“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love
you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20
Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. 21
But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.22
If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. 23
Whoever hates me hates my Father also. 24 If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. 25
But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause. “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will
bear witness about me.27 And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.
Christianity has enjoyed a favored position in our culture for several centuries. But as one commentator put it: The sun seems to be setting on the Christian period
of Western history. The day may be soon coming when we will find ourselves reading John 15 more often than we have in the past. There is evidence on many sides that we have already entered a period of more open opposition to historic Christianity and
that, in turn, has almost always led, in human history, to more overt opposition, if not outright persecution. We see quite clearly the open disdain for or the patronizing treatment of Christians and Christianity in films and on television and more and more
public criticism of evangelical Christianity in the news and in Social Media from top to bottom.
But let us not make the mistake to think that we are unique on this front or that we are the only ones to have been made to endure such hostilities. And we must be
on guard for there is a greater problem for us than when the church in the world has enemies and it is when the world is in the church. This is what we have in our day: The church as an accomplice to the world’s ungodly agenda.
Jesus is not talking about sociological reasons for the hatred of the world toward true believers. There may be sociological reasons, but the hatred He is talking
about goes deeper than that, it is more visceral, more fundamental and more inevitable. It is a theological hatred. One writer put it this way: It is a hatred of God, it is a desire to eradicate God, and all vestiges of the true God. The world does not
hate Christians, does not hate us, first and foremost for what we are and do. They hate us because of our association with Jesus Christ, because, with the uncanny power of the ‘unreborn’ nature, they can smell Christ on us.
That is why Jesus, in v. 21, says that the world will hate Christians, “because of my name.” The only way we will be able to avoid this animosity is for us
to commit treason…for us to distance ourselves from Jesus and from all who embrace Him as the world’s King and Savior. So long as we are fully and uncompromising with Christ, called by His Name, we will be forced to deal with increasing animosity and hatred
from the powers of this world. That is the Lord’s great point here.
See what He says: They hated me, he says, even though they had no cause. Surely, I said some hard things to them, but I also gave them evidence enough that what
I was saying was true and that I was willing to receive them if only they would repent of their ways. But, it is more even than that. “He who hates me,” Jesus went on to say, “hates my Father as well.”
Paul will later tell us in Rom. 8:7: “the sinful mind is hostile to God.” There is in the heart of fallen man, a natural and deep-seated rebellion against
God. It expresses itself in a thousand ways, both religious and irreligious, in both what would be regarded as “good deeds” and in what everyone would acknowledge was corrupt behavior.
John says the same thing here as we read in the Revelation, but there, in a more picturesque and uniquely powerful way: “Then he opened his mouth in blaspheme against
God to blaspheme His name, His tabernacle and those who dwell in heaven. It was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them and authority was given him over every tribe, tongue and nation. All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose
names have not been written in the book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”
This is why James, the brother of Jesus, will write: “Do you not know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?” The people of this world will not
acknowledge Christ’s Lordship, his right to rule their lives; they will not admit, honestly and sincerely, how much badness there is in them and how wrong they have been to take God’s good gifts and corrupt them so. And this as we know, strikes at the core
of the Christian message and at the heart of why Jesus was in the flesh to begin with!
The very presence of God in the flesh reveals the truth about man, every last one of us and men hate Him for revealing the truth about themselves. That is the Lord’s
point in vv. 22-23. To see God and the works of God, honestly and to face God and his works honestly, is to come face to face with one’s own badness and corruption and ingratitude and unbelief. And this is too much for man’s pride to take in.
What we have to understand is that the world’s hatred, the discrediting of the church in our day, the hatred of the world for us, is really and finally a hatred of
God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we are going to stand in the light, as light and proclaim Jesus as the light of the world, we will be faced with the animosity of the world’s darkness. We stand for holiness, our culture for licentiousness of every kind.
We stand for life, the world stands for and champions death, and even has the killing of the unborn as their sacrament. We stand for heaven and life eternal, the world for hell and eternal damnation.
When we read of the cries for tolerance, and freedom of speech except for Christians, when the church begins to listen to voices that demand we live in fear and surrender
our calling as Christians to worship God as God commands, then we know that the fight has moved into dangerous territory.
Brothers and sisters, remember, we were once the enemies of God, but God won us over by love, grace, and mercy. Let us take up these same weapons and proclaim to Christ’s
enemies, that they need be so no more and that Christ Jesus can give them life and make them whole even as He has done for us!
Prayer: Father, forgive me for pining after the things the world sets forth and calls man to bow down to. My affections are fickle and my resolve is weak. Give
me wisdom that comes from heaven that I might discern the evil behind the rhetoric and the betrayal that is being set before me as a child of God. My desire is to stand firm for and with my Savior to the end! Give me Your strength, through Jesus Christ my
Lord, Amen.
Hymn: Am I a Soldier of the Cross? (Go to the comments and under “ronnie alex” hit the tab for the lyrics)
