Some time ago, I got into a conversation with a lady from Amnesty International down at the shops. She was a friendly young enthusiastic lady looking for supporters. She said something like, “Hi, I’m from Amnesty International. We are a human rights group. We have no religious or political affiliations.” At that point I probably could have butted in with, “I do”. But then the lady started to tell me the story of a man imprisoned in another country. He was a Christian, and in prison his captors pulled out his teeth one by one. She asked me, “What do you think about that?” And I said, “I think that’s terrible”, which of course it is.
Torture is a terrible treatment of humans made in the image of God. And I’m glad that the man is now in Australia. But I think my response was lame. What I should have said to this lady was, “It is terrible, but it is expected. It’s terrible, but its normal. This is what happens to Christians in most parts of the world.”
Torture and such cruel and unusual punishment is a violation of the dignity of humans made in the image of God, but it is only the way the world treats Christians, because that is the way the world treated Jesus, and that was what Jesus said would happen to his disciples. That would’ve been a more biblical response. For Jesus warns his beloved disciples that this is exactly the sort of treatment to expect.
We’ve been looking at Jesus’ last words to his friends, and we have already noticed that John does not record Jesus’ last supper, but Jesus’ last sermon instead. We saw that Jesus is the true vine, that we are the branches, and that his Father is the gardener. And we saw that we remain in Jesus’ love by us loving each other. Chapter 15 verses 12 and 13,
15:12This is my command, that you love one another just as I love you. 15:13No one has greater love than this, that they lay down their life for their friends.
Again, in chapter 15 verse 17:
15:17I am commanding you to do these things, so that you love one another.
Jesus says to us, “Be like me. I love you to death. You love each other to death.”
Now, this might raise an expectation, that Christians would experience love. And we would hope that love is the end result of all this, that Christians love and are loved. If we have the Spirit of Christ, we must feel something of this love for each other. We must act out something of this love for each other. Without this love, we are not Christian, and this is not church. Undoubtedly, we will show imperfect love for each other, yes—but it will be real love for each other, all the same.
So, the church loves. Otherwise, it is not the church. Christians love. Otherwise they are not Christians. And in the mix, we expect Christians to know the love of their brothers and sisters.
But there is also a darker side to following Christ, because if the church loves, the world hates. This is how the world treated Jesus. This is how the world will treat us. So we should not only expect love from the church, but also hate from the world. This is the fact, that Jesus and his followers are hated and persecuted. At one level, Jesus simply states the fact of the world’s hatred. The world hates him. The world hates his followers. And if that’s all we understand from this passage today, we’ve taken a big step, because I think our secret hope is that everyone will love us and we will be popular. I know that is my default position. And I don’t think I’m Robinson Caruso.
When we come to Christ, we are, if you like, walking into a battle zone. Imagine that you made the decision to go and live in a middle eastern war zone as an Anglo Australian. You take your pick which one. That is the type of decision we make in coming to Christ. Jesus is a deep and broad shelter from God’s hatred of our sin, yes. But he is not a shelter from the world’s hatred of us. So Jesus reminds them again and again.
Verse 18, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before you.”
Verse 20, “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”
Verse 21, “But they will do all these things to you because of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me.”
What are the Reasons for the World’s Hatred of Jesus?
Now this raises the question, “Why is Jesus hated?” After all, Jesus never did anything wrong. He lusted after nothing or no one, except God’s righteousness. He hated none, except evil. He was no criminal, though he died a criminal’s death. He is the only human that perfectly loved God and neighbour. But he was hated by the world he loved, hated all the way to the cross. Why?
The World is Unreasonable (v. 25)
At one level, the world is filled with blind, unreasoning hatred, the sort that hates first, and thinks later. Verse 25:
15:25But so that the word written in their law be fulfilled, “They freely hated me”.
They freely hated me. They are cut free of all thinking to hate. But underlying this hatred are other unreasonable reasons.
The World Hates God (vv. 21, 23, 24)
We shouldn’t be surprised that the world hates the son of God, because the world hates God. It is like father like son.
Verse 21, “But they will do all these things to you because of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me.”
Verse 23, “The one who hates me also hates my Father.”
Verse 24, “[…] “But now also they have seen me and have also hated me and my Father.”
