I was asked by a church member recently about how our church views sin in the life of a Christian. You might say, “How does God feel about us after we sin?” I know that I have talked with many believers over the course of my ministry who sensed that God had a general disgust and disappointment with them all the time.

How can our Father love us and hate our sin at the same time? How should we imagine God’s disposition toward us as we wrestle through life in the flesh? The Scriptures are complex on this topic, but when we fit them together, we see that ultimately, God wants us to know what a good Father he is, wants us to take sin seriously, and wants us to be assured of his love and our salvation. 

Think of God as a Good Father

One distinctive of our church is that we try to put a strong emphasis on the objective side of God’s covenant with us. By objective, I mean that you and I would see our relationship with God based on things outside of us (like the gospel, God’s promises, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, church membership) instead of things inside of us (like our emotions, our theological acumen, or even our sense of faithfulness). The inner life is often so unstable. The Christian life should feel more like the security and stability of being a member of a strong family. Even on your worst day, you are still a son or a daughter, a brother or a sister—and you are loved by your family members. As you go through the ups and downs of life, the objective covenant under the headship of a loving Father is grounding and reassuring. 

Though you may journey through dry seasons and struggle with various sins, your Savior will see you all the way to glory.

But evangelicals have historically put far more emphasis on the subjective side of our relationship with God: “Have you truly accepted Jesus into your heart?” This is an important question, as the Bible tells us, “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless you fail to meet the test!” (2 Cor. 13:5).

But I don’t think this questioning should be the constant experience of God’s children. Being overly introspective can just lead to anxiety and fear. Imagine a child constantly wondering, “Do my parents really love me?” Is that what God wants from us? Doesn’t he want us free from such fears, just as you would want your own children free from such fears? 

It is not uncommon for conservative Christians to believe they are honoring God when they hammer how incredibly hard he is to please—how high his austerity and holiness are. John Owen, in his classical work of Puritan theology Communion with God: Fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, challenges this hardened view of God as Father and even says that it is Satan who wants us to view God this way:

How unwilling is a child to come into the presence of an angry father! Consider then, this in the first place—receiving of the Father as he holds out love to the soul, gives him the honour he aims at, and is exceedingly acceptable to him . . . Whence then is this folly? Men are afraid to have good thoughts of God. They think it a boldness to eye God as good, gracious, tender, kind, loving: I speak of saints; but for the other side, they can judge him hard, austere, severe, almost implacable, and fierce (the very worst affections of the very worst men, and most hated of him (Rom. 1:31; 2 Tim. 3:3)), and think in this they do well. Is not this soul-deceit from Satan? Was it not his design from the beginning to inject such thoughts of God? Assure yourself, then, there is nothing more acceptable to the Father, than for us to keep up our hearts to him as the eternal fountain of all that rich grace which flows out to sinners in the blood of Jesus. (p. 68)

Owen is inviting us to take human fathers as an example. Maybe you can bring to mind two fathers you know—one who laughs with his children, knows them intimately, wants to help them succeed, and loves spending time with them. He also corrects them and teaches them the wisdom he has learned throughout his life. You imagine the great security his children enjoy living under his caring authority.

Now think of another father whose children are afraid of him, and they never seem to be able to please him. He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t show an interest in his children and seems to take no pleasure in them. He is often harsh and critical. 

Which one do you think God wants you to associate with him? Obviously, the first. Who would want to be like the second? Do we think God is like the people we like the least? It may be that you had a father like the second, and so just having the name “Father” makes you think God is like that. If that is you, one of the most important areas of spiritual maturity in your life will be coming to know deeply what it means that God is a good father.

And so, when we come to the question, “How does God my Father think of me when I sin?” we should start with: he is good and loving and devoted to his children. But someone will ask, “But is he always just accepting? Is there no level of sin that would cause his displeasure or even his rejection of us?” The answer is that because of God’s goodness and love for us, of course, our sin grieves him.

Sin Does Grieve God, Just as it Grieves a Good Father

Now, as someone who was a rebellious child, I have seen how deeply a child’s sin can grieve loving parents. When God’s children wander from the church and blatantly live in sin, it saddens him. And a good father is angry at sin.

