If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake,
because they know not him that sent me. John 15:18-21
The Hatred of the World
because they know not him that sent me. John 15:18-21
The Hatred of the World
The servant is not greater than the Lord: nor so great, and consequently not more, nor so: much deserving of respect, or to be treated in a better manner; suggesting, that Christ was their Lord and master, as he was, and they were his servants; and therefore were not greater than him, but much inferior to him, and could not expect better usage from men than he had:
if they have persecuted me; as they did, both by words and deeds, as before observed:
They will persecute you; and so they did in like manner, and from place to place:
If they have kept my saying; which is either ironically spoken, or designs that insidious malicious observation of Christ's words, made by the Jews, with an intent to catch and lay hold on something to improve against him:
They will keep yours also; that is, either they will attend to your doctrines, or they will make the same spiteful remarks, and put the same evil constructions on your words as on mine. [John Gill]
Unregenerate humanity is here presented. Let's unpack it, and glean what it contains:
I. AS GLOWING WITH HATE.
1. It was a hatred of goodness. To hate the mean, the selfish, the false, the dishonest, and morally dishonorable would be right. But evil was not the object of their hatred.
(1) It was good as embodied in the life of Christ. “It hated Me before it hated you.” How deep, burning, persistent, and cruelly operative was this enmity from Bethlehem to Calvary.
(2) It was good as reflected in His disciples. Just so far as they imbibed and reflected the Spirit of Christ were they hated. “For My name’s sake.”
2. It was a hatred developed in persecution. It was not a hatred that slumbered in a passion or that went off even in abusive language, it prompted the infliction of the greatest cruelties. The history of true Christians in all ages has been a history of persecution.
3. It was a hatred without a just reason. “Without a cause.” Of course they had a “cause.” The doctrines of goodness clashed with their deep rooted prejudices, its policy with their daily procedure, its eternal principles flashed on their consciences and exposed their wickedness. But their
“cause” was the very reason why they ought to have loved Christ. Christ knew and stated the cause of the hatred (Joh_15:19).
4. It was a hatred forming a strong reason for brotherly love amongst the disciples. Christ begins His forewarning them of it by urging them to love one another (Joh_15:17). As your enemies outside of you are strong in their passionate hostility towards you, be you compactly welded together in mutual love. Unity is strength.
II. AS LOADED WITH RESPONSIBILITY (Joh_15:22). These words must, of course, be taken in their comparative sense. Before He came amongst them the guilt of their nation had been augmenting for centuries, and they had been filling up the measure of their iniquities. But great as was their sin before He came it was trifling compared to it now since His advent amongst them.
1. Had He not come they would not have known the sin of hating Him. Hatred towards the best of beings, the incarnation of goodness, is sin in its most malignant form, it was the culmination of human depravity. But had they not known Him they could not have hated Him, the heart is dead to all objects outside the region of knowledge.
2. Had He not come they would not have rejected Him. “He came to His own and His own received Him not.” The rejection of Him involved the most wicked folly, the most heartless ingratitude, the most daring impiety. “If they which despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two witnesses”.
3. If He had not come they would not have crucified Him. What crime on the long black catalogue of human wickedness is to be compared to this?
Conclusion:
1. Good men accept the moral hostility of the unregenerate world. Your great Master taught you to accept it. It is in truth a test of your character and an evidence of your Christlikeness.
2. Nominal Christians read your doom. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
if they have persecuted me; as they did, both by words and deeds, as before observed:
They will persecute you; and so they did in like manner, and from place to place:
If they have kept my saying; which is either ironically spoken, or designs that insidious malicious observation of Christ's words, made by the Jews, with an intent to catch and lay hold on something to improve against him:
They will keep yours also; that is, either they will attend to your doctrines, or they will make the same spiteful remarks, and put the same evil constructions on your words as on mine. [John Gill]
Unregenerate humanity is here presented. Let's unpack it, and glean what it contains:
I. AS GLOWING WITH HATE.
1. It was a hatred of goodness. To hate the mean, the selfish, the false, the dishonest, and morally dishonorable would be right. But evil was not the object of their hatred.
(1) It was good as embodied in the life of Christ. “It hated Me before it hated you.” How deep, burning, persistent, and cruelly operative was this enmity from Bethlehem to Calvary.
(2) It was good as reflected in His disciples. Just so far as they imbibed and reflected the Spirit of Christ were they hated. “For My name’s sake.”
2. It was a hatred developed in persecution. It was not a hatred that slumbered in a passion or that went off even in abusive language, it prompted the infliction of the greatest cruelties. The history of true Christians in all ages has been a history of persecution.
