John 15:18-20

“ If the world hates you, know that I have been the object of its hatred before you. 19. If you were of the world, the world would love what belongs to it; but because you are not of the world and I have drawn you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20. Remember the word which I have said to you:the servant 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 yours also. ”

Jesus does not wish merely to announce to His disciples the hatred of which they are going to be the object on the part of the world; He wishes to fortify them against it; and He does so by saying to them, first: it will hate you as me (John 15:18-20); then: it will hate you because of me (John 15:21-25). Nothing makes us more ready to suffer as Christians than the thought that there happens to us only what happened to Christ, and that it happens to us for Him. Γινώσκετε may be taken as an imperative, like μνημονεύετε (remember), John 15:20: “Consider what has happened with regard to me, and you will understand that everything which happens to you is in the natural order.” The indicative sense, however, is more simple: “If a similar experience befalls you, you know the explanation of it already: you know indeed that....”

By their union with Christ, the disciples represent henceforth on earth a principle foreign to humanity which lives apart from God, to the world. This manifestation therefore appears strange to the world; it is offended by it; it will seek to get rid of it. ᾿Εξελεξάμην, I have chosen, indicates here the call to faith, not to the apostleship; by this word to choose Jesus would designate the act by which He has drawn them to Himself and detached them from the world; the thought of divine predestination is not found here, any more than in John 15:16. The close relation formed by this act of Jesus between Himself and the disciples is formulated in John 15:20 by the expressions master and servant. The quoted axiom has the same sense as in Matthew 10:24, but a different sense from John 13:16. In ch. 13 it is an encouragement to humility; here it is an encouragement to patience.

It is natural to regard the two cases set forth by Jesus in John 15:20 as both real. The mass of the people will no more be converted by the preaching of the apostles than by that of Jesus. But as Jesus has had the satisfaction of rescuing isolated individuals from ruin, this joy will also be granted to the disciples. This meaning seems to me preferable to that of Grotius, who gives to the second clause an ironical sense, or to that of Bengel, who takes τηρεῖν, to keep, in the sense of maliciously watching, or, finally, to the interpretation of Lucke, Meyer, de Wette, Hengstenberg, Weiss, who see in the two sides of the alternative proposed only two abstract propositions between which the apostles can easily decide which one will be realized for them; as if Jesus and themselves had not also gained some of the members of the κόσμος.