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.
Remember the word which I said unto you, The bondman is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my word, they will keep also yours.
The Lord has just told His followers that the world hates them because He chose them out of it. Now He tells them why that hatred should not surprise them. A servant can expect what his Master received.
The verse opens with a call to recall something the Lord had already said.
Here we need that word, "remember." Do we feel resentful or discouraged because of the world's attitude? Then how vital it is that we keep in mind what our Lord went through among men. He Himself had stressed this to them in His words.
The saying about rank settles what the disciples may expect. One writer draws out both halves of the verse and the Lord's purpose in saying it.
The Lord then recalls to their mind His word that no servant is greater than his lord. Instead they must expect His position, the position of the One whom men despised and rejected. They and their teaching would be hated just as much, and for His sake. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will also keep yours… Here the Lord kindly warned them in advance, so that no sorrow would take them by surprise.
It would be easy for a persecuted person to assume the fault lies somewhere in himself. The Lord's wording rules that out.
Notice what the Lord does in these verses. He traces the world's hatred of His disciples back to one thing: they belonged to Him. They were His servants, and the servant is not greater than his Lord. "If they persecuted Me," He said, "they will also persecute you." The world would not hate them for breaking the law, or for some fault in their character. It would hate them because the Lord had chosen them out of the world to be His own.
One writer traces the hostility to grace itself, and to what grace says about man.
Of all things, grace offends the world most, for the world can love human nature in its fallen state. Righteousness must condemn the sinner, yet even righteousness does not offend as much as grace does. Grace rises above the sins it condemns, in compassion toward the sinner, to save him by and in Christ. Grace offends because it treats man as nothing and gives the entire glory to God… Divine love is hated as much as divine light.
The second half of the verse points to a parallel that runs both ways.
His disciples are identified with their Lord. They are now to be His representatives on earth. The world itself would identify them. The world had followed Him with hatred, and it would now show that same hatred to His people… His persecutors would of course be theirs, and those who kept His word would keep theirs also.
Another writer records what the world in fact did with His word.
The world persecuted Him. It refused His Word. It stayed ignorant of the Father who sent Him. It hated the light and preferred the darkness.
One writer frames it as one package: blessing before the Father, reproach before the world. It still stands today.
"You share My position before the Father, with all the favour and blessing that belongs to it. But you also share My position of reproach and rejection before the world. If you have all the assets that go with My place before the Father, do not be surprised to find you also carry My liabilities with the world."… We have grown so used to a quiet, peaceful life in this land… that we easily forget the truth about the position we hold. It is a position of the greatest possible blessing before God. But in this world it is also a position of persecution and reproach, if we are true to our Master.
That leaves one question: where should the sufferer look?
In such times, how good it is to look away from the persecutors and mockers. Look instead to Him for whose sake we go through these things… When we too have to suffer for righteousness, let us remember whose rights and honour are under attack. Then disappointment and discouragement will not fill us.
- Remember — the Lord tells them to look back. How He was treated steadies a discouraged heart.
- Rank — no servant outranks his Lord. A disciple should expect the place men gave Him, not a better one.
- Reason — no fault of the disciple brings this hostility. It falls on him because he belongs to Christ, and the world cannot bear grace.
- Reach — the parallel runs both ways. Those who persecuted Christ persecute His people; those who kept His word will keep theirs.
- Response — look past the mockers to the One whose honour is under attack. Then reproach no longer brings discouragement.
But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they have not known him that sent me.
On the night before the cross, Jesus tells His followers that the world will treat them as it treated Him. Here He names the reason: they carry His name, and the world does not know the Father who sent Him.
Hatred turns into action here. What draws it out is the name the disciples confess.
Jesus further warns the disciples that this hatred will show itself in persecution: "If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you." This active hatred is tied more directly to confessing the name of Christ. The Lord can say, "All these things they will do to you on account of My name." The persecution, whether of Christ or of His disciples, proved they had no knowledge of the One who sent Christ — the Father.
Jesus gives one cause for it all: the world does not know the Father who sent Him. This also puts religion itself to the test.
He gives His own the comfort of knowing this in such hours of bitter suffering, and beforehand too: all the contempt and suffering they might endure from the world was for His sake. It came from the world's ignorance of Him who sent Him — ignorance of the Father. How deeply true this is! It would be impossible for a professing religion to persecute if it really knew Him who sent Christ.
