Hatred of the World
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2021 · 21 November 2021
John 15:18-25, “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.”
“21 But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me. 22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. 23 He who hates Me hates My Father also. 24 If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would have no sin; but now they have seen and also hated both Me and My Father.”
“25 But this happened that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their law, ‘They hated Me without a cause.” This was Thursday evening, where our Lord is teaching His disciples all about love. John said, “having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to perfection.” But now suddenly it turns from love to hate. And the word “hate” is used repeatedly in this passage.
Our Lord promises them persecution as a result of hatred. He tells them, and all who will follow the name of Christ, that they will be hated by the world. Obviously, this began with the hatred of Christ Himself. They hated Him so much they killed Him. And it didn’t take long for that hate to transfer to His followers. So let us see what happened. The church is born in the Acts 2.
In Acts 3, Peter preaches a sermon; and by Acts 4, the apostles are arrested and put in jail by the Jewish authority. In Acts 5, they’re put in jail again. In Acts 6, we meet some of the believers in the early church, and one of them is Stephen; and in Acts 7, he is stoned to death by a mob after a false trial before the Sanhedrin. By Acts 8, persecution breaks out against all believers headed by Saul.
By Acts 12, the first apostle is murdered. It is James, the brother of John, and he’s killed by Herod. In the same chapter, Herod imprisons Peter, holding him until he would find the appropriate time to execute Peter; but Peter was set free by an angel. Persecution continued so that we know from history that all the apostles were martyred, with the exception of John who was exiled to Patmos.
In Acts 9 we have the conversion of Saul into Paul, and immediately he faces threats and persecution from the Jews in Damascus where he was converted. So he faces persecution, and that continues all the way to the end of Acts 28. It’s about Paul preaching the gospel, planting churches, establishing leaders, and being persecuted. His life was threatened every day, from the Jews and the Gentiles.
The first persecutors of Christians were the Jews who saw the Christians as heretics; and in John 16:2, Jesus told His disciples to expect this. “They will make you outcasts from the synagogue. An hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think he’s offering service to God.” The Jews were the ones who killed Christ and they were following up with the persecution of His followers.
In Acts, the gospel began to spread to the Mediterranean world; and there the Gentiles were in control. It isn’t long before the Gentiles pick up the persecution against these Christians. The Romans carried on that persecution for almost 300 years. They thought they had political reason to get rid of these Christians. Christians said Jesus is Lord and would not say Caesar is Lord.
Christians were seen at traitors. They were also seen as revolutionaries because they kept talking about another king and another kingdom. Their king was Jesus and His kingdom was the kingdom of God. And then Christians preached one God, while the Romans believed in many; and so the Romans thought the Christians to be an atheist group who denied gods. There was no separation between church and state.
Perhaps the most violent of all persecutions came under Diocletian starting in 303. Churches were destroyed, scrolls of Scripture were burned, and Christians were massacred. This went on until 324 when Constantine took power and established Christianity as a state religion; and that was the forerunner to the Roman Catholic system, which continued to be a persecutor of the true church.
For a thousand years after that, the Roman Catholic Church persecuted true Christians everywhere. Roman Catholicism flourished and grew up until the middle Ages and was the primary persecutor of true believers. The reformation came, and we all know that reformers were persecuted. There’s a Roman Catholic source that says, “In all of church history, about 70 million Christians have been killed.
All of that history is exactly what Jesus said in the passage we are studying. “They hate us. And because they hate us, they will persecute us.” It’s a prophecy that is absolutely accurate. Jesus said that and that is exactly what has happened. It tells us what was to come, and that is what history recorded. And the Lord said all this on the night before His death as He walked to the garden of Gethsemane.
And that hostility is still going on, even today. The mass murderers of Christians today are Muslims, and it doesn’t seem to be any letup against true Christians. Now the words of Jesus up to this point have been words of promise, comfort, encouragement and hope. They have been words of love. But now there are words not of heavenly blessings, but of sustained earthly persecution.
Being persecuted is the cost of discipleship. “Take up your cross and follow Me.” for some, there’s death in this. For all, there’s a measure of persecution. That measure of persecution is related to your faithfulness. When somebody says, “What do you think we should do about the persecution of Christians around the world? I say, “Accept it.” If we were more faithful, there would be more of it, not less.
Jesus says, “I command you to love one another.” Keep on loving one another. You’ll need it. It’s as if He says, Love each other deeply, love each other humbly, love each other loyally, love each other fervently, love each other devotedly, love each other sacrificially the way I’ve loved you, because all you have is each other. You’re not going to get that love from the world.
Why does the world hate us so much? Well, in this passage, our Lord gives three reasons at least. Verse 18-19, “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” So we’re not part of the system. We are a problem.