3. It was a hatred without a just reason. “Without a cause.” Of course they had a “cause.” The doctrines of goodness clashed with their deep rooted prejudices, its policy with their daily procedure, its eternal principles flashed on their consciences and exposed their wickedness. But their
“cause” was the very reason why they ought to have loved Christ. Christ knew and stated the cause of the hatred (Joh_15:19).
4. It was a hatred forming a strong reason for brotherly love amongst the disciples. Christ begins His forewarning them of it by urging them to love one another (Joh_15:17). As your enemies outside of you are strong in their passionate hostility towards you, be you compactly welded together in mutual love. Unity is strength.
II. AS LOADED WITH RESPONSIBILITY (Joh_15:22). These words must, of course, be taken in their comparative sense. Before He came amongst them the guilt of their nation had been augmenting for centuries, and they had been filling up the measure of their iniquities. But great as was their sin before He came it was trifling compared to it now since His advent amongst them.
1. Had He not come they would not have known the sin of hating Him. Hatred towards the best of beings, the incarnation of goodness, is sin in its most malignant form, it was the culmination of human depravity. But had they not known Him they could not have hated Him, the heart is dead to all objects outside the region of knowledge.
2. Had He not come they would not have rejected Him. “He came to His own and His own received Him not.” The rejection of Him involved the most wicked folly, the most heartless ingratitude, the most daring impiety. “If they which despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two witnesses”.
3. If He had not come they would not have crucified Him. What crime on the long black catalogue of human wickedness is to be compared to this?
Conclusion:
1. Good men accept the moral hostility of the unregenerate world. Your great Master taught you to accept it. It is in truth a test of your character and an evidence of your Christlikeness.
2. Nominal Christians read your doom. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The World-Moved Into the Church
Perhaps there is no word more commonly in our mouths than "the world," and yet hardly any to which we attach less clear and certain meaning—indeed, the sense intended by it varies according to the character of the person that uses it. Let us therefore endeavor to come at something better than mere floating notions about it. The world out of which the disciples were taken was not the Gentile world, but the disobedience of the visible Church.
I. First, it is true to distinguish between the body of Christ, the Church and the world, as between things antagonistic and irreconcilable. For the Son of God, by His incarnation and atonement, and by the calling and mission of His Apostles, has founded and built up in the earth a visible kingdom, which has no other head but Him alone. That visible kingdom is so taken out of the world that a man must either be in it or out of it, and must, therefore, either be in the Church or in the world. In the visible kingdom of Christ are all the graces and promises of life; in the world are the powers and traditions of death. We know of no revealed salvation out of that visible kingdom; we can point to no other way to life. There is but one Saviour, one Mediator, one Sacrifice for the sin of the world, one baptism for the remission of sins, one rule of faith, one law of holiness. There can be no real fellowship or intercourse between those that are of the body of Christ, and those that are not. The only intercourse the Church has ever held with the heathen has been either such as Paul permitted to the Christians in Corinth, who might still maintain the relations of outward kindliness with unbelievers, or direct missions for the conversion of unbelievers. There could be no closer fellowship; for there was a moral and formal contrariety between the rules of conduct and aim on both sides, which held the Church and the world apart.
II. But farther, it is no less true to say that the world, which in the beginning was visibly without the body of Christ, is now invisibly within it. So long as the world was heathen, it warred against the Church, in bitter and relentless persecutions. It was when the conversion of individuals drew after it, at last, the whole civil state—when the secular powers, with all their courts, pomps, institutions, laws, judicatures, and the entire political order of the world, came into the precinct of the Church—then it was that the great tradition of human thought, passion, belief, prejudice, and custom, mingled itself with the unwritten usages of the Church. The world is now inside the fold, baptized, catechized, subdued, specious, and worshipping. This is a far more dangerous antagonist. There is but one safeguard for Christ’s servants; to be like Him, in whom the prince of this world in the hour of temptation had nothing he could make his own. Our safety is not so much where as what we are. [H. E. Manning, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 239.]