Not knowing the Father does not mean having no religion. Zeal can stay strong and still point the wrong way.
This was hatred indeed — hatred "without a cause," hatred returned for love. The cross of Christ was soon to display man's fullest hatred meeting God's fullest love. Ignorant of the Father, the world might still be zealous for God, and think it was serving God by killing the children of the Father.
Jesus gives this warning before any of it happens. The timing is part of the kindness.
He tells them these things before they happen, so that they will not be caught unawares. The truth about these matters would put them on their guard. Their own countrymen would disown them, treating them as law-breakers. Blind in heart and mind, and without the truth, they would be zealous for their religion, and would treat His own as hateful to God. In this way the world would prove that it does not know the Father or the Son... As these things came true, they would trust the One who had told them beforehand even more.
The same truth encourages the believer who suffers today.
What encouragement there is in verse 21 for the suffering believer! He may accept whatever persecution comes as being for Christ's name's sake, remembering that the world is ignorant of the Father who sent the Son, and therefore does not understand the significance of the evil it is doing.
Trouble that comes because of the name also carries the honour of that name. The world reproaches the Christian as Christ's representative.
We are declared to be happy or blessed if the reproach is "for" the name, or "in" the name of Christ; which means that the world sees in us His representatives... To be reproached in the name of Christ is an honour to us. Men may blaspheme Him and reproach us, but we glorify Him, and the Spirit who lives in us rests upon us as the Spirit of glory and of God.
This is not a phase the church outgrows.
The church knows from God's word that the world's character will stay the same to the end of this age. In fact, at its very close the world will take an even more open and daring attitude of defiance and revolt than ever.
- Cause — The world's treatment of believers traces back to one root: it does not know the Father who sent Christ.
- Proof — Persecution says more about the persecutor than about the persecuted. Anyone who truly knew the One who sent Christ could not do it.
- Zeal — Someone can be sincerely religious and still not know the Father. Sincerity is no proof of knowing God.
- Comfort — Jesus warned them first, so nothing catches the disciple by surprise. Trust in Christ grows as the warning comes true.
- Honour — What the world does on account of His name lands on Him. Reproach carried in that name is dignity, not disgrace, until He comes.
If I had not come and spoken to them, they had not had sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.
Jesus is telling His disciples why the world will hate them. He traces that hatred back to its root. His own coming and speaking left the world with nothing to hide behind. But His words raise a hard question. These people had already sinned. How could He say they had no sin until He came?
The Lord is not saying the world was innocent before He came. He is saying that until He came, nothing had shown their sin for what it was.
God takes full account of all of this. He has sent His Son, and He will use this to show the true character of an evil world. That world manages to keep its corrupt condition partly covered up, so long as nothing sets a contrasting standard before its eyes. But the Son of God has come, and has spoken. If He had not come, "they would not have been guilty of sin." That is, nothing would have brought their sin into the light and shown it for what it is. Now they stood exposed, with no cover-up left them.
One writer points to the exact wording. The Lord says sin, singular, not sins.
Note, in John 15:22 and following, it is not sins, but sin. They certainly had sins. But if they had not rejected Jesus, they would not have been fixed for good in the state of sin... Their state before God was a condition of absolute sin, hatred with nothing left to cover it, at a time when God had been fully shown to them — the Son and the Father alike. It is a terrible position.
What made this speaking different from every earlier message God had sent?
This one far greater sin swallowed up all sin before it and of every other kind: they rejected the Son, who had come in love. He spoke not merely as no man ever spoke, but as God had never spoken... God had sent servants, and prophets had spoken. Their messages carried divine authority, but they were only partial. The law had made nothing perfect... He was their Messiah, the Son of David, born where and when they expected... but He was far more. He was the Son of God, beyond reach in His own glory, yet here on earth the most approachable of men. He gave out the words of the Father, as no one had ever spoken since the world began.
Older translations say they have no "cloak" for their sin where the ESV says no excuse. A cloak covers; once it is gone, the hatred shows itself as hatred with no cause.
