John 15:18-27

PERSEVERING UNION OF THE PERSECUTED

Text 15:18-27

18

If the world hateth you, ye know that it hath hated me before it hated you.

19

If ye were of the world, the world would love its own: but because ye are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

20

Remember the word that I said unto you, A servant is not greater than his lord. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also.

21

But all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not him that sent me.

22

If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no excuse for their sin.

23

He that hateth me hateth my Father also.

24

If I had not done among them the works which none other did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father.

25

But this cometh to pass, that the word may be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause.

26

But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall bear witness of me:

27

and ye also bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.

Queries

a.

How had Jesus chosen the disciples out of the world?

b.

How does Jesus-' speaking to the people bring sin (John 15:22)?

c.

In what way would the Comforter bear witness of Christ?

Paraphrase

Do not be overcome with despair when the world hates you, but take courage by understanding why the world hated me before it hated you. If your nature and character were worldly, the world would love you. But because your nature is not now in harmony with the world, due to My word which is now in you and has set you apart from the world, for this very reason the world despises you. You must keep on remembering the precept which I have taught you: A servant cannot hope to enjoy a better life than his master. If the worldlings have persecuted Me, the Master, they will most certainly persecute you, the servant. If any of them have kept My word, they will keep your word also which will be the word of the Master's appointed servants. And all of these persecutions they will bring upon you due to their hatred of Me because they do not know and love the One who sent Me. If I had not come and spoken to them the plain and final revelation of God they would not have been so acutely aware of their sinfulness. But now that I have come and they have rejected Me and My word they shall be condemned more severely, for they have no excuse whatever for their unbelief. Whoever hates Me, hates God My Father also. Moreover, if I had not proved My deity and Messiahship to the Jews through the works which I didand no other messenger of God has ever done such worksthey would not be guilty of the terrible sin of rejecting the Messiah. But now they are compelled by the miracles to recognize that the Father is with Me and so in hating Me they hate both Me and My Father. And the Father is using all this hatred to fulfill His plan of redemption in Me which He prophecied in their Scriptures, They hated me without a cause. But when the Helper comes, the Person whom I will send from the Father to be with you, I mean the Spirit of Truth, He will be a divine personality bearing witness to Me and sustaining the witness which you, who have been with Me from the beginning of My ministry, shall also make concerning Me to the world.

Summary

His disciples will be persecuted because the world hates Him. The world hates Him because of the perfect piercing revelation He made of God's righteousness. God will use the world's hatred to fulfill His redemptive purposes. They are not to despair in their persecution for they will have the divine Helper to sustain them in their work of witnessing.
precious possession he has. And if any man will lay down his life for a friend he has loved him as fully as he is able. But there is something

Comment

The vital union between Christ and His followers results in a fellowship of fruitfulness (John 15:1-11); a fellowship of confidence and communion (John 15:12-17); this union also results in a fellowship of suffering! Because this unity binds them into one sanctified body, it separates them from all those who do not wish to participate in this holy calling. Jesus came to call men apart from the world. This naturally results in enmity on the part of the world (Matthew 10:34-39).

The if of John 15:18 does not mean there may be the possibility that the world will hate you. In the original Greek idiom it means there is no question but that the world hates you.

Why should the world hate those whose very purpose is to do good? First, those who seek to do good must seek to propagate truth. What the Christian believes and teaches to be precious, the world regards as valueless. Much of what the Christian regards to be wrong, the world regards as right. Second, the righteous life of the Christian is a constant rebuke and judgment on unrighteous living and is, therefore, in direct opposition to the worldly life. All of this is because the world is out of harmony with the will of God. Men of the world walk by sight and not by faith. Their main interest is in satisfying the desires of the flesh and the pride of life. They have no concern for the hereafter. They are only after the here. It all depends upon what a man judges to be valuableit depends on where the treasure is, for there will the heart be also. If a man loves darkness, he will hate the light (cf. our comments on John 3:18-21).

There is an alternative! If the follower of Christ would escape the hostility of the world and become one of the world's hail, fellow, well met children, all the Christian need do is lower his flag, cover up his badge and do as the Romans do and he will be loved by the world. As Maclaren puts it, A half-Christianized world and a more than half-secularized Church get on well together. why should the world care to hate or trouble itself about a professing Church, large parts of which are only a bit of the world under another name? When Christian people and churches become vain, earthly, sensual, given to pleasure, wealth, and ambition, the world will not oppose them. BUT GOD WILL!

But true disciples of Jesus are not of the world. When Jesus calls men out from the world and sanctifies them by His word, His Spirit abides in them (cf. John 17:13-19). Henceforth they seek to make their every thought and deed captive to His will. Because they have overcome the world by faith and Christ now lives in them, the world hates them and makes war upon them (cf. 2 Timothy 3:12).