The world hates the father and doesn’t know him. In fact, no one naturally, by themselves, loves God. No infant or child naturally loves God. We must not think that children are innocent. David says, “Surely I was sinful from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” And no adult by themselves knows God and loves him. The world hates God. And dear Christian friends, that was us, too. Jesus says in verse 19, “I have chosen you from the world, for this reason the world hates you.” We were once part of the hating world. And Jesus plucked us from our hatred of God and neighbour by choosing us for himself. It is not that we just needed a nudge in the right direction, and we will all love God. We needed a new nature, for we were part of the world, and needed to be brought out of the world. The nature of this world is that it hates both Father and Son.
And no one can love the Father and not love the Son. The Father and Son have such a unity, that if you hate one, you hate both, and if you love one, you love both. That is why Jesus can arrogantly say, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”, and it not be arrogant at all. Jesus is the only way to God. There is no other way to God and to be saved.
The World Hates Its Sin Being Exposed (vv. 22, 24)
But Jesus is also hated because he is a whistleblower. He is hated for the same reason that we need witness protection programs. He exposes sin. Verse 22, “Unless I had come and spoken to them, they would not have sin. But now they do not have an excuse about their sin.” Jesus spoke up about sin, and he took away the excuses his contemporaries used to justify their sin. And he rendered all the people that heard him all the more guilty for their sin once they heard him. So Jesus is hated. This is hate that comes from the guilty conscience and from the conviction of sin.
3:19This is the judgement: the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their works were evil. 3:20For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, so that his works might not be exposed. (John 3:19-20)
There is a better way open to the world and to us than loving the darkness and hating the light. That is, the better, no, the necessary way, is to walk in the light and to have our evil deeds exposed.
But if we walk in the light, as he [Jesus] is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)
Friend, I hope you have come into the light, for in the light, all our sin is naked before God. But in the light, there is purification from sin. Jesus washes our sins away when we bring them into the light, and there is restored fellowship with one another.
The Reason For the World’s Hatred of Jesus’ Followers (vv. 19, 20, 21)
And because the world hates Jesus, the world hates Jesus’ followers. Verse 20, “No servant is greater than his master.” If Jesus is hated, we will be hated because of our love for him. When an army inadvertently kills civilians as it wages war, they call it ‘co-lateral damage’. I guess that sounds a bit better than saying “We killed civilians”. The world’s hatred is focused on Jesus, but those who follow him are at risk of becoming ‘co-lateral damage’. Verse 21, “But they will do all these things to you because of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me.” The target is Jesus, and the world hates his name, even though it's the only name given us by which we must be saved. And the world hates us because we were once part of the world.
Who is it that smokers find infuriating? A reformed smoker. Who are the most vitriolic against alcohol, or gambling? Those who go to ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ or ‘Gamblers Anonymous’, for every week at the meeting they remind themselves that they are powerless against the ravages of their addiction. They need the help of the meeting, and the higher power, to continue the battle (in the same way that we need the church, for church is ‘Sinners-Not-So-Anonymous’).
The world that we used to be part of sees us ‘recovering sinners’ as wowsers. The world hates those who are taken from it. Verse 19, “If you were from the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not from the world, but I have chosen you from the world, for this reason the world hates you.”
Jesus has chosen his disciples from the world. He has plucked them out from the great mass of rebellious, God-hating humanity. He has elected them. Jesus said in chapter 15 verse 16, “You did not choose me, but I chose you”. It seems so arrogant to say, “Jesus has chosen us!” But it is what Jesus says, and what the bible teaches. We are not chosen because of anything good in us. That’s why we needed to be chosen. We didn’t choose Jesus, but he chose us.
Expect Help in Witnessing from the Witness (vv. 26-27)
So we are to expect persecution and hatred from the world. But we are also to expect help from God in the task of witnessing or testifying. We are to expect comfort and counsel that the world cannot take away. In verse 26, Jesus said to his apostles, “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me.” Jesus promised he would not leave his disciples alone. He was going away and was going to send the Advocate, one who would take his place during the time of his departure. The apostles and their successors, the church, would not be left as orphans. Jesus would send the Spirit to us, who serves as our Advocate—that is, our legal advocate, our lawyer, our solicitor. And he will testify about Jesus. God the Spirit, you see, is the great evangelist who bears witness to the son. The ability to witness is first of all the work of God the Spirit, for the Spirit points not to himself, but to the Son. The Spirit brings glory to the Son (John 16:14).
In this one verse, we are given a glimpse of how the triune God works. The incarnate Son returns to the Father. Then the Son sends the Spirit. But the Spirit comes from the Father. So rightly do we say in the Nicene Creed in the Western tradition, “the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son”. The Spirit testifies to the Son, all to the glory of the Father.
