Or, What the World Needs Now Is What the World Hates Most
Scripture: John 15:18-25
Date: November 10, 2013
Speaker: Sean Higgins
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We hop a fence into another field away from the analogy of the vine and the branches. The new field isn’t so friendly and we really ought to make sure we’re abiding in the vine, believing His love for us, and trusting His promises of fruitfulness to us; we’ll need it.
Last Lord’s day we saw in verses 12-17 that we must abide in Jesus if we’re going to love like Jesus. He commands us to love up to His standard, and His standard was to lay down His life for His friends. He loved them and spent all of His sacrificial capital on them. He saved nothing back in order to save them. He loved them and invited them to abide in Him, not only to fellowship with Him but also to bear much fruit for Him. At least part of that fruit includes love from the energy and strength He gives.
What effect would love like that have? It would result in an growing community of disciples known for loving each other (see also John 13:34-35). Consider again verses 16-17.
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another. (John 15:16–17, ESV)
He chose them to “bear fruit” and He characterized that fruit as fruit that would “abide.” Their abiding in Him would result in abiding fruit, and here we are. Generations of disciples living with each another and loving one another pops from this kernel of promise. That kernel keeps popping today. This is some kind of potent love.
We might ask, “Yeah, but who can love like this?” At our Life to Life group last Wednesday we considered the question, “Is love like this hard?” How would you answer? How would Jesus answer? He would say that loving like Him is only as hard as abiding in Him.
Our experience argues that loving is hard because abiding is hard. A hundred distractions disconnect our fellowship with Him and the flow of His life into our fruitfulness. But as we read these words of Jesus to His disciples He makes it sound believable. He doesn’t open the analogy to obstruct our approbation of it, like handing us a treasure map that He’s drawn to deceive us or discourage us. “Ha! You’ll never find it!” Jesus stimulates faith and hope and confidence as well as focused singularity. “Abide in Me and fruit will come and a new community of love will grow out of it.”
We generally ride one rail or another, so hearing Jesus’ encouragement we might think that it was time to get the cake and some puppies. Abiding sounds peaceful and love sounds right as rain. What could stop the swell of serenity from washing over the entire world? Everywhere Christians go, everything we touch might not turn to gold, but our loving hands would certainly turn everything into butterflies and melted butter on fresh baked bread and hugs and poetry. That is just what happened when God so loved the world that He sent His Son who embodied love among us. Or not.
This is where Jesus picks up preparing His disciples in verse 18. As they abide in Him, they will love one another. As they love one another, a community will be created. As that community is observed by outsiders, they will hate it. The world will hate love-fruited disciples just as they hated the love-enfleshed Lord. The world will hate most what the world needs most. It’s why Jesus came and its why He leaves us here.
Hate dominates verses 18-25; a form of “hate” found eight times in the paragraph, including the first and last sentences. So do conditional, “if…then” constructions provide the skeleton; see six of them. We’ll follow the flow by stepping from “if” to “if.” The two in verse 20 are closely related so there are five points about hate that Jesus makes. We’ll cover the first three this morning, if the Lord wills. It’s a battle that love causes and conquers.
Jesus sets the context of the disciples’ love in a broader context of how the world will respond.
”If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. (John 15:18, ESV)
The first condition describes the fact that hatred is nothing new. Jesus “came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11). The Gospel of John documents the reactions to Jesus and many, if not most, of the reactions were violently intolerant. Look at whose left by chapter 15: eleven men plus a few others outside of the upper room. They had seen Him be hated.
If the world , the group of humanity who reject Jesus, hates you , the small group of standouts learning to love like Jesus, and they do hate you, know that it has hated me before it hated you . He commands them to know , to realize the facts.
Why would this be encouraging? If you step on a rusty nail and it hurts, know that it also hurt me when I stepped on it before you. It’s not encouraging that hatred hurts, it’s encouraging that hatred that hurts fits. When we encounter hate, we know we’re in the right place.
A fundamental division exists, the antithesis between two cultures that goes all the way back to Genesis 3. God established enmity between two communities, the offspring of the evil one and the offspring of Eve. To see that enmity is to know we’re alive.
While Jesus came to rescue men, He rescued them from fighting on the wrong side, He did not rescue them from fighting, at least not initially. He experienced the hatred from the majority. The disciples entered the age old battle from the right side.
The reaction of hate when confronted by love is absolutely natural.
