John 15:19

If ye were of the world, the world would love his own.

It is the nature of all intelligent persons to love best what is in sympathy with themselves. Christ loves most tenderly the disciples who obey his commandments and seek to be like him. The world loves those best that are in harmony with its ambitions, aims and pleasures. Hence, when the church lowers itself to. worldly standard, is complaisant toward sin, and full of the worldly spirit, it will not come into collision with the world. It is the servants who are "chosen out of the world," who are not of the world and who testify against it, that it hates. This has been illustrated in all ages. John the Baptist and Christ might have chosen smooth paths that would have secured worldly favor, but their rebukes of sin brought them to death, and in every generation the faithful servants, such men as Huss, Waldo, Wickliffe, Savonarola, Luther, Roger Williams, and the great army of martyrs, have been hated and persecuted. See chapter 7:7 where Christ shows that the world cannot hate those who act in accordance with its worldly policy and principles, and also, 1 Peter 4:12-13; 1 John 3:13-14; 1 John 4:4-5.