Workers of Iniquity?

The phrase "workers of iniquity" is found about 21 times in the KJV, but not once in the NASB. And in Psalm 5:5 scripture says God hates or hated workers of iniquity. YLT goes with hated all [those] working iniquity. Thus using our English translations, God both loved the lost, (for God loved humanity in this way, John 3:16) and hated the lost, (depart from Me, you perpetrators of iniquity, Luke 13:27).

One of the efforts to resolve this difficulty is to draw a distinction between the person and the action, God loves the sinner (john 3:16) but hates the sin done by the workers of iniquity, Psalm 5:5.

Another more probable effort is to point out that scripture uses "love and hate" to express a comparison between two levels of love. We are to love Jesus more than we love our parents.(Luke 14:26).

Lastly those born anew, thus spiritually children of God, are loved in an additional way, as a family member or friend, (phileo love in addition to agape love).

 

I do not think we can get around the plain sense of Psalm 5:5, God hates the person doing evil. My best effort, above, is God loves those doing evil (John 3:16) but loves in an additional way (Phileo) those washed and no longer doing evil in God's eyes.

We can find various efforts to capture the full meaning of "iniquity" such as evildoing, injustice, boastful, arrogant, persons of bloodshed, persons of deceit. But God "hates" the workers (those doing the evil thing) rather than just the evil being done.