The Hate and Love of God are the Same

How is it possible for the following to both be true:

1. God is always loving, gracious and merciful to sinners
   
2. God is always just, lawful and hates sin
   

God is like rubbing alcohol. When you have a diseased cut, you might pour it in. What will happen, simultaneously, is terrible pain and healing. The pain is the death of the disease as the alcohol kills it. The healing is that same death, that same pain.

The key is to understand evil as the Socratic (and, yes, Augustinian) "absence of God."

What is dryness but the absence of moisture.
What is cold but the absence of heat.
What is darkness but the absence of light.
In what way is rain or sun violent? Because, by their nature, they destroy (respetively) dryness, cold and darkness. We could say the Sun had clobbered the darkness, or banished or scattered it, but that wouldn't be correct, technically, since there was nothing there to be clobbered or banished or scattered. The Sun "annihilated" darkness just by infusing it with what it lacked: light.

What is death but the absence of life?
What is unbelief but the absence of faith?
What are lies but the absence of Truth?
What is hate but the absence of Love?
How does He smash death? By providing Immortality.
How does He end unbelief and lies? By providing that Truth which gives faith.
How does He cure hatred? By loving us so much we are moved (and enabled!) to love Him back, and to lover one another. ("We love Him because He first loved us.")
How does God "cobber" the gracelessness in this world? By bringing the world His Grace.
How does He counter ignorance? By coming to teach us and show us.
That's how His gracious Presence is reconciled with His hostility to evil: they are one and the same.