When you became a Christian, you were chosen by God to come out of the world. “You are not of the world,” verse 19. Why? Because I chose you out of the world. You are now a living rebuke to the world.” We become the conscience of the world; they hate us for that. And, they love to see a so-called Christian crash and burn in a moral disaster. They love to see that. They feed on that.
In 2 Corinthians 4:2 Paul says that “by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience.” There’s a law of God written in the heart of every person, the unregenerate as well as us. The law of God is in the heart; and when we preach the truth, it lights their conscience, and either accuses or excuses them. We are the conscience of the world and they hate us for it.
Let me tell you how you can elevate the hostility: start identifying evil as evil. Anyone who says that atheists are going to heaven is an antichrist. Homosexuality is evil. Gender identity tampering is evil. Adultery is evil. Fornication is evil. Lying is evil. Pride is evil. Self-centeredness is evil. Self-righteousness is evil. That’s why they killed Jesus because He said their religion was evil.
Then verse 20, “Remember Matthew 10:24, ‘a slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also.” They’re going to treat us like they treated Christ. Same Satan, same demons, same kingdom of darkness, same hatred of God. Righteousness, goodness and truth exists. They hated Him; and they will hate us.
In Matthew 5, Jesus said, “You’re going to be persecuted; but blessed are you when you’re persecuted for My sake.” If He, the perfect one, was treated that way, how do we, the imperfect ones, expect to be treated any different? And if we are Christians identified with Christ, we would expect the world run by Satan to have exactly the same attitude toward us that they have toward Him.
And if you haven’t experienced any of that, maybe you need to be more bold about what you say; the reality of death, and judgment, and hell, eternal punishment and sin. Those things need to be proclaimed. And we need to say, “Your deeds are evil, and evil has consequences, and it’s divine, and it’s eternal, unless you’re forgiven through the gospel of Jesus Christ.” You’re not greater than your Master.”
Another reason for the hatred of the world is that they do not know God. Verse 23, “He who hates Me, hates My Father also.” Verse 24, “They have both hated Me and My Father as well.” That’s an indictment of the entire religious system of Israel. In John 8:41 they say, “We have one Father: God is our Father.” Jesus said, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God.”
“Why do you not believe Me?” Verse 47: “He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason, you do not hear them because you’re not of God. You don’t know God. Not only do you not know God, you hate God.” Verse 55, Jesus says, “You’ve not come to know Him, but I know Him. And if I say I do not know Him, I will be a liar like you.” If you don’t come to Christ for salvation, you don’t know God.
Romans 1:21-23 says, “Men became futile in their thoughts, professing themselves to be wise they became fools. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie.” Romans 1:28 says, “They didn’t see fit to acknowledge God any longer.” And verse 30, “They became haters of God,” Why do they hate Him? They hate the true God, because they love their sin, and He sits in judgment on it.
Most people don’t understand man’s sinful nature. If man is blind and spiritually dead and double-blinded by Satan, and cut off from God, and in the deeds of his flesh he can do no good thing, and all his righteousness is filthy rags, and no one seeks after God, and they’re all poisoned and corrupted, if man can do nothing, then you have to be a Calvinist, because God has to invade.
You can only know God by knowing Christ. He is the only way to God: “No man comes unto the Father but by Me,” He said. You can’t know God unless you come to Christ, and you can’t come to Christ and confess Him as Lord unless the Holy Spirit enables you to do it. 1 Corinthians 12:3, “Nobody confesses Jesus as Lord but by the Holy Spirit.” It’s a divine miracle.
“Well, what can I do about it?” Cry out to God to be gracious and give you spiritual life. You might love a god of your own creation who tolerates you the way you are, but that is not the true God. Verse 22-23 says, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin. But now they have no excuse for their sin.” 23 He who hates Me, hates My Father also.”
Verse 24, “If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin. But now they have both seen and hated Me and My Father as well.” Jesus is saying, “If I had not come and spoken to them, if I had not done the works among them which no one else did, they would not have sin.” They would not have sin in a specific area. It doesn’t mean general sin.
The greatest sin is the rejection of the greatest revelation which is Christ. That’s why Acts 17 says it was a time in the past before Christ came where God overlooked sin. It meant that there was some tolerance of God because Christ hadn’t come. “But now” says Paul on Mars Hill in Acts 17, “God commands all men to repent because He has revealed Christ.” To hate God is to be doomed to hell.
We have a nation here of people who have been exposed to the story of the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is massive rejection of Jesus Christ, and that is the most serious sin any human being will ever commit. So there is the prophecy of our Savior, that as the world hates God, it hates Him and it hates us because we belong to Him. All that hatred is in excusable. But they did, and they do.
But more important, they hate us to fulfill scripture. Look at verse 25, “They have done this to fulfill the word that is written in their law.” Psalm 69:4, “They hated me without a cause.” Jesus is saying to the apostles, “This is the plan, that they would hate Me without a cause.” How will they overcome the persecution and the hatred? By the power of the Holy Spirit. Let us pray.