You confound, first, two things-abhorring " workers of iniquity," and "hating Esau." In the last case the children had done neither good nor evil. The former is moral detestation of ill-doing and ill-doers in God's moral character and government, which must be the case morally; the other is the sovereign election of faith, and rejection of Esau. But grace reigning through righteousness makes the case plain. It is what makes the cross glorious- God glorified in it. God is love, but He abhors evil-must in His nature. Can love operate in accepting evil and evil-doers in their evil? Then righteousness is denied, not merely ignored, by God in definitive judgment-i.e., if He accepts the sinner in his sins. But propitiation is made-the death of Christ satisfies the claim of righteous judgment (though it does a great deal more), and hence love flows freely according to righteousness.
Hence Christ has not only borne our sins, but has glorified God in the cross. Without it there was neither righteousness nor love. Now grace reigns, but it reigns through righteousness to eternal life. Less would have been contradiction. Sin having entered without the cross, at least love would have remained hidden and powerless, for indifference to evil is not divine love. Light and love go together in His nature, and His authority acts in righteousness to maintain right; but by the cross love is not only free in its proclamations to all the world, but divine righteousness is "upon all them that believe." The new nature judges sin morally. "Do not I hate them that hate Thee? yea, I hate them right sore, as though they were mine enemies." But now I see propitiation made, justice and love for me, and in the highest act of love I can carry out the love according to righteousness to God's glory. He is righteous and just to forgive; and, much more, we are made the righteousness of God in Him. God cannot but hate evil; and, morally speaking, He hates, detests the evildoer. It is not a passion as in us, but His moral judgment, that of His nature, to be made good by judgment in righteousness. The cross has done this, and love acts on the footing of righteousness, but a righteousness not in the object, but for him on the part of God. While producing fruits of it in the quickened soul, it does not reconcile God, but His holy righteous nature requires the propitiation; but when made, and righteousness glorified (and God has given in love, and Christ Himself too, for it), then love is free, and grace reigns through righteousness. Man knows this through faith, and returns in entire confidence, and is reconciled to God, his heart in perfect order as thus brought) according to what God is, for He is glorified in the cross as the ground and means of His reconciliation.
The reconciliation of things (Col. 1) is that they have been turned away and polluted from their natural relationship to God, and they are restored purified to this. They could not be guilty as we, but they were polluted; so the tabernacle, which represented them in the midst of Israel.
The work of Christ is the basis of all. They are to be reconciled. At present the created heavens are the seat of disorder, as well as the earth; but we are reconciled, having believed in the efficacy of that by which He has made peace, and being brought back to God. We were by nature the children of wrath.
There is the necessary moral outgoing of God's nature against evil; but " God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us," etc. Here it is the new creation, through redemption, tells how wrath and love go together, God's moral judgment and sovereign goodness.