God’s covenant with all mankind is based on a legally binding contract, a covenant, an agreement based on love. A marriage of a man and a woman is a model of this agreement, this covenant, this binding contract.
“Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as [a service] to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as Christ is head of the church, Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives should be subject to their husbands in everything [respecting both their position as protector and their responsibility to God as head of the house].
Husbands, love your wives [seek the highest good for her and surround her with a caring, unselfish love], just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify the church, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word [of God], so that [in turn] He might present the church to Himself in glorious splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy [set apart for God] and blameless. Even so husbands should and are morally obligated to love their own wives as [being in a sense] their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own body, but [instead] he nourishes and protects and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members (parts) of His body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall be joined [and be faithfully devoted] to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery [of two becoming one] is great; but I am speaking with reference to [the relationship of] Christ and the church.”
Ephesians 5:22-32 Amplified Bible
God’s ten commandments are the legal basis for this covenant between man and God. What happens when a person violates the covenant? Before the Messiah Jesus, the Christ came to dwell among men, the penalties for individual or societal violations were severe. Under the new covenant, we have an advocate, a lawyer, that intercedes for violators who repent, as stated in 1 John 2:1.
Whether the individual violator or the nation that is the violator, refuses to repent, refuses to turn from their sin and seek forgiveness and submit to God, the covenant is broken. The unrepentant violator(s) betray God’s love.
God created the world and all that is in it. The unrepentant sinner has betrayed God’s love and the covenant is now null and void.
Important Facts:
Fact number one: God hates sin. He hates all who do evil.
Fact number two: God loves the world and proves this love by sending to earth his son Jesus Christ to save us. God is not indifferent to our hearts or our behaviors.
Fact number three: God has employed many intermediaries over thousands of years to restore covenant breakers.
Fact number four: God is extraordinarily patient, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.
Fact number five: God is not indifferent to the behaviors of mankind. His covenant is based on love. Looking back to fact number one, God hates sin and sinners. How does this work?
Context is king. In the context of the Bible, love and hate are not antonyms. If you require an antonym of love, indifference works. When person A is indifferent to the values and behaviors of person B, person A will not feel betrayed by person B for any reason.
In the case of holy matrimony, a man and a woman are legally and spiritually bound together by a marriage covenant. If either commits adultery, this is a betrayal of the love of the other party to the covenant.
Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), a Holocaust survivor discovered for himself, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
What, then, is hate? Hate is love betrayed.
“He who hardens his neck and refuses instruction after being often reproved (corrected, criticized), Will suddenly be broken beyond repair.” Proverbs 29:1 AMP
John White
Rockwall, Texas
John N. White 
Leave a comment