There is a phrase most of us have heard. Maybe used. It usually comes out when we want to sound loving and biblical at the same time. We say: "Hate the sin, love the sinner."
And we mean well. We really do
But in part 3 of the teaching series Stuff Jesus Didn’t Say, Pastor Steve Ingold made a straightforward case: Jesus never said those words. And when you trace where the phrase actually comes from, and what it actually does to people, it becomes clear that “meaning well” really isn’t enough.
Where the phrase actually comes from
The phrase is most often credited to St. Augustine, who instructed nuns to love people while opposing their sins. It was later made famous by Mahatma Gandhi, who wrote: “Hate the sin and not the sinner.”
It was not Jesus who said it. You can’t find it in the Scriptures. It didn’t come from a theologian or a political leader. But it has circulated long enough in Christian culture to start to feel biblical, even when it isn’t. And this particular phrase has done a lot of damage along the way.
The problem with the phrase
Let’s start with the first half. Do followers of Jesus hate sin? Yes. But the reason for this “hate” matters. Sin, at its core, is anything that hurts you or hurts someone else. God hates it for the same reason a parent hates watching their kid get hurt. It’s not about rules. It’s about love.
But the phrase also positions us as judges. We get to identify someone else’s sin, elevate it, and organize our posture toward them around it. And the church has a long history of getting hyper-focused on certain sins while barely noticing others. That focus tends to push whole groups of people to the outside.
Now the second half: “love the sinner.” The problem here is subtle but important. By the time someone says this phrase, they’ve already reduced a person to a label. And when you’re on the receiving end of it, it doesn’t feel like love. It feels like someone has already decided who you are before they’ve ever actually seen you. And the phrase just feels like hate.
What Jesus actually does
Luke 7 gives us a clear picture. Jesus is at a dinner party at the home of a Pharisee named Simon. It’s a public setting where everything revolves around reputation.
A woman walks in. The Bible doesn’t give her a name. It just says she was known in the city as “a sinner.” That is not a casual label. It was socially defining. It informed where she was allowed, how people spoke to her, which people spoke to her, and what she could expect when she walked into a room. So she probably already knew what was waiting for her. And she walked in anyway.
She brings with her a jar of very expensive perfume, she breaks it open, and pours the perfume on Jesus’ feet. This is not some spontaneous gesture; she planned this. She is her walking toward someone she believes might see her differently.
Simon, in the meantime, watches this and thinks to himself: if Jesus were really a prophet, he’d know what kind of person is touching him and pull back. But Jesus doesn’t pull back. He turns toward her.
Then he asks Simon a question that cuts right to it: “Do you see this woman?”
As in: Do you see her. Not her label. Not her reputation. Her. The person.
Jesus then walks through everything Simon didn’t do and everything she did. And he restores her dignity in front of everyone. Not privately but publicly. He talks about her sin and he refuses to let that be the thing that defines her. Instead, he says, “Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”
The only people he confronts are the ones who feel justified in keeping their distance.
What Paul actually says in Romans
Romans 3:23 is often the verse people reach for to support this kind of language. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” True. Very true. But look at the full context.
Paul writes that there is no difference between Jew and Gentile. We are all in the same boat. And then he writes: “all have sinned” (past tense) and “fall short” (present tense). He holds both truths at the same time. He doesn’t pretend the brokenness isn’t real, but he also doesn’t reduce people to a fixed label.
He keeps going: “all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
The most defining reality about a person is not what’s wrong with them. It’s what God has done for them, is doing for them, in them, and through them. Your identity is not defined by your worst moment. It’s defined by what God has already done.
Three things we refuse to do
If we are a church community that is compelled by the words and actions of Jesus, then there are some things we choose not to participate in.
We refuse to keep people at a distance. Jesus didn’t separate people from their sin so he could tolerate one while rejecting the other. The did the opposite: He ate with people, touched them, stayed near them. Proximity changes things. “Hate the sin, love the sinner” lets us believe we can stand at arm’s length and still call it love. But when people hear “hate the sin,” what they often experience is just hate. Grace doesn’t come with an asterisk.
We refuse to define people by one thing. The woman in Luke 7 had a label. Jesus refused to let it be the final word. It’s easy to take one part of someone’s story and let it become the whole story. Jesus keeps asking a different question: Do you see this person? Not your assumption about them. Not the label on them. Do you see them.
We refuse to use harmful language. Phrases like this one have left real people feeling tolerated but not welcomed, talked about but not known. This is especially true for people in the LGBTQ+ community, where the phrase gets used most often and has caused the most harm. But it’s not only them. The same dynamic plays out with people who are divorced, struggling with addiction, previously incarcerated, or undocumented. The message tends to be: you can be here, just not all of who you are. That’s not what Jesus modeled.
The will to embrace
Theologian Miroslav Volf describes what he calls “the will to embrace” as the affirmation of a person’s worth, dignity, and humanity prior to any other judgment. Embraced is the label. That’s who you are. That’s how we see each other.
And on the flip side, Volf writes that exclusion is the very essence of sin. Which means the real problem in that room in Luke 7 wasn’t the woman. It was everyone else. The distance. The quiet decisions about who belongs and who doesn’t.
Jesus didn’t reinforce those lines. He closed the gap. He saw her as God sees her.
That’s what we’re aiming for at Cornerstone. A community where dignity is restored and everyone is included. Not as a policy. As a posture. Because if we’re going to follow Jesus, we don’t build our identity around who we exclude. We become people who make room.
You can watch Steve Ingold’s full message on our YouTube channel.
This article is based on “Stuff Jesus Didn’t Say” taught by Pastor Steve Ingold at Cornerstone Fellowship on March 29, 2026.
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