If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. (John 15:19, ESV)
Three times Jesus uses the phrase of the world . It does not refer to physical location. It describes one’s nature and resulting loyalties. The disciples are not of the world; the world is of the world. We all love our own kind.
If you were of the world , but you’re not, then the world would love you as its own . Like loves like; that’s natural. The world would throw you parties, confer honorary degrees, write positive blurbs for your books, and like your Facebook page. If only.
But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, the world hates you . First, the only way to get “out” is to be chosen from outside. Second, “out of the world” cannot be a latitude/longitude issue. They were all in the world’s space, but not of the world’s spirit. Third, no ultimate in-between exists. You’re either of or your out. It is more natural for the world to love its own and hate disciples of Jesus than it is natural for disciples to love other disciples. That is supernatural.
We ought to wonder, Why does the world hate those who love? Why wouldn’t they see and want the good of love? Aren’t they attracted to the honey?
Yes, some will be, those who He chooses out of the world. That’s part of the abiding fruit Jesus promised in verse 16. But in general, the world hates those who love like Jesus because it disrupts their whole system.
Imagine if you, your family, and your city decided to paint some rocks yellow and call it money. Your entire economy was built around this arrangement of colored driveway gravel. As usual, some had more rocks, some had less, but everyone had access and everyone agreed that this was best deal.
Now imagine that a small group of people moved into a town who had real gold, gold they received from a gracious master. The difference was obvious to everyone even though no one wanted to acknowledge the difference publicly; that would disrupt the entire community. People’s feelings were going to get hurt. The gold people probably were acting better than the yellow rock people, in their heads at least. These gold people needed to be stopped! And who does this “lord” think he is, giving out gold to people willy-nilly?
True love that sacrifices for the unworthy subverts the current system, it takes aim to overturn all the agreements made between men in the world. They don’t like feeling less, they don’t appreciate the implications of their inferiority. Add the natural irrational nature of blindness that loves death and no wonder that the world hates those who are not of the world. The out-of-this-worlders remind the of-this-worlders that they are of this world.
Building on the reality in both verses 19-20, Jesus specifies that His followers should not expect to step in anything different than He stepped in.
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 also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. (John 15:20–21, ESV)
He begins with another command, Remember . The last time He said something like this was right after washing their feet (John 13:16). Mirroring humility like His becomes disciples, so does receiving persecution like Him. A servant is not greater than his master .
It’s quite a mental jump to assume that we will be treated better than our Lord. Spurgeon put it:
Doth that man love his Lord who would be willing to see Jesus wearing a crown of thorns, while for himself he craves a chaplet of laurel (an evergreen garland)? Shall Jesus ascend to his throne by the cross, and do we expect to be carried there on the shoulders of applauding crowds? Be not so vain in your imagination.
In reality If they persecuted me , and they did, then they will persecute you. If they kept my word , and only a few did, then they will also keep yours . Temper your expectations.
But all these things they will do to you on account of my name because they do not know the one who sent me . The persecution is absolutely personal toward God. Disciples represent God the Father by following God the Son and the world can’t handle it. They will not say that they are persecuting us for spiritual reasons any more than they will acknowledge that they don’t know God. We must be wise and see the plot with God’s perspective, like the one He’s given us here.
It is always possible that we could make men mad because we are acting like jerks. When we act worldly as we confront the world, they are in bounds to call us on it.
However, our bigger problem may be that we’re not expecting men to be mad when we love each other, let alone when we try to love them. Our bigger problem may be that we expect to get out of the battle rather than that we are battling wrongly.
Two things. First, Jesus leaves us here to subvert the world of hate. There are two communities, a community that loves Jesus and a community of those that hate the community that loves Jesus. We are a subculture, not a separated (in space) culture. Love leavens the loaf, it doesn’t lift us into heaven to be with all the other leaven. The world hates most what it needs most, and a community committed to love must be at the center. We can’t say, “Don’t like it? Then we’ll take our love and go home.”
Second, Cotton Mather observed, “For the faithful, wars never cease.” We need this teaching of Jesus to be prepared. He saved us from being on the wrong side of the battle, not saved not to battle.
Shasta’s heart fainted at these words for he felt he had no strength left. And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one. (C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy)
Jesus calls us to love in a world that prefers a self-destructive definition of love that it will protect to death. Who would embody love like that? Jesus, and all His fruitful loved ones.