I. First, it is true to distinguish between the body of Christ, the Church and the world, as between things antagonistic and irreconcilable. For the Son of God, by His incarnation and atonement, and by the calling and mission of His Apostles, has founded and built up in the earth a visible kingdom, which has no other head but Him alone. That visible kingdom is so taken out of the world that a man must either be in it or out of it, and must, therefore, either be in the Church or in the world. In the visible kingdom of Christ are all the graces and promises of life; in the world are the powers and traditions of death. We know of no revealed salvation out of that visible kingdom; we can point to no other way to life. There is but one Saviour, one Mediator, one Sacrifice for the sin of the world, one baptism for the remission of sins, one rule of faith, one law of holiness. There can be no real fellowship or intercourse between those that are of the body of Christ, and those that are not. The only intercourse the Church has ever held with the heathen has been either such as Paul permitted to the Christians in Corinth, who might still maintain the relations of outward kindliness with unbelievers, or direct missions for the conversion of unbelievers. There could be no closer fellowship; for there was a moral and formal contrariety between the rules of conduct and aim on both sides, which held the Church and the world apart.
II. But farther, it is no less true to say that the world, which in the beginning was visibly without the body of Christ, is now invisibly within it. So long as the world was heathen, it warred against the Church, in bitter and relentless persecutions. It was when the conversion of individuals drew after it, at last, the whole civil state—when the secular powers, with all their courts, pomps, institutions, laws, judicatures, and the entire political order of the world, came into the precinct of the Church—then it was that the great tradition of human thought, passion, belief, prejudice, and custom, mingled itself with the unwritten usages of the Church. The world is now inside the fold, baptized, catechized, subdued, specious, and worshipping. This is a far more dangerous antagonist. There is but one safeguard for Christ’s servants; to be like Him, in whom the prince of this world in the hour of temptation had nothing he could make his own. Our safety is not so much where as what we are. [H. E. Manning, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 239.]
HOW TO MEET THIS ANTAGONISM
1. Reckon it as a sign and test of our true union with Jesus Christ. Let us count the reproach of Christ as a treasure to be proud of, and to be guarded.
2. Be sure that it is your goodness, and not your evils or your weakness, that men dislike. The world has a very keen eye, and it is a good thing that it has, for the faults of professing Christians. Many bring down a great deal of deserved hostility upon themselves and of discredit upon Christianity; and then they comfort themselves and say they are bearing the reproach of the Cross. Not a bit of it. Be careful for this, that it is Christ in you that men turn from, and not you yourself and your weakness and sin. Ministers find themselves preaching to themselves often, in regards to this. God knows how to keep us dependent on Him.
3. But, also meet this antagonism by not dropping your standard one inch. If you begin to haul it down where are you going to stop? Nowhere, until you have got it draggling in the mud at your foot. It is no use trying to conciliate by compromise. All that we shall gain by that will be indifference and contempt.
4. Meet hostility with unmoved, patient, Christ-like, and Christ-derived love and sympathy. The patient sunshine pours upon the glaciers and melts the thick-ribbed ice at last into sweet water. The patient sunshine beats upon the mist clouds and breaks up its edges and scatters it at the last. And our Lord here tells us that our experience, if we are faithful to Him, will be like His experience, in that some will hearken to our word though others will persecute, and to some our testimony will come as a message from God that draws them to the Lord Himself. The only conqueror of the world is the love that was in Christ breathed through us. The only way to overcome the world’s hostility is by turning the world into a church.
This was Jesus intent, to mold and make His people into His body, which He declared to Peter "The gates of hell, will not prevail against it."
(A. Maclaren, D. D.)
2. Be sure that it is your goodness, and not your evils or your weakness, that men dislike. The world has a very keen eye, and it is a good thing that it has, for the faults of professing Christians. Many bring down a great deal of deserved hostility upon themselves and of discredit upon Christianity; and then they comfort themselves and say they are bearing the reproach of the Cross. Not a bit of it. Be careful for this, that it is Christ in you that men turn from, and not you yourself and your weakness and sin. Ministers find themselves preaching to themselves often, in regards to this. God knows how to keep us dependent on Him.
3. But, also meet this antagonism by not dropping your standard one inch. If you begin to haul it down where are you going to stop? Nowhere, until you have got it draggling in the mud at your foot. It is no use trying to conciliate by compromise. All that we shall gain by that will be indifference and contempt.
4. Meet hostility with unmoved, patient, Christ-like, and Christ-derived love and sympathy. The patient sunshine pours upon the glaciers and melts the thick-ribbed ice at last into sweet water. The patient sunshine beats upon the mist clouds and breaks up its edges and scatters it at the last. And our Lord here tells us that our experience, if we are faithful to Him, will be like His experience, in that some will hearken to our word though others will persecute, and to some our testimony will come as a message from God that draws them to the Lord Himself. The only conqueror of the world is the love that was in Christ breathed through us. The only way to overcome the world’s hostility is by turning the world into a church.
This was Jesus intent, to mold and make His people into His body, which He declared to Peter "The gates of hell, will not prevail against it."
(A. Maclaren, D. D.)