Ultimately, his desire is for sinners like us to grow in our assurance of his love. And as we grow in that assurance, we will trust in him more deeply and live like him more fully.

In my case, my rebellion against my parents became so severe that when I was fifteen, they told me I was not welcome at home. I refused to obey anything they said or be home when they told me. My parents loved me deeply, and this wickedness in me grieved them profoundly. But they also had to say, “Such behavior cannot go on in our home.” This was right and good.

God does this with people who are in steep rebellion. They are “handed over to Satan” (1 Cor. 5:5) with the hope that they will repent and turn back to their Father and be saved.

Of course, this raises the question of whether someone can lose their salvation. The Bible’s answer is paradoxical. On the one hand, Jesus says of the sheep given to him by the Father:

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. (John 10:27-29)

We are also told by the Apostle Paul, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).

If you are God’s elect, though you may journey through dry seasons and struggle with various sins, your Savior will see you all the way to glory.

But Jesus also warns that there are people who are in him who will be cut out: 

Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. . . . If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. (John 15:2, 6)

There are sins that can have a person removed from God’s family. The church is the household of God, and there are children in this household who can become like me with my parents—they have lost the right to remain in the family. A loving Father cannot allow such evil in his household.

In some way, people who live in outright disobedience and deny Christ were never really Christians in the first place. First John 2:19 describes those who “went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.” Apostasy is real, and Christians are warned against it. Hebrews has numerous such warnings.

For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. (Heb. 6:4-6)

Notice that this does not say the apostate cannot be restored to Christ, but they can’t be restored to repentance. It is possible for a person to so harden themselves that they are no longer able to repent of their sins and turn to Christ in faith and obedience. We are called to beware that such doesn’t happen to us.

But my experience is that the people who tend to have the most tender consciences are nowhere near this kind of hardening to Christ. They are just simply very sensitive to their own sin. Everyone who knows them wants to tell them, “Obviously God loves you. You are so obviously a believer!” They need to hear what a jovial and loving father they have. The image that should always come to mind for them is the Father in the prodigal son story who is eagerly waiting to welcome his son home.

How can we come to view our Father in this way?

Assurance Comes from Spiritual Maturity

The Westminster Confession of Faith has an excellent chapter on assurance. It tells us that it should be the goal of every Christian to come to a place of true assurance of God’s love and grace in this life:

This infallible assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties, before he be partaker of it: yet, being enabled by the Spirit to know the things which are freely given him of God, he may, without extraordinary revelation, in the right use of ordinary means, attain thereunto. And therefore it is the duty of everyone to give all diligence to make his calling and election sure; that thereby his heart may be enlarged in peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, in love and thankfulness to God, and in strength and cheerfulness in the duties of obedience, the proper fruits of this assurance; so far is it from inclining men to looseness. (WCF 18.3, emphasis mine)

What this says is that there are true believers who do not yet enjoy assurance. I’ve met many people like that, who, it is quite clear to me, love the Lord, but their tender consciences keep them from enjoying the assurance.

Sin also keeps us from assurance. Because God must grieve over sin, sin clouds our sense of God’s love and goodness. It is not that God’s devotion to us has changed, but our experience of his love has.  

Again, Westminster recognizes this experience that is common among believers, especially the immature:

True believers may have the assurance of their salvation divers ways shaken, diminished, and intermitted; as, by negligence in preserving of it; by falling into some special sin which woundeth the conscience and grieveth the Spirit; by some sudden or vehement temptation, by God’s withdrawing the light of his countenance, and suffering even such as fear him to walk in darkness and to have no light: yet are they never utterly destitute of that seed of God, and life of faith, that love of Christ and the brethren, that sincerity of heart, and conscience of duty, out of which, by the operation of the Spirit, this assurance may, in due time, be revived; and by the which, in the meantime, they are supported from utter despair. (WCF 18.4)

So, how then does our Father view our sin? He views it the way any loving father would. He hates sin because it keeps us from enjoying his loving presence in our life. He is not reluctant to embrace us, but he does stand against our sin because he knows how destructive it is. But ultimately, his desire is for sinners like us to grow in our assurance of his love. And as we grow in that assurance, we will trust in him more deeply and live like him more fully. Our Father is good. Let us rest in his love.