Suppose Christ had not come and spoken to the world words such as no man had ever spoken. Suppose He had not done among them works which no other man had done. Then no one could charge them with the sin of deliberate hostility against Christ and the Father. They would still have been fallen creatures. But little would have shown that they deliberately hated God. But now there was no cloak for their sin... So the world's hatred is no longer ignorance. It is sin. It is a causeless hatred. We, even as Christians, may at times give the world cause for hatred, but in Christ there was no cause.
Verse 22 speaks of what He said; verse 24 of what He did. One writer traces both back through the Gospel.
John 8 sets out His words which were rejected by men — words which presented Himself as being "the truth"... In John 9, His works set out what He is, and what God is. They are equally rejected, and the favoured object of His sovereign grace is cast out of the synagogue... These two things are taken up by the Lord in the end of John 15. His words (verse 22)... His works (verse 24).
His coming was the last test of the human race. Every earlier test had already failed.
All seemed lost. Man had failed every test, and failed it plainly. No option seemed left but to condemn guilty mankind. Then God acted in free sovereign grace and sent His Son. The coming of Christ put the first man to the final test. Instead of receiving the Son of God (come in love and grace!), man passed a terrible verdict... This was the final test.
The danger the verse exposes is not ignorance but claimed sight.
Those who say they see have no excuse. Confessed blindness is not at all the difficulty, but professed sight. This is a very solemn principle for an age like ours, where so many claim to believe. Sin stays in place where there is nothing more than a claim to see. A man who is blind, and knows it, can have his eyes opened; but what can anyone do for a man who thinks he sees when he does not?
And the exposure is not the end of the story:
Morally, the death of Christ is the end of the world. God tried man in every way, and man failed... When the sin is proved, it is put away... That very crowning act that proved their hatred of God put away their sin.
- Hidden — Sin was always there, but the world kept it covered until Christ came.
- Sin, not sins — The issue is not a list of offences but a settled state, and rejecting the Son revealed it.
- Uncovered — A cloak hides. Once they had seen the words and works of Christ, they had no excuse left for their hatred.
- Tested — After law and prophets, the coming of the Son was the final trial of what man is, and man failed it.
- Answered — The very act that proved the hatred is the act that put their sin away.
He that hates me hates also my Father.
The Lord is telling His disciples what to expect from the world. He has just said that His words left His hearers with no excuse. Now He goes further: the hatred aimed at Him does not stop at Him — it lands on His Father.
Christ does not say that hating Him is hating God in general. He names the relationship. One writer shows how this measures sin by a new standard.
The revelation of Christ forced everything to a point. It measured man's condition as nothing else could. It proved this. Israel might be bad when measured by a law — a holy, just, good law of God. But measured now by the Son of God, all sin before this was as nothing compared with the still deeper sin of rejecting the Son of God. "Whoever hates Me hates My Father also." It is not merely God as such, but "My Father" that was hated.
The Son never presented Himself apart from the One who sent Him.
They cannot reject Him or hate Him without hating His Father. They do not know, says the Lord, Him that sent Me. But is this all? No. Jesus had made Him known and had spoken to them. His word had been enough to judge all their acts. They had no excuse, for He, the Truth, had spoken. … But he who hated Him hated His Father also.
The same writer shows when refusing Him would have been right.
By rejecting Christ, men proved they did not know the Father. If Christ had come saying that God was not Jehovah, they would have been right not to receive Him; but He always identifies Himself with the Father, and so men were proved the very enemies of both.
What man refused in Christ was the love of God itself.
Christ came on an errand of infinite love from God. In Him man, if he had not been blind, would have seen what he should have been toward God, and what God is toward man. Christ was the wholly dependent and always obedient man. But God was also in Him reconciling the world to Himself. He was the perfect expression of divine love to the guilty and miserable. But man would have neither. His unrighteousness hated true righteousness, and his enmity to God hated the love that came to save and bless him.
Those who hated Him were not irreligious. One writer notes that zeal for God can go with ignorance of the Father.
This was hatred indeed, hatred "without a cause," hatred for love. The cross of Christ was soon to present man's fullest hatred meeting God's fullest love. Though ignorant of the Father, the world might still be zealous for God, and think it was serving God by killing the children of the Father.
Another writer applies it to any profession that is only outward.
Solemn words indeed. The professing people of God — which the Jews were — are here viewed as the world. They share in its spirit and show it: hatred of Christ, and hatred of His Father. The professing people of God part of the world? Yes, where profession is not real. And what was true then is true still.