There are three approaches Jesus makes to prepare and arm His little children for their trying hours ahead. First, He tells them plainly that they must expect persecution. Fore-warned is fore-armed. Had He disguised or tempered His warning it would have been the worse for them when the persecution, in all its terribleness, came upon them. He told them plainly that they would be betrayed by parents and brethren and even put to death (cf. Luke 21:12-17). Second, He tells them that whatever they may have to suffer, they can take heart in the fact that He, their Master, has suffered like persecution and hatred before them. The servant should be proud to share in tribulations with One who is so much greater than he, and regard his suffering a privilege rather than a burden (John 15:18; John 15:20). (cf. also 2 Corinthians 4:17-18; Philippians 3:10; James 1:2-4; 1 Peter 4:12-16.) Third, Jesus tells these men that the world's hatred is a necessary outcome of their being called into fellowship with Him. They may either forfeit the privileges of such a fellowship and go back to the world, or they may retain the peace, hope and love of this fellowship and suffer the tribulations that necessarily accompany such an election. When He said remember He was referring to when He first sent them out. He warned them then that they would be hated and persecuted (cf. Matthew 10:16-25).

If men are of the attitude to obey God and His Son, they will obey the words of God's messengerswhen God's messengers speak God's word. The apostles were inspired and thus their messages had the inherent authority of God. Men today who are spokesmen for God may expect true followers of Christ to heed their preaching but only so long as their preaching conforms to the written Word of God, the Bible. When men do not heed the word of Christ, it shows that they have not the love of the Father in them (cf. John 5:42-43; John 8:43-47).

In John 15:22 through John 15:25 are some of the most solemn words to ever fall from the lips of the Saviour of men. He plainly declares that by both His teachings and His miraculous works He demonstrated enough proof of His Sonship, Messiahship that men who reject Him have absolutely no excuse. In comparison with the sin of not listening to His words, and being taught by His works, all other sins dwindle into nothing. Jesus does not mean to say that these men would have been clear of all sin. The Jew was condemned by the Law; the Gentile committed sins against his conscience (cf. Romans 1:1-32; Romans 2:1-29). But as black as these sins are, they are white compared with the blackness of the to love one another. He does not merely command love but with the command supplies the motive. And Christ's friends, living close to Him, and bearing fruit will get what they ask from the Father. Why? sin of rejecting the revelation of God in His Son, Jesus Christ. The rejection of the Messiah was the crowning act of rebellion by the Jews against God which brought down the vengeance of God and caused them to become a by word among the nations. They rejected the Great Prophet (cf. Deuteronomy 18:15-16; Acts 3:22-23). How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation (cf. Hebrews 2:1-4)?

As light comes to a man and increases, so his responsibility to follow and live in the light increases (cf. Luke 12:47-48). See also our comments on John 9:35-41. The measure of the guilt is the brightness of the light. No shadows are so black as those which are cast by the brightest noonday sun and no sin is so black as the rejection of the revelation of God in His Son who was in the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person.

Jesus spake as no other man had spoken; He did works which no other prophet had ever donenot even Moses. The proof is so clear that men cannot plead ignorance. To most men the gospel has been so often presented that they cannot say they have had no opportunity. There is no excuse for their sin. They do not know the time of their visitation (cf. Luke 19:41-44).

And the terribleness of this sin of hating Christ and His disciples is made even worse in that it is irrational and unreasonable. It is hatred without a cause. Jesus said that this hatred was foreknown by God and prophesied in the Old Testament. It was all within the purpose of God. It would be used by God to carry out His redemptive plan in Christ, the Lamb, the Suffering Servant. The same hatred by the enemies of God was shown to God's king David, but the final fulfillment of the worst that such hatred could do come from God's enemies against the One of whom David was but the shadowy type, the eternal Son of David. This prophecy is in Psalms 35:19; Psalms 69:4sometimes the entire Old Testament was called the law (including poetry, history and prophets). But Jesus had broken no law, injured no one, hated no one. To the contrary He sought only to do good to friend and enemy alike. What cause or reason had anyone for hating Jesus? What cause or reason has anyone today for hating Jesus? Some evil words and works have been done by evil men in the name of Jesus and His church, but the Word of Christ proclaimed and lived in the spirit of Christ has always sought the good of friend and enemy alike. What reason can the world give for hating true disciples of Jesus? None!

Now the climax to this section. He has poured out the deepest longings of His heart that they will persevere during the persecution that will inevitably come upon them. So now He promises again the Comforter. This is the Holy Spirit, that divine Person He promised and described in the preceding chapter. He will come as the Helper. In their witnessing to the world they will have the companionship and fellowship of this divine One. As eyewitnesses they must testify concerning Jesus (cf. Acts 1:21-22; Acts 4:19, etc.). The Holy Spirit would come to them and guide them infallibly in calling to their remembrance, without error, what they had seen with their own eyes and heard with their own ears (cf. 1 John 1:1-4; 2 Peter 1:16-21) and He would guide them into all truth which Christ had not yet taught them. But more than this, the Holy Spirit would accompany the apostles and bear witness to Jesus through the miracles He wrought through them (cf. Hebrews 2:4).

If, then, God be for us, who can be against us (cf. Romans 8:35-39)!

Quiz

1.

Why does the world hate Christ and His followers?

2.

Name the three ways in which Jesus prepared the disciples for the persecution to come upon them?

3.

What is indicated of men today who will not listen and obey gospel preaching?

4.

What did Jesus mean when He said If I had not come. they had not had sin?

5.

Why do men, who have had opportunity to hear of Christ, have no excuse for their sin?

6.

Why is hatred of Christ irrational and unreasonable?

7.

In what ways would the Holy Spirit bear witness to Jesus?