John 16:1-4

Comfort against the World's Hatred. John 16, 1-15.

The intensity of the world's hatred: V. 1. These things have I spoken unto you that ye should not be offended. V. 2. They shall put you out of the synagogs; yea, the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. V. 3. And these things will they do unto you because they have not known the Father nor Me. V. 4. But these things have I told you that, when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them. And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you.

Jesus had both warned His disciples of persecution and hatred, and had given them encouragement to meet all such demonstrations. And all these statements were made with the view of saving the disciples against being offended, that the coming of the predicted tribulations should not scandalize them. They now know that all these things happen in accordance with God's counsel and will or by His permission.

The hatred of the world, of the children of unbelief, may have various forms or degrees. For one thing, they will excommunicate the believers in Christ, they will exclude them from all external communion. The ostracism of the true disciples of Christ, in both church and society, is a favorite method of manifesting enmity toward Christ to this very day. And the time will come, Jesus says, when bigotry and hatred against Christ and His followers will not be satisfied with such measures, but will not even shrink back from murder itself. Every one of them, as a fitting representative of the whole class, will have the idea that he is thereby doing an act of special worship toward God. Everyone will believe that his murderous intent and execution is a work of great merit and well pleasing to God.

These words have been and are being fulfilled continually. The believers have ever been accounted a mad and malicious company. But the reason for this hatred, its intensity, and its expression, is found, as Jesus has remarked before in the fact that the unbelievers know neither the Father nor the Son. From the beginning Jesus had attempted to bring out the relation between Himself. and His Father very strongly; both His words and His works proclaimed the union between them, and yet the deliberate blindness of the unbelieving Jews continued.

"But this is said for our comfort and strength against such excommunicating and murdering, that we pay no attention to it nor be offended. For here we have the testimony and the glory, which they themselves must give us by their own confession, that they do not persecute us on account of such matters in which they could adduce a public proof as doing well and right, as in the things in which the world has a right to condemn and to punish, so far as notorious scoundrels, thieves, murderers, and rebels are concerned, but they persecute us in those matters of which they neither know nor understand anything, namely, that we preach of Christ and the Father, whom they know not, and yet, in their blindness, they oppose such preaching and rage against it" (Luther, 8, 624, 625).

What Jesus therefore has told His disciples will serve both as a warning and as a consolation, lest the coming of the trials and persecutions occasion surprise and offense. It had not been necessary for Jesus to give them such a full account at the beginning of His ministry for in those days, and since, He had been with them as their Friend and Protector, guarding them against both weakness and persecution.