No one can claim the Father while setting the Son aside.
There is the warning that "Everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father either." There follows also the encouragement that "Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also." … Some profess to honour the Father but deny the Son. According to the scripture before us, their profession of the Father is completely worthless. The test of the truth is not the Father, but the Son.
The Lord did not abandon the world that hated Him.
Would the Lord leave the world without another effort to rescue people out of it? He would not. … Hostility and hatred had not quenched His deep compassion. If possible, souls should be rescued from everlasting ruin. For that, a fresh testimony should go out. … The world rejected Him and crucified Him in its hatred. Yet He would send the Holy Spirit to bear witness to the world about the One they had cast out.
- Named — The Lord says "My Father," not simply God. To reject the Son is a deeper sin than any before Him.
- Undivided — Christ always identified Himself with the Father. No one can hate the Son and leave the Father untouched.
- Exposed — Love came in Person, and man hated it. That answer measured man more fully than the law ever could.
- Untrue — Profession is no cover. Those who hated Him were religious, and any claim to the Father that denies the Son is worthless.
- Undeterred — The hatred did not stop His compassion; He sent the Spirit to testify of the One the world cast out.
If I had not done among them the works which no other one has done, they had not had sin; but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father.
The Lord is telling His disciples why the world will hate them. He traces that hatred back to its source. People had watched Him do what no one else had ever done — and they hated Him for it. The verse raises a hard question — how can seeing more of God leave people worse off rather than better?
The Lord has just spoken of His words. Here He adds what His hands had done. Commentators note that words and works reach people differently.
And there was this further aggravation of their sin — the works He had done. Fitting words have a strong effect on some people. Works reach others even more deeply — works that express not only power, but goodness, holiness and love. Here they had words and works in perfect harmony, each confirming the other, such as were never seen except in Jesus the Son of God.
Older translations read "they had not had sin." Either way, the words do not mean these people would have been innocent. They mean their sin had not yet come out into the open.
It is not that they would not have been sinners. No — but "they had not had sin." So He says in another place, "If you were blind, you would have no guilt" (John 9:41). God came near to man in the Person of His Son. Man was able to say, "This is the heir" — yet he also said, "Come, let us kill him." So, "they have no excuse for their sin." Those who say they see have no excuse. Confessed blindness is not the difficulty; professed sight is. Sin stays where there is only a claim to see. A man who is blind, and knows it, can have his eyes opened. But what can be done for someone who thinks he sees, when he really does not?
The works were not just impressive. They showed who He was.
Every page of the Gospels tells us He was the God-man. On one side, He was a homeless stranger, a weary Man sitting at Samaria's well. He was hungry in the desert and slept in the boat. He groaned and wept tears of sorrow and sympathy. On the other side, He worked miracles, cleansed lepers, opened blind eyes, raised the dead to life, and showed His power over the winds and the waves. In a word, He declared by His mighty acts that though He was a man, He was also God.
Why does the Lord move from "hated me" to "hated... my Father"? Because the works were not His alone; they carried the Father's glory into plain view.
The Father's glory shone out in the works — the Son at work, the voice and the works together. It was no longer only the Son's voice, with the Father still behind. Now the works that witnessed to the Father were added. They saw, and they hated. Their alienation was total: they were cut off from the blessedness they had seen, the whole revelation of the Father and the Son in Him.
They had no excuse left.
If the Lord had not done among them the works no other man had done, they might have stayed as they were. They might have refused to believe in Him and not been guilty before God. They would still have been the object of God's patience. But in fact they had seen and hated both the Son and the Father. The Father had been fully revealed in the Son. If, when God was revealed in full and in grace, they rejected Him, what else could be done but to leave them in sin, far from God? If He had been revealed only in part, they would have had an excuse. They might have said, "Ah, if He had shown grace, if we had known Him as He is, we would not have rejected Him." They could not say that now.
One writer sets this rejection beside the worst sins recorded earlier in Scripture.
"If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin," said the Lord Jesus. It is as though the sin of Cain, of the world before the flood, of Babel, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Tyre and Sidon, of Pharaoh, of Jeroboam, of Ahab, could not be put in the same scale or measured by the same measure. It is as though every earlier act of transgression, disobedience and blasphemy were now eclipsed.
The Lord's own grief is in these words.
