How is Satan getting us to hate instead of love?
In answering this, it is important to realize that the believer in Christ has THREE enemies, the WORLD, the FLESH, and the DEVIL. Let’s consider each of these and then see how “the Devil” is able to use “the world” to stir up “the flesh” resulting in hatred towards others.
The WORLD is the whole “world system” that is under the influence of the Devil (Satan). This is confirmed in 1st John 5:19, “…the WHOLE WORLD lies under the sway of the wicked one” (NKJV). This includes the world of entertainment, art, politics, technology and even religion.
The FLESH is the fallen, sinful nature of man. We read of it in Romans 7:18-20, “For I know that in me (that is, in MY FLESH) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.”
The DEVIL (Satan) is the fallen angel Lucifer who rebelled against God (see Isaiah 14:12-14) and who tempts man to rebel against God as well (see Genesis 3:1-6; 2nd Corinthians 11:3 and Revelation 20:1-2) and to hate one another.
These “three enemies” are seen together in Ephesians 2:1-3, “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of THIS WORLD, according to the PRINCE OF THE POWER OF THE AIR, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the LUSTS OF OUR FLESH, fulfilling the DESIRES OF THE FLESH and OF THE MIND, were by nature children of wrath, just as others.” This passage clearly teaches us what we have already seen; the DEVIL uses the WORLD to stir up the lusts and desires of the FLESH. Satan can’t “make us sin,” but he can and he does use the enticements of the world to allure the evil nature in us. When we succumb to his temptations, we then commit sin. A good example of this is seen in 1st Samuel 11:1-5 where King David “saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful” (verse 2) and then he “took her” and “lay with her” (verse 4) and she became pregnant (verse 5). It was surely the Devil who used this beautiful woman to tempt David to sin. David could have “looked away” instead of continuing to “look upon her with lust in his heart,” but he succumbed to the temptation and sinned by committing adultery. The sin of David illustrates what we have been learning about our three enemies and how the WORLD is used by the DEVIL to allure the FLESH into sin. James 1:13-15 speaks to this, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings for death.”
As to your specific question, the DEVIL gets us to “hate instead of love” in the same way; he uses something in the WORLD to stir up our FLESH. We see this especially in the world of politics and religion. As I write, the people living in the United States are very divided politically and we can even say there is real “hatred towards each other” because of this. We see the same division and hatred in the religious world. Scripture shows us that this kind of hatred reared its ugly head at the very dawn of man’s creation. After the Devil tempted Adam and Eve to rebel against God, he then stirred up the heart of their son Cain to murder his brother Abel because of religion (see Genesis 4:1-8). As we read this story, we see that it was “Cain’s religion” that caused him to hate his brother, for Cain was trying to come to God through his own “good works” and Abel came to God by faith in “God’s way of salvation.” God accepted Abel’s sacrifice of a slain animal but He reject Cain’s sacrifice of the crops he had grown and this resulted in Cain being jealous of Abel and this in turn led to hating him and killing him. We read thousands of years later in 1st John 3:12 & 15, “Not as Cain who was of the WICKED ONE and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brother’s righteous…Whoever hates his brother is a murderer.” So, we see that the WICKED ONE used Cain’s WORLDLY RELGION to stir up his FLESH to hate and to murder his brother. (452.3) (DO)