A prime example of parsing good speech from bad is the notorious notion of “hate speech,” which involves designating certain kinds of remarks, gestures, expressions, and writings as intentionally hateful and thus worthy of regulation and even criminalization. Source; The Heritage Foundation

Recently I linked the iniquities of mankind to hating God. I went as far as to insinuate that acts of sin were a way of telling God that we hate Him, hate speech. My way of interpreting this is founded in reversing the words of Jesus. 

John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

If you do not love Jesus, disobey Him.

I want to make this point as clear as possible, this is not about how God feels about His creation, it is about how we treat God.

Let us take a brief step back to a recent quote from Genesis 3:16 Amplified Bible

To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth; In pain you will give birth to children; Yet your desire and longing will be for your husband, And he will rule [with authority] over you and be responsible for you.”

God’s will is that we, the church, become betrothed to His Son, Jesus Christ, who shall have authority over us and be responsible for us.

This is the key to understanding how God can put aside our iniquities because He has relinquished His need for justice to His Son who by authority and responsibility has said to the Father “Her sins fall on me.”

Since Jesus lived and died as the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, His free will sacrifice gives Him the right to declare His Bride is cleansed of all uncleanness by His death and resurrection. When He ascended to the Right Hand of the Throne of God He has the right to declare that His Bride is covered by the shedding of His blood.

It is not a matter of justice any longer, it is a matter of love.

Are you betrothed to the Son and do you love Him?

Exodus 20:5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,

I would never ask anyone to do something that I myself have not done. My conclusions are mine and mine alone. Only the Word of God can support any meaningful conclusions.

The first thing that I wanted to ponder was the issue of hating God. Why would our iniquities be considered as hating God?

International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia

Iniquity:

in-ik’-wi-ti (‘awon; anomia): In the Old Testament of the 11 words translated “iniquity,” by far the most common and important is ‘awon (about 215 times). Etymologically, it is customary to explain it as meaning literally “crookedness,” “perverseness,” i.e. evil regarded as that which is not straight or upright, moral distortion (from ‘iwwah, “to bend,” “make crooked,” “pervert”). Driver, however (following Lagarde), maintains that two roots, distinct in Arabic, have been confused in Hebrew, one equals “to bend,” “pervert” (as above), and the other equals “to err,” “go astray”; that ‘awon is derived from the latter, and consequently expresses the idea of error, deviation from the right path, rather than that of perversion (Driver, Notes on Sam, 135 note) Whichever etymology is adopted, in actual usage it has three meanings which almost imperceptibly pass into each other:

I consider that this is a biblical interpretation where studied men have made their own conclusions about the meaning of iniquity. All that verse tells me is that God entreats those behaviors as hate crimes against Him. He takes it personally.

The second thing I notice is a generational effect in which the iniquities of the father are passed down by the life lived and what children are taught. We learn first from our parents and if they do not love God, what are the children being taught?

The children are the only ones who can break the gene cycle of unacceptable behaviors in God’s point of view. What we think does not change how God views these issues.

In conclusion, I must admit that a pondering of any one verse to discover a truth cannot be measured alone and must be weighed against all relevant scripture that God has given us to understand His vision for us and how it can possibly improve our understanding of God, His will and how that improves our lives.