"Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner" Isn't in the Bible

Did you know "hate the sin, love the sinner" — one of the most common pastoral aphorisms in modern Christianity — isn't actually a Bible verse?

The phrase traces back to Augustine of Hippo, in Letter 211 (c. AD 424), addressed to a community of women religious. The Latin reads: "Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum" — "With love for mankind and hatred of sins." Augustine was making a pastoral point about how to discipline within a community, not establishing a doctrinal principle for all of Christian ethics.

The modern English phrasing — "Hate the sin and not the sinner" — was popularized in 1929 by Mohandas Gandhi in his autobiography (An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth): "Hate the sin and not the sinner is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced." Gandhi was a Hindu drawing on a Christian theologian to make a moral observation. From Augustine to Gandhi to twentieth-century evangelical sermon illustrations, the phrase entered Christian discourse — but it never entered Scripture.

What does the Bible actually say?

The biblical picture is more textured than the misquote allows. Scripture does NOT cleanly separate "the sin" from "the sinner":

— Psalm 5:5 — "The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers."
— Psalm 11:5 — "The LORD tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence."
— Proverbs 6:16-19 — "There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him..." (the list includes both actions and the people who do them).

And yet, the same Bible insists that God loves sinners:

— John 3:16 — "For God so loved the world..."
— Romans 5:8 — "But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Both are true. The Reformed reading holds them together: sin isn't something the sinner has (like a coat to remove); it's the orientation of the heart apart from grace (Matthew 15:18-20). When God loves a sinner, He loves the actual person — and His love is costly love, requiring the cross. The misquote's danger is making love-of-sinner emotionally cheap — a benevolent shrug at sin while pretending to engage the person. Scripture's posture is the opposite. God hates evildoers as evildoers, and loves them so much He sent His Son to die in their place — treating sin and sinner together at Calvary.

The cross didn't separate the sin from the sinner. It treated them together. Christ died for sinners — not just for sins.

📖 Passages: Psalm 5:5, Psalm 11:5, Proverbs 6:16-19, John 3:16, Romans 5:8, Matthew 15:18-20