The fall of Satan and his angels is shrouded behind a veil and cloaked in mystery.1 Throughout the history of the church, Christian orthodoxy has regarded the devil and his minions as angels who were created by God but fell into sin and misery. William Gouge (1575–1653) wrote, “The devils by creation were good angels, as powerful, wise, quick, speedy, invisible, and immortal as any other angels.”2 The Puritans believed that demons shared the same nature as angels, but through rebellion against God they became subject to divine judgment. When these angels fell, Gouge said, “They lost not their natural substance, and essential properties thereof, no more than what man lost when he fell. . . . Only the quality of his nature and properties is altered from good to evil.”3 Accordingly, the Westminster Larger Catechism aptly states, “God by his providence permitted some of the angels, willfully and irrecoverably, to fall into sin and damnation, limiting and ordering that, and all their sins, to his own glory” (WLC 19).
Lucifer: The Anointed Cherub
Writing extensively on the fallen angels, Jonathan Edwards (1703–1558) believed that Lucifer—the name that many in church history have given to Satan before his fall—was created to be immensely superior to all the other angels and held a type of leadership, dominion, and strength over the other angels. Lucifer before his fall, Edwards writes, “was the chief of all the angels, of the greatest natural capacity, strength and wisdom, and highest in honor and dignity, the brightest of all those stars.”4 Edwards pointed to Isaiah 14:12:—“How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of dawn!”—as an indication that Lucifer outshined all the other angels that were created. Edwards believed the title of “the anointed cherub” (Ezek. 28:14) points to the fact that Lucifer was created as the highest of all the angels. Lucifer is also described in Ezekiel 28:14 as residing “on the holy mountain of God,” who walked “in the midst of the stones of fire.” In Ezekiel 28:16, there seems to be a reference to the “covering cherub” (KJV) who resides in the temple’s Holy of Holies and use his wings to cover the throne of God. In this context, Edwards believed this cherub to be the being who was in the closest proximity to the throne of God. Edwards noted that this was a great honor and caused him to be exalted above all other angels. Yet, Edwards quickly pointed out, as the second person of the Godhead, Christ is exalted supremely higher than Lucifer. In other words, Edwards speculated that while Lucifer was only near the throne, Christ, being supremely higher and more excellent in His being, sat down forever with God on the throne. This conclusion results in Edwards’ astonishing statement:
Lucifer, in having the excellency of all those glorious things that were about him all summed up in him, he was a type of Christ, in whom all the glory and excellency of all elect creatures is more properly summed [up] as the head and fountain of all, as the brightness of all that reflects the light of the sun is summed up in the sun.5
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 I hope that you reach the end of your life and can say with Joshua, “I am about to go the way of all the earth, and you know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one word has failed of all the good things that the LORD your God promised concerning you. All have come to pass for you; not one of them has failed” (Josh 23:14).

Now Joshua was old and advanced in years, and the LORD said to him, “You are old and advanced in years, and there remains yet very much land to possess… Now therefore divide this land for an inheritance to the nine tribes and half the tribe of Manasseh”
Joshua 13:1, 7
Can you imagine promises so certain? The Israelites had wandered in the wilderness for 40 years because of their unbelief. God had promised them a land, and they refused to believe Him. Fast-forward and Joshua has brought them in and they have begun the conquest of Canaan. They had defeated king after king, but there was still work to be done. Joshua is too old to continue with the Israelites, so what is he to do? “…divide this land for an inheritance…”
Can you imagine promises so certain? Divide up the land. What land? The land you haven’t conquered yet, but the land that was promised.
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Our culture calls many things “hate speech”, but Scripture clearly defines it as any speech which denigrates people’s nature as God’s image-bearers and any speech—or silence—that promotes sinful and destructive behavior.  In order to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must pray for them, acknowledge their personhood, and lovingly seek their good by confronting sin when necessary.  The world will call us hateful for this, but this is what Scripture calls love—and that’s all that matters.

