Love touches hearts. Love bonds people together. Love causes us to feel connected. So when there’s a lack of love, then we feel it deeply. Hatred can manifest in more than one way. You may not have realised this. The Bible says that hatred is the cause of murder. So if you read that a murder has taken place, there’s one thing you can be sure of, that underneath it was hatred; and all it took was a provocation. The person becomes provoked, their anger flares up, their hatred flows out and expresses as murder.
Let’s see if I can find the verse on that. In 1 John 3 – it tells us that he that hates his brother is a murderer. What an incredible thing that is. See, we’ve already read that he who hates his brother is in darkness. But the Bible tells us also that the person who hates his brother is a murderer – verse 15 of chapter 3. Let’s read it from verse 14: “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”
So we need to see here in this passage, a murderer takes life from someone. A murderer takes a person’s life. So, if someone is murdered, the motivation was hatred and the life was taken away. So, the first expression of hatred is violent or angry acts against another person. That can be physical violence, or it can be angry words. That’s why when someone is really angry, you will feel frightened because behind it there’ll be a spirit of murder. You can literally feel afraid because this could get out of control.
We’re not designed to hate people. We’re not designed to live with hate in our heart. We’re designed to be loving. When hatred is in our heart, we can’t see clearly, we react against people and then attempt to hurt them. People can really hurt you with their words and you walk away, and you feel your life has been drained away, end up in pain. It can take you some time to recover.
Another form of hatred – what I’ll call ‘cold love’. The love that God has is alive and warm and vibrant. It touches us. Cold love – the person’s heart is closed up against you. They are polite, they don’t do anything that’s really bad, but there’s no flow of love. It’s like a coldness in their heart. So their behaviour is ok, but you don’t feel the love at all. You look and you think, what’s wrong with this? But the heart is closed up. I have found whenever there’s cold love, underneath there’ll be hate. It’s just the person’s learned to manage it and not to learn how to express the love of God.
So you see, the Bible’s very clear – hatred in your heart causes blindness. You can’t see clearly in relationships; causes you to live in darkness; and it affects your relationships with people. The Bible tells us – demonic spirits can cause blindness. In 2 Corinthians 4:4 – “Now, the god of this world has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe, lest the light of the gospel would shine in.”
So another cause of spiritual blindness is the activity of demonic spirits. The Bible says – the god of this world – it’s talking about evil spirits. It says – it blinds the mind so they can’t see, they can’t understand. You share about Jesus with them, and they don’t understand. They might even say something like this: “I can’t see that.” They’re actually spiritually blind.
This is why we need to pray for the unsaved. All our efforts to reach people, we need to pray for them. We’re praying for the blindness to go. We’re praying for demonic influence to lift off them so that their mind becomes clear and they can see the truth and embrace the truth.