It is an unfortunate habit of some Christians to rightly say that people should imitate the character of God (Ephesians 5:1) while selectively choosing what characteristics to emulate. Often I find that in an effort to emphasize the love of God and the love that God expects of us, people will try to draw attention away from God's other characteristics, even going as far as to say that humans should not imitate them. What does the Bible actually say about this?
I have found no shortage of people who will tell me that humans should try their best to replicate the love of God, which is with great clarity attested to by Scripture (1 John 4:8, John 3:16, Romans 5:8, etc), yet I know of few who acknowledge that the Bible indisputably credits God with having a hatred for certain sinners (Psalm 5:5-6, 11:5, Proverbs 3:32, etc). A partial imitation of God is not in accordance with what the Bible instructs of us. If we are to imitate God and imitate his love, then what could we appeal to as justification for not sharing his hatred?
Any excuses for imitating one but not the other would amount to purely emotional or arbitrary lines that the Bible never speaks of. No, hating someone does not mean you have malicious feelings for them, nor does it mean that you don't love them or that you cannot minister to them (see here [1]). God is just (Isaiah 61:8), he has described in specific detail what his prescriptions for terrestrial justice consist of through Mosaic Law, and his commands for us to love each other do not contradict or nullify his commands for us to be just (Micah 6:8). Likewise, it does not follow from the commands to love that hatred is necessarily wrong on our part (and it certainly is not on God's).
I used hatred as an example of an aspect of God's nature few Christians seem to know of or have a willingness to imitate, yet the same can sometimes be said of his characteristic of justice. Some Christians are so focused on merely persuading people to internally embrace a certain belief about Christ that they act as if justice is now something reserved exclusively for the afterlife, as if God does not care about Christians opposing or affirming the penalties of modern legal systems, as if his moral nature changed (Malachi 3:6) and thus his commands in Mosaic Law about justice are outdated, as if the command to love others and evangelize them nullifies other moral obligations! We are to imitate God's character in its fullness without contradiction, just as God loves, hates, forgives, and judges in consistent ways.
Let us not cherry pick God's nature and in doing so arbitrarily choose what aspects of God's character we have a moral obligation to imitate. If God is good, and we have an objective obligation to be good as God is, then there is no place for selective conformity to goodness. Our commitment is either inconsistent and therefore illogical and partial or consistent and therefore thorough and sound.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/does-god-hate.html
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