate is not a weapon of the strong, but a crutch for the weak.

But grace — grace is strength (2 Tim. 2:1). Grace is a signature attribute of God in you that can hold you together when your own hands are trembling. His grace is the anchor in the storm when every other foundation crumbles. Grace is strength to forgive when bitterness seeks revenge. Grace keeps you walking when the weight of life presses down. Grace speak peace when anger would be so much easier. Grace is strength to endure trials with joy, to rise again after failure, and to love the unlovable with the love that Christ showed us. Paul said, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13). That strength flows through grace—it is God’s power poured into weak vessels, turning frailty into resilience, despair into hope, and ordinary people into living trophies of His grace.

Grace does not answer hate with more hate. It answers with love, which the hater never sees coming. Grace does good when hate does evil. Grace is patient when hate is impulsive. Grace forgives when hate condemns. Grace speaks with love when hate screams in anger. Hate builds up walls in people, but grace disarms the fear and the hate. People acting out in hate often feel regret about it. Grace is never ashamed of itself.

Hate damages and strains a heart and shortens one’s life. But grace strengthens your heart and extends your life. Hate produces death. Grace produces life.

Hate acts like a child. Grace acts like an adult – with class. Hate tears down. Grace builds up. Hate has to scream and do violence to make a point. Grace, on the other hand, gently speaks truth in love. Grace is quiet strength in a storm. One simple act of grace in love speaks more volumes than all the screaming haters combined. Hate is full of fear and insecurity. Grace is full of love and eternal security. Grace can absorb the blows and stand tall. Grace can turn enemies into friends, bitterness into peace, and despair into hope.

Hate is weak because it destroys itself and everything it touches. Grace is strong because it loves without apology, heals wounds, gives life to others, and endures without breaking a sweat. When all is said and done, hate leaves nothing—but grace leaves a legacy.

Hate is weak because it depends on the threat of destruction. Grace is strong because it depends on nothing but God’s love— and love never fails. As Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 13:7, charity beareth all things, which means it can hold up under the weight and pressure of all things in this life and charity can endure all things, which means it can stay the course all the way to the end. Plus, charity never faileth (1 Cor. 13:8). Charity never dies. Just as God is eternal, so too, His love is eternal. There is no beginning to His love nor an end to the presence of love in Him because God IS love and God IS eternal. And if God is eternal and God is love, then the edifying power of love will never die.

At the cross, hate nailed Christ to the wood, but grace turned that act of cruelty into the greatest victory of all. Romans 5:20, “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” Hate was strong enough to kill Him, but His grace was strong enough to save the world.

Hate cannot and will not last, but grace, God’s grace, is eternal, unshakable, and unconquerable.

Hate ends in defeat. Grace ends in glory.