Hate Alarm – The Sixth Commandment

Hate Alarm

The sixth commandment

Exodus 20.13; Deuteronomy 5.17

“You shall not murder.”

Leviticus 19.17

“You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him.”

Matthew 5.23

“But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment…”

Like a smoke detector in your soul.

Anger is like a smoke detector in your soul. The slightest bit of hate will set it off, unless, of course, we have through neglect and indifference allowed the batteries to die. Most of us get angry at times. Not all anger is bad, as our Lord Jesus demonstrated in throwing the merchants out of the temple, and as God will prove in due course. But anger is the kind of affection you shouldn’t allow much room to operate in your soul. We can be angry as long as it doesn’t lead us to sin (Ps. 4.4). The fact that anger can lead to sin – to hate and all its various forms of murder – indicates that, whenever we feel the alarm of anger in our souls, we need to check right away to see if a fire of hate has begun to be kindled there. If so, and if it’s allowed to fan into flame, it can lead to murder in a wide array of forms – meanness, unkind words, gossip, hurtful deeds, backbiting, and, of course, violence. Don’t allow anger to be a characteristic affection, one that defines you as a person. Anger should be so rare in us that even the slightest hint of it should lead us to go searching for any smoldering hatred. Failure to do so, to heed the alarm of anger, could be disastrous.

Would those who know you say that you are an angry person? Or quick to become angry?

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“In the Gates” is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.