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.