How sharp His sorrow must have been — not only because they hated Him with such violence, but because they hated His Father too.
- Seen. The works were not hidden; the Father's glory was on public display in what the Son did.
- Unique. No one else had done them, so no one could claim the evidence was ordinary or ambiguous.
- Exposed. Without His words and works, their sin would have stayed hidden — that does not mean they were innocent.
- Hated. Rejecting the Son was not a partial refusal; the hatred fell on the Father whom He revealed.
- Eclipsed. Beside the rejection of the One who had shown them grace, every earlier sin in Scripture weighs less.
But that the word written in their law might be fulfilled, They hated me without a cause.
Jesus has just shown that His words and works left the world without excuse for hating Him. Now He points to Israel's own Scriptures, which foretold that hatred and called it hatred without a cause.
The words He quotes are not from the five books of Moses, yet He calls them "their law." The New Testament often uses "law" that broadly.
The New Testament sometimes uses the term "law" for other parts of the Old Testament besides the five books of Moses. The Lord said, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I said, you are gods'?" — yet that quotation came from the Psalms (John 10:34). First Corinthians 14:21 does the same.
So their own law condemned them. Their hostility did not derail God's plan; it carried it out.
Yet God was in perfect control. He had foretold this in "their law," where the psalm presents the Messiah saying, "They hated Me without a cause" (Ps. 35:19). So the Jews unknowingly fulfilled their own Scriptures by their hatred and rejection of Christ. Nothing can thwart the fulfilment of the word of God.
"Without a cause" does not mean the hatred had no source. It means the reason cannot be found in the One they hated.
The world as a whole had no hope left, for by their own law they hated Christ without a cause. So the world's hatred is no longer ignorance: it is sin. It is a causeless hatred. Sadly, we, even as Christians, may at times give the world cause for hatred, but in Christ there was no cause. There is indeed a cause for the hatred, but it lies not in the One who is hated, but in the hearts of those who hate.
The hatred was not merely failure to keep rules. Something worse was exposed when God came near in kindness.
That is how causeless man's hatred was, right in the presence of divine grace. A full display of grace can end no other way. The mind of the flesh is hostile to God. Not only is there refusal to submit to His law, but hatred of His love; and this was now proved. Only Jesus, present in this way, speaking and working among men as He did, could prove it fully. They had seen Him, and the Father in Him — and they had hated both! Hatred of the Father and the Son is in itself irreparable, complete, and final.
The love was given freely, and the hatred came back just as freely.
The love was freely given, and here was the desperate evil. "They hated Me" — the state foretold — freely, "without a cause." What a word! It is sad and awful, and it humbles us about man's evil nature and corruption. They hated the blessed perfection of Jesus, freely and without a cause. They hated the Lord freely — evil moving of itself, with nothing to cause it.
He did not merely quote the psalm. He felt its words to the full.
On the cross the Lord felt to the full the hatred of the Jewish nation towards the godly remnant. His infinite perfection let Him say in an absolute way that they hated Him "without a cause." Those who sought to destroy Him were His enemies for no just reason. His enemies were many and strong. He had to meet not just the hostility of one man, but at the cross the hatred of a whole nation, led by its powerful leaders.
The same expression has a bright side. God's own act toward the believer is also without a cause.
"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift" — freely, without a cause — "through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." Of the Lord it is said that they hated Him "without a cause." God justifies the believer "without a cause." What wonderful grace!
He warned His followers to expect the same.
Was He fiercely opposed and hated? He was — so much so that the Scripture came true: "They hated me without a cause" (John 15:25). He warns us too, with His own lips, "Because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you" (John 15:19).
- Their law. "Law" here covers the wider Old Testament, including the Psalms. The words that condemn them come from the very book they boasted in.
- Their cause. The hatred had no cause in Christ. Its cause sat in the hearts of those who hated, which makes it sin and not ignorance.
- Their proof. Perfect love on display drew out more than law-breaking. It drew out hatred of that love — the fullest test the human heart has ever faced.
- Their fulfilment. By rejecting Him they carried out the Scripture they claimed to keep, without knowing it. Nothing can stop God's word from coming true.
- Our gift. The same "without a cause" describes how God justifies the believer: freely, with no cause in us. It also explains why the world still hates those Christ has chosen out of it.