If the world hate you, know that it has hated me before you.
Jesus has just commanded His disciples to love one another, and now He warns them about the world outside. Why would the world hate people who love, and what comfort is there in knowing its hatred fell on Him first?
One commentator sees the command to love and the warning of hatred as two halves of one picture. He also warns how easily it gets turned around.
Our Lord commanded that love be the bond between His disciples. The world's hatred gives that command extra force. Love flowing inside, hatred pressing from outside — that is what He describes as the result of His rejection and death. Let us take this to heart. Down through the centuries the tendency has been to reverse it. When believers begin to love the world outside and chase its approval, coldness, division and even hatred creep in among them.
Jesus does not say the world may dislike them for their failings. He traces the hatred back past them to Himself. One writer points to that as the comfort inside a hard saying.
The world hates those who belong to Him and are no longer of the world. But the Lord wants us to know this: it hated Him before us just as surely as it hates us now... For it hates us because of Him, not Him because of us. So our faults are not the true cause. The cause is His grace and moral excellence, His divine nature and glory. The world dislikes and hates what belongs to God, and it hates Him who is God.
If Christ was hated first, something in Him provoked it. The same writer says the cause is not God's judgment but His grace.
Of all things, grace offends the world most. The world can love human nature in its fallen state. Righteousness must condemn the sinner, and that offends. But grace offends more. Grace rises above the sins it condemns and, in compassion for the sinner, saves him by Christ and in Christ. It does this by treating man as nothing and giving the entire glory to God... The world hates divine love as much as it hates divine light.
The wording assumes the disciples already know this. So surprise is not a fair reaction. They were told.
There is nothing surprising, therefore, if the believer is faced with the hatred of this world... The world hates him for the same reason that the person who does evil hates the light. It is the same reason Cain hated his brother Abel. Sadly, we must admit that we are often amazed when the world hates us. That is very foolish of us. It is what we should expect, from the nature of the case.
The world that hated Jesus was full of religious people. Today it can even carry the name of Christ, so do not look for it only among the irreligious.
The world is a vast system that takes in every race and class, and false religion too. What they all share is their hatred of God. The world that immediately surrounded the disciples was the world of corrupt Judaism. Today the world that believers meet most often is the world of corrupt Christendom. Its outward form may change from age to age. At heart it is always turned away from God and full of hatred for Christ.
Sharing what Christ gives also means sharing what Christ received.
We share with Christ the love, joy, and close friendship of the inside circle. Then we must also share the hatred and shame the world poured on Him. There is no suggestion that the disciples should try to make the best of both worlds. It must be Christ or the world; it cannot be Christ and the world.
Many readers will object that they have never met such hatred. One writer turns the verse into a test.
It is useless to plead that the world has improved since then... it is still the world that hated and rejected Christ. If we have never felt its hatred and contempt, the reason is that we have not been faithful to Him.
What looks like pure loss, one writer calls an honour.
It is hard, of course. But what a moral honour it is to be linked with Christ like this! "For to this you have been called." God allowed it, overruled it, and used it for the good of His children on earth.
- Him first. The hatred did not begin with the disciples; it fell on Christ, and reaches them only because they are His.
- Not your faults. What the world cannot bear is grace, which gives all the glory to God and treats man as nothing.
- So expect it. Do not be astonished by the world's hostility. The Lord told us in advance.
- Not both. The inner circle of love and the outer pressure of hatred come together; it is Christ or the world, never both.
- Then honour. Sharing His rejection is association with Christ, and God uses it for His children's good.
If ye were of the world, the world would love its own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, on account of this the world hates you.
The Lord warns His disciples that the hatred aimed at Him will now fall on them. The cause is not their behaviour but His own choice to take them out of the world — so what is "the world," and why does its hatred follow?
Here "the world" does not mean the planet, or people in general. One writer gives a definition, and notes what "chosen you out" points to:
John 15:19 — "The world." This, in the words of Westcott, stands for "the organisation of society alien from, and opposed to, God" (compare 1 John 2:15). "Chosen you out": here is the idea of the Church.
Another writer shows how wide that system is, and what never changes in it:
The world is a vast system taking in every race and class, and false religion, all sharing a hatred of God. The world right around the disciples was the world of corrupt Judaism. Today the world believers mainly meet is the world of corrupt Christendom. Its outward form may change from age to age; at heart it is always marked by alienation from God and hatred of Christ.
It is easy to assume opposition means we have behaved badly. The verse says otherwise:
It is important to notice that in these verses the Lord traces the world's hatred of His disciples to the fact that they belonged to Him. They were His servants, and the servant is not greater than his Lord. "If they have persecuted Me," He said, "they will also persecute you." The world would not hate them because they were law-breakers, or because of objectionable features in their moral character, but because the Lord had chosen them out of the world to be His own.
There is real comfort in that direction of travel. The hatred begins with Him and reaches us second-hand:
The Lord would have us know this: the world hates us no more surely than it hated Him before us. Is it not sweet and comforting to be so sure about the world, dreadful as that truth is? For it hates us because of Him, not Him because of us. It is not our faults, then, that are the true cause, but His grace and moral excellence, His divine nature and glory. The world hates the Father shown in the Son. So it hates the children who were the Father's and were then given to the Son. Christ was hated first, they next, and for His sake.
One writer sets the world's own kind of love beside the grace it cannot bear:
The world does love those who belong to it, in its own way. That stands in sharp contrast with the grace that goes out to the stranger, the wretched and the lost. Grace is of all things the most offensive to the world, which can love nature in its fallen state. Even righteousness offends less, though righteousness must condemn the sinner. Grace rises above the sins it condemns. It has compassion on the sinner, to save him by Christ and in Christ. Grace offends because it treats man as nothing and gives the entire glory to God... So the world also hates us who confess Christ. It hates us not only because we are not of the world, but because Christ has chosen us out of it. That choice shows the world to be utterly worthless and condemned. Divine love is as hateful to it as divine light.
The verse names its own cause. The believer's position is not self-made:
Here we get the source of the world's hatred. The world dislikes us not only for how we walk, but for the place Christ has chosen us for. It is a distinct place, "out of the world," so that we may be a distinct people. It is because they are Christ's that the world cannot like them. We should let our light shine out. Our confession of Christ should be so clear that the world knows who deserves the credit for the good works — that we belong to Christ.
Christ does not only take us out. He puts us somewhere new:
The Lord has chosen us out of this world system. In saving our souls He "delivered us from the domain of darkness," from Satan's kingdom of this evil world, and "transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son" (Colossians 1:13). Our citizenship and our associations in life are in heaven (Philippians 3:20).
Being chosen out of the world does not mean leaving it. There is a purpose in staying:
This "out of the world" character of the Christian company is so little valued, and the result is a very feeble testimony to the world. I wish we understood its meaning better. We are in the world but not of it. We are to be kept from the evil in it, while we bear witness of Christ to it and try by the gospel to gather souls out of it for Him.
- Out of the world — the cause. Christ's choice, not the disciples' conduct or character, draws the world's hatred.
- Out of the world — the offence. The world can love what belongs to it; grace, which treats man as nothing and gives God the glory, it cannot bear.
- Out of the world — the comfort. It hated Him first; so the hostility reaches us because of Him, not Him because of us.
- Out of the world — the new address. Christ takes us out of the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God's Son, and our citizenship is in heaven.
- Out of the world — the errand. We stay in it without being of it, so that the gospel can gather others out of it too.