What We Can Do When We Encounter the Double-Minded

“I hate the double-minded, but I love your law.” (Psalm 119:113)

To hate is “to detest” or “to abhor.” The psalmist positions himself to hate everything that hates. If the psalmist sees God hating something, he is going to placed himself right next to God and share that hatred.

George Zemek wrote, “When the righteous … hate evil, this is not primarily an emotion of the human heart. It is a passionate disowning in faith of the evil or the evil person whom God Himself has rejected. In his hatred the wise man is on the side of the divine judgment.” (The Word of God in the Child of God, pg. 262)

He hates what God hates. What specifically is the object of his hatred here? It is the “double-minded.”

Based on the context of Psalm 119, we can assume the “double-minded” hate God’s Law. The question is, “How?”

The “double-minded” are people who seem to be devoted to the Lord but allow their loyalties to be divided. They look to have one foot in heaven and one foot in the world. They are serving 2 masters (Matthew 6:24), which, you might remember, was the issue of the prophets of Baal that Elijah confronted (I Kings 18:21).

Why would the psalmist “hate” these men? He hates them because they adore uncertainties and absolutes.

The “double-minded” is the man who says he trusts God until the trial gets unbearable. This is the man who professes Christ at camp and then goes back to his hypocritical lifestyle when he gets home. This is the man who publicly opposes crude humor in the workplace and then laughs at it in the privacy of his own home while watching a movie.

The “double-minded” drives the psalmist closer to God’s Law. The fear of hypocrisy should drive us to a deeper commitment to God.