You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
-Leviticus 19:17-18, ESV

In our day many apply the term “hate speech” quite liberally.  The Left often uses it for any view that makes them feel uncomfortable.  Balking at this, the Right often responds by denying the entire concept of “hate speech”.  But Scripture must define our terms, so we cannot call everything “hate speech” like the Left, but we also cannot deny its existence like the Right.  This post will examine how Scripture defines hate speech.
Denigrating God’s Image
While we may debate what constitutes hate speech, it is clear from Scripture that hateful speech is sinful—and that God takes it very seriously.  The tongue is a restless evil full of deadly poison (James 3:8), so we are foolish to underestimate its destructive power: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit” (Proverbs 18:21).  We will be either justified or condemned by our words (Matthew 12:37).  Thus, Scripture is clear how we must speak: “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear….Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving” (Ephesians 4:29, 5:4) and “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Colossians 4:6).  Therefore, we are sinning whenever our words are corrupting or foolish; not helpful for building others up, gracious, beneficial, or fitting to the occasion.  But sinful speech is not necessarily hateful speech.  Jesus links speech to hate in the Sermon on the Mount:

You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
-Matthew 5:21-22, ESV

Here, “you fool” was a serious insult that went beyond mere foolishness to denote worthlessness.[1]  While Scripture sometimes calls people worthless, we dare not use such language since we do not know the eternal state of people’s souls.  Such language denigrates people by referring to them as something lower than people made in God’s image.  It is the most common manifestation of the anger of man that does not produce the righteousness of God (James 1:20): “Terms of abuse are not a heightened form of anger; they are its most obvious and common expression”.[2]  That is why Jesus equates such speech with murder:

Jesus establishes a new divine law when He…proclaims in threefold repetition that the term of abuse which is regarded as harmless though spoken in ill-humour is an offence worthy of death….This paradox of unparalleled sharpness is designed to bring home to the hearers the terrible seriousness of sins of the tongue in God’s eyes and hence to save them from having on their consciences the everyday ill feelings towards their brothers which might appear innocuous but in fact poison relationships.
-Joachim Jeremias, “Ῥακά,” ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans: 1964: 975–976.

Therefore, hate speech according to Scripture would be any speech that does not recognize another person as a person created in the image of God.  Obviously, things like racial slurs fit into that category, but so do misogynistic or misandristic terms that view women and men respectively as inferior. Since our culture despises marriage, some culturally acceptable terms for spouses would be hate speech according to Scripture, such as a husband referring to his wife as his “ball and chain”.  Our culture’s disdain for children also means that several terms for them are actually hate speech, like “rug rats”.  For the same reason, I refrain from saying “unborn” or “preborn” in favor of “children in the womb” to avoid diminishing their humanity.
Biblically, hate speech also includes viewing a person’s identity as part of a certain demographic or lifestyle as more important than his or her personhood.  The primary and most important identity of any person is as a person—a man or woman made in the image of God.  Second is identity in relation to God.  We are all sinners by nature and either separated from God because of our sin or reconciled to God by being in union with Jesus Christ through faith.  Then—and only then—come other factors, starting with our unchangeable identity as male or female.  We err when we allow any other factor of our identity to supersede this hierarchy.  Any factor can supplant this identity in our minds, but this erroneous prioritization is especially prevalent in the alphabet abomination where sexual orientation is the locus of identity.  They are not gays, lesbians, homosexuals, or anything else but people who practice homosexuality (1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:10).  While our sin nature is an important part of our identity, we must not make our particular sins to be so central to our identity that they supplant our humanity or relationship with God.  All of these are hate speech by the biblical definition.
It is equally important to note what is not hate speech according to Scripture.  While any term that emphasizes demographics or particular sin over personhood and relationship with God is hate speech, that does not mean that all strong or less-than-complimentary language is hate speech.  Scripture is full of sharp word that our culture would consider hateful.  Proverbs and Ecclesiastes frequently refer to people as fools, and God Himself often mocks the folly of sinful people.  For example, we have previously seen how God calls the complacent women of Samaria “cows” (Amos 4:1).   Jesus continues this practice by calling the religious leaders blind guides, blind fools, and sons of vipers (Matthew 23).
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