Psalm 45:7

“Be ye angry, and sin not.” There can hardly be goodness in a man if he is not angry at sin; he who loves truth must hate every false way. How our Lord Jesus hated it when the temptation came! Three times it assailed him in different forms, but he always met it with, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

He hated it in others; nonetheless fervently because he showed his hate more often in tears of pity than in words of rebuke. Yet what language could be more stern, more Elijah-like, than the words, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer.”

He hated wickedness so much that he bled to wound it to the heart; he died that it might die; he was buried that he might bury it in his tomb; and he rose that he might forever trample it beneath his feet.

Christ is in the Gospel, and that Gospel is opposed to wickedness in every shape. Wickedness arrays itself in fair garments, and imitates the language of holiness; but the precepts of Jesus, like his famous scourge of small cords, chase it out of the temple, and will not tolerate it in the Church.

So, too, in the heart where Jesus reigns, what war there is between Christ and Belial! And when our Redeemer will come to be our Judge, those thundering words, “Depart, ye cursed,” which are, indeed, but a prolongation of his life-teaching concerning sin, will manifest his abhorrence of iniquity. As warm as is his love to sinners, so hot is his hatred of sin; as perfect as is his righteousness, so complete will be the destruction of every form of wickedness. O you glorious champion of right, and destroyer of wrong, for this cause hath God, even thy God, anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.