In trying to understand what it means to love God and then to hate Him, we cannot use the standard ways of understanding love to do so. Many interpret Romans 9:13, where it says “Just as it is written, “JACOB I LOVED, BUT ESAU I HATED,” as simply meaning that God loved Esau less than He did Jacob. In other places where the Bible uses the word “hate” it is interpreted as “love less” as well. However, when Scripture speaks of some men loving God and others as hating Him, it is self-evident that the word “hate” is not used to mean “love less” in those instances. All human beings do not love God and are not distinguished by their degree of love for God. Love and hate are opposites. We are commanded to love God with all of our being and yet unbelievers are said to hate God. Exodus 20:5 says this clearly: “You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me.” But human beings have a very high view of themselves and along with their deceived hearts and ignorance of God they will not admit to hating God. They even convince themselves that they love Him. It is vital, therefore, to get it across in some way to people what it means to hate God. After all, Romans 5:10 teaches us that Christ died for His enemies and only enemies need to be reconciled: “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.”
Romans 8:7 gives us another clue in our search: “because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so.” The mind that is the fleshly mind and is focused on the flesh, even if it is very religious, is hostility toward God. Romans 1:30 gives us a list of sins that God has turned people over to: “slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents.” The “haters of God” part of the list is followed by insolent, arrogant, and the boastful. Surely, then, whatever it means to hate God it is linked with pride. Combined with the mind set on the flesh as hostility toward God we can at least see that self-centeredness and pride are components of hating God.
It is also important to note that the object of hatred is the true character of the true God and not some of the false things that people set out about Him. In some way all people could have something they would call love toward God if we watered down the character of God enough and set out enough things about Him that would please the carnal and selfish heart. But the assertion of Scripture is that all sinners that have not been born from above or born again and reconciled to God do hate Him and the truth about Him. So if we are going to try to understand what it means to hate God, we have to note that it is the true character of God that people hate. The god that is declared and talked about in our day bears little resemblance to the God of Scripture. It is no wonder that people go around thinking that they love God when in fact they hate Him. People will love other people and God as long as they think other people and God love them. We love those who love us (Luke 6:32). That is one reason why modern evangelism is clearly bankrupt when it starts with “God loves you.” Sinners love themselves and all who love them. They can believe without any grace at all that God loves them and therefore that they love Him.
There are causes and reasons why we love and hate things or people. If I take a bite of food and declare that I hate it, I am saying that it is disagreeable to my taste buds and that the food displeasing to eat. If I take a bite of food and declare that I love it, I am saying that my taste buds are delighted and I have pleasure in eating that food. When an unbeliever says that s/he hates another person, that person is saying that s/he is repulsed by the mannerisms or character of that person. We can hate something about another person or we can hate the person. That usually means that we hate how that person acts toward us or we hate the person because they have offended us and so we hate what they do because the other does things that do not conform to my self-love. In one sense at times we think of hating another as being repulsed by the other. It might even boil down in many cases to hating the character of the person and what they stand for.
For the moment we can think of hatred for God as being repulsed by His true character. This is why we must declare the truth of who God is. Until people are repulsed to some degree by the true character of God they will not see their sinful nature and hearts. They will not know what it means to have a change of heart and what it means to be born from above. Until people see that their spiritual taste buds (as dead in sin) are set against God and true love they will not know what sin really is and then what true love really is. The fact remains that all unbelievers hate God and are repulsed by His true character. Instead of changing the character of God to make Him pleasing to sinners, the truth of God must be preached so that sinners can be changed to make them pleasing to Him.
God Loves... Himself 
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