But the disciples also must bear witness. Verse 27, “And you also will testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.” The Spirit bears witness, but so must the disciples. They knew Jesus in the flesh. They must testify to what they saw and heard, as we must also.
We have not seen Jesus in the flesh, but we are the descendants of the disciples. We have received their gospel. We confess with our mouths, “Jesus is Lord”, the risen and reigning King of the Universe, and so we join our voices with the Spirit, the counselor, in his work to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment.
Expect Excommunication and Martyrdom (John 16:1-4)
But because the Spirit’s work is to convict of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and we join our voices to his, we will be hated, because the world hates to hear about its sin.
They say that forewarned is forearmed. Modern parlance calls this a ‘heads up’. Jesus is not telling his disciples or us so that we melt away in fear, but so that we stand firm. Chapter 16 verses 1 to 4:
16:1I have spoken these things to you so that you might not stumble. 16:2They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed an hour is coming when anyone who kills you will think it a service offered to God. 16:3And they will do these things because they have not known the Father nor me. 16:4However, I have spoken these things to you so that when their hour comes, you will remember them, because I have told you. But I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you.
This is a word to the apostles. But it is also a word to us, for Jesus had an eye to us when he spoke that night, for we are those who would believe their message.
The church in every age experiences persecution. And because the world is in the synagogue, true believers in Christ may well first be excluded from apostate churches. In some places today, you cannot be ordained without agreeing with the ordination of practicing homosexuals. In some places, you won’t receive a license in the Anglican church if you don’t agree with women presbyters, or bishops, despite what the apostle says. In 1660 in England, when the Monarchy was restored, the Church of England ejected 2000 of the best, most evangelical ministers in 2 years. But when the Plague and the Fire of London came in 1666, these pastors were the ones who stayed to pastor the churches, while the Church of England ministers left.
And of course, some Christians pay the ultimate price. They are killed for their trust in Christ. In fact, it is estimated that more people died for Christ in the twentieth century than in the previous 1900 years. Sudan, China, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Syria, Egypt: in all these places we hear that Christians suffer. Even in Australia, there are death threats and other lesser persecutions. And often the people who do these things think they are serving God. When Graham Steynes and his two boys were set on fire in their car in India a few years ago, it was by a Hindu crowd who believed they were serving God. When Archbishop Cranmer was burnt at the stake, it was thought by some to be the will of God and a Christian and holy act. The people who flew into the twin towers, or the Bali bombers, believed that they were serving God. We mustn’t assume that we Aussies are in the ‘Lucky Country’ and we will be free from all this. All we can say is that we currently enjoy a comparative peace from violent oppression. But if and when the day comes and violent persecution visits our churches, may we remember that Jesus already warned us.
Perhaps for now the world’s hatred takes a different form. Perhaps it is exclusion from the inner circle at work, because you do not join in with the coarse joking, or drinking binges, or the slander. Or you’re on the outer because you disapprove of the petty theft, or you won’t lie either to your boss or for him. Perhaps it’s the continual niggles with your non-Christian family, perhaps a husband, or children, or parents, or brother or sister, which when you sweep away the leaves and uncover the root of the problem, it is because you confess Jesus Christ is Lord, and they don’t. Perhaps it is because you think that homosexuality is sin, but our society approves of those who practice it.
In all this, lets make sure we are faithful in the smaller tests, so that we will be ready for the bigger tests when they come.
My Translation
15:18“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before you. 15:19If you were from the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not from the world, but I have chosen you from the world, for this reason the world hates you. 15:20“Remember the word which I spoke to you, “No servant is greater than his master”. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. 15:21“But they will do all these things to you because of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me. 15:22Unless I had come and spoken to them, they would not have sin. But now they do not have an excuse about their sin.
15:23The one who hates me also hates my Father. 15:24If I had not done the works among them which no one else did, they would not have sin. But now also they have seen me and have also hated me and my Father. 15:25But so that the word written in their law be fulfilled, “They freely hated me”.
15:26When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. 15:27And you also will testify, because you have been with me from the beginning
16:1I have spoken these things to you so that you might not stumble. 16:2They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed an hour is coming when anyone who kills you will think it a service offered to God. 16:3And they will do these things because they have not known the Father nor me. 16:4However, I have spoken these things to you so that when their hour comes, you will remember them, because I have told you. But I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you.