John 15:22-25

The hatred of the world and the testimony of the Spirit: V. 22. If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin. V. 23. He that hateth Me hateth My Father also. V. 24. If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen and hated both Me and My Father. V. 25. But this cometh to pass that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their Law, They hated Me without a cause.

The position of the unbelieving Jews at the time of Jesus was much like that of Paul, Rom. 7, 7. If Jesus had not come and revealed Himself to the world as the Messiah, if He had not taught and preached as He did, then their great sin, unbelief, would not have been committed.

After the revelation of Christ, after the open preaching of the Gospel before the world, there is no longer any excuse for unbelief. It is here laid bare as the sin of sins, for Christ earned and offered full atonement for all sins, and in rejecting Him they also rejected His atonement, whereby their sins were returned to them with their full damnation.

And in hating Jesus they also hated the Father, thus loading upon themselves a still greater measure of guilt. That is the climax of enmity toward God, that the world despises and rejects the love of God, the grace of God in Christ, that the children of unbelief hate that God who offers them mercy and peace.

The situation is perfectly plain. Jesus had not only preached of the Father time and again, but He had revealed Him also through His works, through His miracles. They had rejected this revelation in their unbelief. Seeing the Father in the person of the Son, they had hated Christ and therefore also the Father, with whom He is One.

There is no excuse for the world, but there is some measure of comfort for the disciples in the fact that the world's hatred has been prophesied, Ps. 69, 4. Without a just cause, from a mere spirit of contrariness, the world hated Christ, and today hates the Christians. Their rejection of Him, of His Word, and of His followers, is inexcusable.