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?
Love inside, hatred outside
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.
Not about you
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.
What the world cannot bear
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.
Told in advance
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.
Which "world"?
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.
No middle path
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.
The honour in it
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.
Summary
- 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.