...is that every last human being is a sinner. All have sinned, as the saint noted, and fallen short of the glory of God. Humans are fallible and weak, struggle against concupiscence, and fall into temptation and sin. One such sin is the sin of hatred, a most wicked and terrible sin. The Epistle of John even equates the act of hating with murder, a mortal sin. It's hardly the only sin, of course, but it is relevant to mention prior to discussing what a Christian response to sin must be.

Many Christians are taught to love the sinner and hate the sin, but personally I've always felt this to be...well...an acceptable starting point for children, but not a mature attitude for adult Christians who have grown in their faith. That is because in the end, the statement "love the sinner, hate the sin" is nothing more than rubbish.

That's not to say that Christians should not hate sin. We should hate sin, and to hate sin is the mandate of the righteous. That is also not to say that Christians should not love the sinner, as we should love all people (and all people are sinners). To love is a very Christian, very Godly mandate, and we ignore it at our eternal peril.

But it is to say that we shouldn't take "love the sinner, hate the sin" as our maxim, because it is a false maxim.

The statement would seem to imply a certain parallelism: sin/sinner, love/hate. That's well and good, but it also betrays the key context in which all things must happen: charity. Love and hate are not parallel ideas at all -- the latter must happen within the context of the former if it is to avoid being condemned as sin (as per 1 John 5). As John da Fiesole so aptly put it, "Hate and love are not parallel in Christian thought. The second greatest commandment is not, "Hate what is opposed to the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength." Christian hatred must be situated within the larger context of Christian charity" -- and as a maxim, "love the sinner, hate the sin" fails on that account.

"Sin" and "sinner" are similarly not a parallel: "what are the contraries of "sin" and "sinner"? English doesn't have a word meaning "a morally good act," and the customary "saints and sinners" pairing is actually a cIass ("sinners") and a sub-cIass ("saints"), not two mutually exclusive cIasses."

Christians already believe that we may not do evil deeds that good may come of it; there is no "by the ends" justification of the means possible within Christian thought. Loving the sinner and hating the sin is something of a logical reductio of this wider statement, and then a false one, because it ignores, and is vulnerable, to one key aspect of human nature: that we are all sinners.

And because of the false parallelism of love and hate for sinner and sin (respectively), human weakness often sees "love the sinner, hate the sin" devolve into either hating the sinner or loving the sin.

Gahdhi popularized the common phrasing of the "love the sinner, hate the sin" teaching, but his basis was in something Augustine once said: "Observe due love for the persons and hatred of the sins", which is a more mature approach to the matter. Unlike Gandhi's false maxim, Augustine's instruction doesn't assume a false parallelism; it does not contrast between love and hate, but understands that proper, non-sinful hate must emerge from directed, charitable love. It affirms that both are due, and then to every person.

Unlike "love the sinner, hate the sin", which ultimately is a courting of the lesser evil.